The Freeman | Ideas On Liberty » Bruce M. Evans

Perspective: Remembering Who We Are

Bruce M. Evans — Tue, 01 Nov 1988 08:00:00 +0000

The election of national leaders brings forth feelings of anxiety and expectancy. Yet, change often carries a glimmer of hope, even in the minds of hardened realists or confirmed skeptics.

Somehow, coming off a season of defeats, a football team retains a spark of optimism that its first game can be won. Similarly, we often feel a new year will be better than the last—or a new can of coffee offers a better aroma. It may even be possible that a new President will be better than the last one.

Americans are harsh judges of political figures. ‘Our feelings are a curious mixture of high hopes and not-so-high expectations.

We hope for a return to personal initiative and responsibility, but we expect a continuation of current welfare state policies. We hope for a return to reason and logic in meeting problems of natural resources and economic policy, but we expect that special interest groups will continue to hold sway. Thus, we are frequently the schizophrenic victims of hope and despair.

Many of us had parents who said to us in some way as we prepared to leave home: “Remember who you are.” And I want to suggest that here: Remember who you are.

Free people have been characterized throughout history by initiative, courage, independence, and compassion—all of which contribute to a better quality of life. Traditionally, free people ask only for an opportunity.

Elected officials in America once were seen as people of character, integrity, principles, and good judgment—chosen to protect the interests of all the people. It was understood that special interest issues were not to be settled by governmental intervention, but through peaceful interactions in the market.

We need leaders who will help us understand that if we try to advance our vested, selfish interests through political means, we will restrict our own freedom, as well as that of our fel-lowmen.

Edmund Burke once said: “The great difference between the real statesman and the pretender is that one sees into the future, while the other regards only the present; the one lives by the day, and acts on expediency; the other acts on enduring principles and for immortality.”

If there were fewer calls for expediency and political intervention, there would be far less of the same. Much of the regulation which we find so offensive is brought on by the abuse of influence and by special request. Group after group is organized to secure more money or advantage through government intervention.

In his address urging adoption of the United States Constitution, Benjamin Franklin stated: “. . . I cannot help expressing a wish that every member . . . would doubt a little of his own infallibility.”

Let us ask our officials to recall their own fallibility. Let us ask them to remember that the constitutional purposes of government pertain to the protection of life, liberty, and property, and to leave our personal and social problems to individual and community initiatives.

Whether one’s perspective is optimistic or pessimistic, we should note with Emerson that “This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.”

Let us use it well!

—Bruce M. Evans

President

Civilization

The Declaration of Independence lists “the pursuit of happiness” as among the most fundamental of rights. In this the framers were realists, rather than moralists.

Civilization has greatly advanced in material wealth and its intellectual underpinnings: steadily, clearly, and progressively the standard of living has risen and the proportion of total output devoted to life’s necessities has fallen. Indeed, in many cases, today’s understanding of a necessity was yesterday’s understanding of a luxury.

Moralists may prefer to think of civilization as progress in “the pursuit of virtue,” hut evidence for this is scanty. Violence, coercion, and fraud flourish everywhere, even in the most “civilized” and “advanced” countries. Nor are crimes and sins of man against man less abundant now than in yesteryear.

“Civilized,” literally, means “fit for life in cities.” And indeed it is the cities that are most vibrant economically and intellectually, centers of commerce and know-how, filled with trade and economic and intellectual specialization and cooperation. As Jefferson described the “march of civilization”—“like a cloud of light, increasing our knowledge and improving our condition.”

But as Jefferson so often predicted, cities are also among the places least given to virtue and most given to vice, with violence done to persons and property everywhere in sight.

What does this mean to those of us devoted to the freedom philosophy? It means that while the pursuit of happiness, and the economic and intellectual progress that makes it possible, are aided greatly by the cooperation, competition, and specialization of the marketplace, the pursuit of virtue is intrinsically a matter of individual effort dedicated to self-improvement. This the Founders understood.

—Joseph S. Fulda

Perspective: The Power of Principle

Bruce M. Evans — Thu, 01 Sep 1988 08:00:00 +0000

Consistency of thought and behavior is indeed rare. The vagaries of life often are characterized by a continual shifting of principles and practices “to meet the demands of our modern world.” There is today, perhaps as always, a dearth of exemplars of principled life—role models of internal and social consistency and integrity.

The 90th anniversary of Leonard Read’s birth reminds us of a lifetime devoted to the practice and promotion of principled freedom. Through The Foundation for Economic Education, Mr. Read devoted almost 40 years to describing and calling for an ideal. He took the time and exerted the effort to analyze daily ac-tivities-personal, social, and political—in the context of principles and moral philosophy.

It seems somewhat ludicrous that we readily accept group action which would be considered unconscionable if initiated by individuals. Yet, the political agenda is generally shaped by special interest focus on outcomes with little thought for the violation and destructive abandonment of principles. Rarely do we ask, “Is this morally right?” in a discussion of proposed legislation. Our preoccupation is rather with good intention and popular appeal. Thus, unprincipled behavior often becomes the law of the land through action without thought and the anonymity of group process. In the absence of principle, power rules.

FEE continues to carry the banner for principled lives, public and private. The example and heritage provided by Leonard Read require our thoughtful perseverance in a cause served best by responsible, principled individuals.

—Bruce M. Evans

President

“I, Pencil” Gets Around

In December 1958, FEE’s founder and longtime president, Leonard E. Read, wrote a short piece about an ordinary wooden lead pencil. He wrote in the first person, as if the pencil itself were writing. “I, Pencil,” he wrote, “am a complex combination of miracles: a tree, zinc, copper, graphite, and so on. But,” the pencil continued, “to these miracles which manifest themselves in Nature an even more extraordinary miracle has been added”—the “miracle” of uninhibited creative energy, bringing together millions of tiny know-bows of countless individuals. No human being could mastermind the complexities of making a pencil, Read wrote, any more than he could put molecules together to create the tree which is cut into small slats from which pencils are formed.

Read’s explanation of the complicated division of labor and international cooperation required to produce something as simple as a pencil has struck a responsive chord with many people all over the world. “I, Pencil” has been reprinted in anthologies for school children, translated into foreign languages, and parodied in an ad several years ago in Review of the News. A diagram of a pencil was used by Hillsdale College, with quotes from the article, to illustrate why the free market is essential. Milton Friedman mentioned “I, Pencil” in his 1980 TV series, Free to Choose, and in his book of the same name. Thomas Sowell referred to it in his profound and thoughtful Knowledge and Decisions, when he wrote, “It has been said that no one knows how to make even a simple lead pencil.”

“I, Pencil” has even been used in a recent best-selling Japanese comic book, Japan Inc., Introduction to Japanese Economics, which has been translated into English and is now available in this country. Several panels describe the ingredients, the tools, and the inter-national cooperation needed to make a pencil. Then the legend reads, “It’s not that each person works for the sake of making pencils. All of them work for the goods they want . . . . we make the goods they want so they’ll make the pencils we want . . . . It’s not that someone somewhere gives an order. Pencils are made right before our eyes, but it seems like a miracle.”

—BBG

The Loss of Freedom

Much of the loss of freedom with the growth of big government has been concealed because the direct losses have been suffered by intermediary decision-makers—notably businessmen—and it is only after the process has gone on for a long time that it becomes blatantly obvious to the public that an employer’s loss of freedom in choosing whom to hire is the worker’s loss of freedom in getting a job on his merits, that a university’s loss of freedom in selecting faculty or students is their children’s loss of freedom in seeking admission or in seeking the best minds to be taught by.

—Thomas Sowell

Knowledge and Decisions

While They Starve

The Government of Ethiopia has so severely restricted emergency relief operations in the country’s north, a region ravaged by both drought and war, that as many as two million people are out of reach of any known system of food distribution, aid officials and Western dip-1omats say.

Because of the restrictions, these officials say, hundreds of thousands of tons of donated food are piling up at ports and may never reach those in need. Agricultural seeds, too, are not being distributed. This means that farmers who must soon plant crops cannot do so, which could lead to even greater problems next year.

—The New York Times,

April 29, 1988