How Do We Know

5

AFLAME WITH RIGHTEOUSNESS

Some nations . . . once they have grown prosperous lose interest in freedom and let it be snatched from them without lifting a hand to defend it, lest they should endanger thus the comforts that, in fact, they owe to it alone. It is easy to see that what is lacking in such nations is a genuine love of freedom, that lofty aspiration which (I confess) defies analysis. For it is something one must feel and logic has no part in it.

—ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

From the earliest years of our history America prospered. Other nations of the world whose soils were as fertile and climates as friendly as the U.S.A. were poverty-stricken and they wondered why America flourished. Many governments sent commissions here to find the answer. All returned to their homelands with the wrong answers. It was only that French statesman, Tocqueville (1805-59) who, when visiting here, found the right answer:

I sought for the greatness and genius of America in fertile fields and boundless forests; it was not there. I sought for it in her free schools and her institutions of learning; it was not there. I sought for it in her matchless constitution and democratic congress; it was not there. Not until I went to the churches of America and found them aflame with righteousness did I understand the greatness and genius of America. America is great because America is good. When America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.1

And logic has no part in it. I am reminded of Charles F. Kettering’s remark: “Logic is an organized way of going wrong with confidence.”

No question about it, our Constitution was excellent as was the Bill of Rights. These documents limited government more than governments had ever been limited in any nation.2 Result? No citizen turned to government for help and for two reasons: (1) it had nothing on hand to give, and (2) it had not the power to take from some and give to others. For more than ten decades a self-responsible, self-reliant citizenry!

Constitutions, however, short of a perpetual righteousness, lose their discipline and fade away as has ours. A good example is Argentina. A commission from that nation came here along with other commissions from other countries. On returning, they wrote a Constitution even better than ours. Have a look at Argentina today. In a deplorable politico-economic mess!

In the spring of 1940 I paid my first visit to Argentina. It was then one of the world’s most prosperous nations. Why? They were adhering more or less to free market principles. Three pesos was equivalent to a 1940 dollar. In any event, free-market thinking lapsed. Result? A Command Society! What has happened to the peso’s value? A brilliant Argentinean—a freedom devotee—recently bought four cups of coffee in Buenos Aires and remarked to his friends, “I am paying more pesos for the coffee today than I paid for a new automobile in 1936.” The lesson? It is only doing what’s right—freedom—that matters!

Some nations . . . once they have grown prosperous lose interest in freedom. Other wise men agree:

Everything in the world may be endured except continued prosperity.

—Goethe

“Everything” is too strong a term, for there are other things than prosperity that some people cannot endure. For instance, how hard it is for a politician—as distinguished from a statesman—to endure the thought of citizens acting freely and creatively as they please? Why? Fat-headedness—be-like-me-ness—rules their despicable conduct!

Prosperity has this property, it puffs up narrow souls, makes them imagine themselves high and mighty, and they look down upon the world with contempt.

—Sophocles

He that swells in prosperity will be sure to shrink in adversity.

—Caleb Colton

A swelled head is incapable of coping with adversity. Those who have not known ill fortune are lacking in knowledge of themselves, and they are ignorant of their potential virtues as well. As to such citizens, Tocqueville wrote, “. . . they lose interest in freedom and let it be snatched from them without lifting a hand to defend it.” They cannot defend freedom, and for a simple reason: they are too low on the politico-economic ladder. Most of them, resorting to legal plunder, are in a know-nothing category.

. . . lest they should endanger thus the comforts that, in fact, they owe to it alone. Wrote the Scottish clergyman, Samuel Rutherford: “Of all created comforts, God is the leader, you are the borrower, not the owner.”

One of my prayers is: “Blessings upon our associates, near and far, past and present; the perfection of our ideas and ideals; our adherence to them; and our faith in Thee.” Admittedly, I am a borrower, not the owner!

Descend to my level. We mortals, at best, possess no more than finite consciousness. Is creativity within our range? Yes, indeed! It comes by way of a strict adherence to private ownership, the free market, and government limited to keeping the peace and invoking a common justice; briefly, everyone free to act creatively as he or she pleases. We owe all laudable comforts to freedom!

Finally, does freedom defy analysis? Yes, we only know that it works, not how the trillions of miracles configurate and confer their countless blessings. However, we can feel this phenomenon. Thanks, Alexis de Tocqueville, for grasping the wonders of early America!

• 1See Science Is a Sacred Cow by Anthony Standen (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1950), pp. 63-64.
• 2“No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words ‘no’ and ‘not’ employed in restraint of governmental power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights.” (“Liberty and Ethical Values,” Edmund A. Opitz)