August 28, 2007
by Clay Barham
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"All men's impulses, when motivated by legitimate self-interest, fall into a harmonious social pattern," said the 18th century French legislator, Frederick Bastiat. He gave us a way to see our social problems. Solving our social problems rests upon whether men's interests are harmonious or antagonistic to one another. If harmonious, then liberty solves our problems. If antagonistic, coercive rule of the many by the wiser few is a necessity.
Those who believe men's interests are harmonious will agree that solving our social problems is possible only when we do not interfere with or try to redirect those interests. Those who believe men's interests are antagonistic to a properly functioning society, start by denying liberty. Worse yet, they cannot agree on which system, out of the many, is the right one for elimination of freedom.
Those who believe that individual self-interests, by their very nature, are in conflict with properly run communities, will design, engineer, and manage different kinds of artificial social orders. The questions we all have to ask is; if the selected plan is the best, will everyone accept it, will they accept it when it runs contrary to their self-interests, and where will we find those to run it whose self-interests are not antagonistic? Then, if it turns out bad, do we keep it anyway? Will those who came up with the winning plan maintain it by force when newer and better plans are introduced?
We have only to look at history for the answer. We divide the world into the Old and the New. The Old World, which is everywhere but North America, has run through just about every conceivable plan and method of eliminating liberty. You name it; they lived it and still do. Some have tried to force neighboring nations to accept their plan, through force and invasion. The result has been a lot of human misery and little progress. New plans are born each day, from colleges and gutters, and all promise the same thing, to deny individual liberty.
What have we learned from the New World, America? Almost 400 years ago, a small band of Christians left Europe and settled in North America. The Bible was their constitution, and their laws were the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule. These were simple, easily understood and followed behavioral boundaries. The people were free of the rule of a few, and they survived, invented, created, built and fashioned a new world of their own making, by expressing their own legitimate self-interests. As time went on, they established a habit and tradition based upon it.
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Look at the result. Compare the New and the Old World, and tell me what you see. In the Old World, even today after the influence of the New World is felt, poverty and misery best describe their communities. Has the Old World progressed all that well? Some areas better than others, but most of that world is still a miserable place to live. Have they eliminated war? Do people live without fear of their neighbors? Is there plenty of food, good water and energy to run their machines? Do they simply live from hand to mouth?
What do you see in America? What do you look for there? Do you go deep into the ghetto and stare at the dark streets and the criminal behavior of a few? Do you concentrate your attention of the worst side of community, a side that will always be there? On the other hand, do you step back and look at the whole picture, of where individual freedom has taken the Nation? The upper and middle classes are wealthier than the wealthiest of the Old World. The lowest classes of people in poverty are better off than most of the middle class found in the Old World.
The caring, altruistic, bleeding-heart liberals in America see the underside of each rock and want to plan, engineer and manage a new brand of liberty-limiting programs to solve the social problems they see. It will result in bringing us closer to the failing social plans of the Old World, equalizing the misery and poverty of the many who will be ruled by the wealthy few.
Bastiat was correct in his assessment. If you accept liberty, and the promise of America, you can expect greater happiness. If you accept an Old World social plan, you can expect poverty, misery and rule of the many by the caring few.
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Clay Barham [send him email] has been a candidate for the California legislature and a stand-in talk show host for ABC. He was educated in physical and behavioral sciences, with a Ph.D. in sociology. He is the author of five books, with his latest being Foundations of Modern American Conservatism and Liberalism: The Roots of Freedom and Tyranny. Visit his website at http://www.claysamerica.com.
