Ideas on Liberty

BY RIDGWAY K. FOLEY, JR.

ACCORDING to G. K. Chesterton, “There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.” Substantial similarity exists between the eminent Mr. Chesterton and my redoubtable friend and mentor Paul Poirot. Each man qualifies as a remarkable wordsmith; each demonstrates eclectic knowledge; each operates on high principle. Thus, it seems fitting to employ a Chesterton epigram in tribute to Paul Poirot.

Chesterton’s trenchant observation reminds us that the glory of individual action lies in its very lack of prescribed form and fetters. Of course, nature provides some constraints: We would not do at all well in a random universe. However, avoidance of artificial barriers allows full sway to man to construct his “castle in the clouds,” to permit his mind to expand, develop, and search for a destiny beyond the ken of a coercive committee.

In essence, one must choose between contract and coercion. A contractual society exists upon the premise that men can arrange their affairs voluntarily and with good faith; that persons seeking their self-interest can better plan and provide for a desired outcome than can the omnipotent state; that endless variations require specific treatment impossible under the strictures of general codes; and, that a moral order pervades the universe. The statist society leaves precious little room for the grace of individualism—the puny minds of legislators and bureaucrats seek to foreordain all possible outcomes by virture of prior restraints they concoct. The result: a dull, faceless, and tasteless society, to say the least.

A contractual society requires law—rules of societal architecture, if you will—only to solve otherwise insoluble disputes and to thwart aggression; it allows the contracting parties, absent force and fraud, to preordain their ends. Contrast the prevailing view: “Modern political leaders reject the importance of private contracts; government rules are written for everything. Individual rights are never defended; special class ‘rights’ (which are actually demands and wishes) are used as guidelines.”1

Contrary to the prevailing political mode, one ought to be concerned with the dignity, the worth, and the sanctity of the individual human being. Each individual is unique, and this unique quality, this discrete difference, is the source from which all values flow. This difference in values produces the need to engage in exchange, to trade peacefully, and to form those voluntary associations which satisfy human needs for companionship and security, for civility and development. Those who decry individual action seek regulation in all important matters of human existence. Regulation implies the need for coercive control; it preordains the ultimate demise of individualism.

The Dogma of Creeds

Why does society2 impose controls which inevitably stifle creativity and inhibit advance? Regulation affords an acceptable label to camouflage coercive restraint of free, creative human conduct which, if unchained, might dispatch wonderful energy and miraculous results for the individual or mankind or both. Codes, no matter what their origin and their well-intended meaning, are always shortsighted because the draftsmen (being fellows of wee minds) cannot foresee the developments which will flow from the unchanneled conduct of millions upon millions of discrete, contemplative individuals. Codes are always rigid and inflexible, geared to the lowest common denominator. Codifiers lack foresight and insight; their castles crumble, so they assault their neighbor’s citadel, armed with law books and envy. Policing ultimately implies force; it forms the first step to a totalitarian state. It also implies sameness, limits upon creativity, and dullness.

Current emphasis upon societal rights and individual obligations does more than blur fundamental distinctions: It skews accurate analysis. “Class” or “societal” rights represent an impossibility: No aggregate possesses rights; rights belong to individuals, merely because they are individuals; rights do not inhere in mobs, in associations, or in claques. Indeed, since decisions emanate from personal individual choice, aggregate analysis is unhelpful. The unique characteristic of man as man, as distinct from all other creatures, is his capacity for moral choice. Man possesses the potential for evil as well as for good, and therein lies his humanity. Although man may be influenced by his heredity and by his environment, he is not fully determined by those forces: In essence, man is moral choice.3

Despite this seminal trait ineluctably present in mankind, we live, more and more, in an age of enforced orthodoxy. Lip service to liberty tumbles before the narrow constraints of a prescribed agenda. Punishment for thought or action beyond narrow “acceptable” limits exceeds the mere excommunication prevalent in earlier times: it may partake of compelled participation, imprisonment, torture, or death. While enforced orthodoxy was ever thus, the current situation differs radically from the past: the modern mandate state reigns during a period of rhapsodic lip service to tenets of liberty, tolerance, and pluralism. In simple terms, cant and hypocrisy mar the day: freedom for all who cleave to the prescribed agenda; the rack for those deserving wretches who deign to think the unthinkable, who seek heaven beyond the boundaries so carefully circumscribed by the legislators of the mind.

Extending One’s Vision

Individualism, in its pure sense, recognizes the inherent, unlimited right to create one’s “castle in the clouds” sans adherence to any scholastic governor, without sanction for heresy or apostasy. Properly construed, the philosophy of the volunteer, of the individualist, comprises the most tolerant of all human conditions: Absent aggressive and deceitful conduct, each individual enjoys the inherent right and power to extend his vision to the heights and depths of his desires. The open texture of individual action flows spontaneously, without preconceived ends: The majority may consider the dreamer foolish, wasteful, or goofy, but his quest remains unhindered.

Individualism is not egoism in its brittle and distasteful sense. Mankind seems bent on theocratic imposition, and few are immune from the virus of swell-headed certainty. The old theocratic society, oft characterized by blue laws and cant, sought to impose upon the social order a particular view of morality and good behavior. The new theocracies, although not so identified, also seek to conform all human behavior to a compulsive norm wherein the state or its minions define “good works” in the socialist tongue and impose their rules quite as arbitrarily as their precursors. Thus, the bigots of yore forbade bawdy houses and demon rum, whilst the illiberal moderns snub South Africa and Robert Bork, and preclude rational discourse by their opponents concerning legitimate religious, political, and moral controversies. Not to be outdone, the rationalist of the day—particularly in the political spectrum—reads out of his doctrinaire splinter movement those who seek to argue, e.g., concerning the issue of abortion or the precept of a limited government. Just so, the assault on judicial activism of the Warren years takes on quite a different hue with the elevation of “conservative” social engineers to the high court. All theocracies, old and new, overt and covert, partake of the same listless error: the cocksure belief in personal infallibility concurrent with a demeaning disregard for those who disagree.

Return to the lesson of Chesterton’s phrase: “There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.” Shackles deprive us all. Limiting rules inhibit advance and condemn us to a stagnant past. Committee action reduces contemplation to the peat bogs of the mind. Useless regulations provide but illusive certainty in an uncertain life. Free individual action, far from lacking order, provides the most orderly and felicitous fulfillment of the human condition. No aggregate, no committee, no state, ever constructed a castle in the clouds.

Mr. Foley, a partner in Schwabe, Williamson, and Wyatt, practices law in Portland, Oregon. He is a Trustee of The Foundation for Economic Education.

4. Ron Paul’s Freedom Report, “The Elusive Dream for Great Leaders” (Vol. VIII, September 1983), pages 2–3.

5. In Nockean terms, the adept term is “state,” not “society.” Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy, The State (Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1935).

6. Albert H. Hobbs, Man Is Moral Choice (Arlington House, New Rochelle, New York, 1979).

• 1. Ron Paul’s Freedom Report, “The Elusive Dream for Great Leaders” (Vol. VIII, September 1983), pages 2–3.
• 2. In Nockean terms, the adept term is “state,” not “society.” Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy, The State (Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1935).
• 3. Albert H. Hobbs, Man Is Moral Choice (Arlington House, New Rochelle, New York, 1979).
• 4A contractual society requires law—rules of societal architecture, if you will—only to solve otherwise insoluble disputes and to thwart aggression; it allows the contracting parties, absent force and fraud, to preordain their ends. Contrast the prevailing view: “Modern political leaders reject the importance of private contracts; government rules are written for everything. Individual rights are never defended; special class ‘rights’ (which are actually demands and wishes) are used as guidelines.”
• 5Why does society impose controls which inevitably stifle creativity and inhibit advance? Regulation affords an acceptable label to camouflage coercive restraint of free, creative human conduct which, if unchained, might dispatch wonderful energy and miraculous results for the individual or mankind or both. Codes, no matter what their origin and their well-intended meaning, are always shortsighted because the draftsmen (being fellows of wee minds) cannot foresee the developments which will flow from the unchanneled conduct of millions upon millions of discrete, contemplative individuals. Codes are always rigid and inflexible, geared to the lowest common denominator. Codifiers lack foresight and insight; their castles crumble, so they assault their neighbor’s citadel, armed with law books and envy. Policing ultimately implies force; it forms the first step to a totalitarian state. It also implies sameness, limits upon creativity, and dullness.
• 6Current emphasis upon societal rights and individual obligations does more than blur fundamental distinctions: It skews accurate analysis. “Class” or “societal” rights represent an impossibility: No aggregate possesses rights; rights belong to individuals, merely because they are individuals; rights do not inhere in mobs, in associations, or in claques. Indeed, since decisions emanate from personal individual choice, aggregate analysis is unhelpful. The unique characteristic of man as man, as distinct from all other creatures, is his capacity for moral choice. Man possesses the potential for evil as well as for good, and therein lies his humanity. Although man may be influenced by his heredity and by his environment, he is not fully determined by those forces: In essence, man is moral choice.