Kenneth W. Ryker is the Academic Dean of Northwood Institute of Texas, where he teaches the philosophic basis of American life and business and free market economics. The author of some two hundred articles and several booklets, he lectures widely on the philosophy of freedom and the threats to individual freedom in America today.
He is the Director of The Freedom Education Center on the campus of Northwood Institute, Cedar Hill, Texas. The Center is dedicated to promoting a better understanding of the philosophy of freedom and provides an extensive repository of revisionist historical material available to freedom-oriented researchers.
PART ONE: Introduction
People act in response to what they believe. If their convictions are based on false ideas, their actions will be improper, against their own best interests.
Any rational person consciously acts in such a way as to leave himself better off after his action than before. This is a universal principle of human action. Yet every day millions of our citizens do act contrary to their own best interests and demand acts of their governments which have this effect. Why?
Because they are acting in response to convictions based on false ideas and myths. As a consequence their acts and those of the various levels of government cause their condition to become less satisfactory—to deteriorate.
What then must be done to correct this situation? Obviously, it is to strive to replace false ideas with truth! But what is the truth?
Truth is that which is—the self-evident and that which proceeds logically out of the self-evident.
Truth is rightness; it is correct, genuine, based on right principles. Truth corresponds to fact or reality; it is natural, and most important of all, truth is its own witness!
Some truths are known; others are still being sought as the ultimate end and purpose of knowledge.
The purpose here is to present known truths about freedom and government in the hope that these truths may help replace some false ideas and myths. A sincere effort has been made to distill the essence of the philosophy of freedom.
According to the eminent Professor Ludwig von Mises:
The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom from the state. The history of the West, from the age of the Greek city state down to the present-day resistance to socialism, is essentially the history of the fight for liberty against the encroachments of the officeholders.1
Freedom is of the greatest importance to us for we have found through the great American experiment that freedom provides the best means through which to achieve whatever goals we set for ourselves.
We Americans have a tendency to believe that our freedoms are protected by our Constitution and its Bill of Rights. This is dangerous thinking for it dulls our sense of vigilance. Note the following words of Judge Learned Hand:
Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court even can do much to help it.
Over a period of many years we have observed liberty slowly dying in the hearts of our people. The inevitable consequence has been the loss of countless freedoms,2 our Constitution notwithstanding. Mr. Ed Hiles of Atlanta once wrote:
Freedom is not free and it must not be taken for granted. It was won through sacrifice and will be maintained only through sacrifice. It can be lost—just as surely, just as completely, and just as permanently—tax by tax, subsidy by subsidy, and regulation by regulation, as it can be lost bullet by bullet, bomb by bomb, or missile by missile.
If we are to preserve the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, it is absolutely essential that there be a new birth of freedom in the hearts and minds of our people.
There is no way of knowing how this might be achieved. It might take the form of a great “Crusade for Freedom” led by a dynamic new libertarian leader, as yet unknown. Or perhaps as a result of the philosophy of freedom being presented in a new, concise, easily understood form.
1. Freedom and Government: Eternal Dichotomy
The supreme issue of our time is whether government is to be the master or the servant of the people. We all know this question was supposedly settled nearly 200 years ago with the American Revolution. But here we are today concerned with the issue again.
At the heart of the matter are the different natures of man and government. The nature of man is to be free, or it might be said the nature of man is individualism. Whereas the nature of government is to govern—to regulate—to control, or we might say the nature of government is unity.
And there we have the eternal conflict: individualism versus unity—freedom versus regimentation. It is vitally important to understand that the natures of man and government are diametrically opposed!
What gets us into trouble is that we lose sight of these contrary natures of man and government—and we fail to see the fundamental principles involved. When we take our eyes off basic principles we are at sea without a rudder. Not having basic criteria by which to gauge issues, we soon find the sphere of individual liberty being compressed smaller and smaller as the governmental “cosmos” grows larger and larger—and before long tyranny looms on the horizon!
On the other hand, when we do have a firm foundation based on fundamental principles, apparently complicated issues are simplified—solutions become crystal clear—as we analyze them in the light of our basic criteria.
2. Individual Rights
The indispensable foundation of a free society is the principle of individual rights. The concept of rights is the basis of individual morality and is thus the foundation of a moral society, society being nothing more than a group of individuals.
A right is defined as “a just and proper claim,” but it is more than that. A right implies not only freedom of action in the total absence of coercion, but it implies freedom of action even if coercion is present. Thus, a right isn’t lost, even if coercion appears.
Additionally, a right is freedom of action morally without asking permission. If, to remain moral, the person must first ask permission from another, then he is in a state or condition of privilege. If he maymorally act without permission, then he has a right.
The concept of Natural Rights was developed by John Locke in seventeenth-century England and found its way into our eighteenth century political documents which enumerated our basic human rights. In order to document precisely what these rights are, let us examine some of the more important of these basic documents of American liberty in their order of development.
Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress, October 14, 1774
… That the inhabitants of the English colonies in North America, by the immutable laws of nature, the principles of the English constitution, and the several charters or compacts, have the following RIGHTS:
Resolved… That they are entitled to life, liberty and property: and they have never ceded to any foreign power whatever, a right to dispose of either without their consent.
Virginia Declaration of Rights, June 12, 1776
… That all Men are by Nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent Rights, of which, when they enter into a State of Society, they cannot by any Compact, deprive or divest their Posterity; namely, the Enjoyment of Life and Liberty, with the Means of acquiring and possessing Property, and pursuing and obtaining Happiness and Safety.
Declaration of Independence, July 4th, 1776
… We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed;…
Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, October 25, 1780
All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness.
Bill of Rights, December 15, 1791
Article V. No person shall… be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
As we have just observed, our basic American documents of liberty clearly define our rights. The common thread running through the above preambles has been summarized by Justice Sutherland of the Supreme Court as follows:
The individual has three rights, equally sacred from arbitrary interference [from government]: the right to life, the right to his liberty, the right to his property. These three rights are so bound together as to be essentially one right. To give a man his life, but to deny him his liberty, is to take from him all that makes life worth living. To give him his liberty, but to take from him the property which is the fruit and badge of his liberty, is to still leave him a slave.³
Whether one attributes the source of these rights to the Creator or to Nature, the fact remains that man naturally, clearly, and demonstrably possesses the rights to life, liberty, and property—and these are his only rights!
Declarations, Constitutions, and Bills of Rights do not guarantee rights; they are merely codifications of ideals and principles. If the ideals are not truly believed and practiced by the people, the documents become mere scraps of paper. It is the practice of the principles that is the key to freedom!
3. Government
It has been shown that the American position holds that each individual is born free with inherent rights to his life, the enjoyment of liberty, and the ownership and control of his property. To enjoy these rights man seeks a way of life in which he feels secure. He strives to establish a society of stability and order.
Obviously, each person has the right to defend his life, liberty and property. A right is meaningless if it cannot be defended. It follows logically that he may delegate this protective and defensive function to an agency which we call government. As government thus derives its powers from those delegated by the individuals who create it, government cannot then possess any fundamental powers or authority not inherent in the individual.
Frederic Bastiat, brilliant French political economist of a century ago, beautifully expressed the relationship between man’s rights and government:
Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.4
The sole purpose of government is to protect life, liberty, and property—to serve as a common defensive force for those from whom it receives its delegated authority. In short, the only legal and moral purpose of government is to prevent injustice.
It is important to keep in mind that, reduced to fundamentals, government is purely and simply organized force. After being brutalized by it for centuries, man finally came to realize that this organized force of government would have to be limited and controlled if he were ever to be really free.
This radical idea finally found expression in the American Revolution and the ensuing Constitution and the Bill of Rights, limiting the power of government being the major purpose of both these documents.
Defensive Force
Because government is force, and force is inimical to man’s nature and best interests, to what must this use of force be limited?
To defensive, never aggressive force. To protection and defense of life, liberty and property against fraud, theft, murder—against depredation in general. In all other things the collective force of government must be constrained. Government must not interfere in the peaceful and creative pursuits of man so long as he does not threaten the life, liberty or property of another. The philosophy of freedom embodies the absence of coercion.
We know that each individual has the right to protect his own life. It is obvious that government police, as his agents, exercise this delegated function legitimately.
On the other hand, no individual has the right to use force or coercion to cause another to associate with him, or sell to him or provide a service for him. Thus it becomes clear the collective force of government has no legitimate authority in the so-called public accommodations areas. The misnamed “civil rights” laws are a perversion of justice and a clear example of illegitimate government action.
To pursue this point further, the terms “civil” and “rights” are contradictory. Rights are natural or inherent in each individual and are antecedent to government. We have previously demonstrated the only rights that any individual possesses are those to life, liberty and property.
“Civil” implies that government is the source of rights. Government is never the source of rights, but is often the inhibitor of rights. Government can, however, be the source of privileges, and this is what “civil rights” really are: special privileges made possible for some through government infringement on the rights of others.
How Government Grows
What causes government to engage in activities not properly its function? Because through force, or the threat of force, people can be made to act in a way they would not act voluntarily, or they can be made to pay for something they would otherwise not willingly subsidize.
In any society there are always those who want to impose their will on others. If such people are able to seize political power, they can use government, the agency of coercion, to achieve their goals.
This perversion is made possible when people lose sight of the proper function and scope of government. The only alternative to totalitarianism as an end result is an informed citizenry, intent on limiting government to its proper role: the protection of life, liberty and property.
In addition, there are those who believe that if government does not take the initiative in a particular sector, no action will be taken. This may be true in some instances and false in others.
If willing individuals, exercising their own free choice, do not wish to undertake or support a particular activity, it probably should not be attempted. The absence of demand indicates the inadvisability of the project. When government must be used to initiate the endeavor, it means people would not do so of their own free choice, and are therefore, forced to act against their wishes.
On the other hand, the thousands of voluntary organizations and associations, charities, hospitals, and millions of individual enterprises in the market place, with the resultant high standard of living thus enjoyed, is proof that government force is not a positive factor in man’s progress. Rather, it is most definitely a negative factor, inhibiting progress in every instance where it interferes with the creative efforts of man. Consider those countries of the world where government exercises the greatest degree of control over the lives of its people; there you will find stagnation, poverty and discontent.
Then examine the countries where government intervenes least in the creative affairs of its people, and there you will find the highest degree of progress, prosperity and contentment.
Because we live in a republic which uses the democratic process to choose elected representatives and enact laws, there is a tendency to believe something is right for government to do simply because “we voted for it.”
Right or Wrong?
The fact that a majority of a voting group chose a particular course of action has no relationship to its rightness or wrongness. An action is right or wrong on principle. No moral absolution takes place in a majority vote for an immoral act.
This matter is so important it should be restated: A majority vote never determines whether an act is right or wrong—only whether it is legal or illegal. Any act that is illegitimate for an individual is illegitimate for government!
Over a hundred years ago when France was moving toward socialism as America is today, the French political economist, Frederic Bastiat, wrote an essay on “The State” in which he clearly outlined the process now in vogue for some to live at the expense of others:
The oppressor no longer acts directly by his own force on the oppressed. No, our conscience has become too fastidious for that. There are still, to be sure, the oppressor and his victim, but between them is placed an intermediary, the state, that is the law itself. What is better fitted to silence our scruples and—what is perhaps considered even more important—to overcome all resistance? Hence, all of us, with whatever claim, under one pretext or another, address the state. We say to it: “I do not find that there is a satisfactory proportion between my enjoyments and my labor. I should like very much to take a little from the property of others to establish the desired equilibrium. But that is dangerous. Could you not make it a little easier? Could you not find me a good job in the civil service or hinder the industry of my competitors or, still better, give me an interest-free loan of the capital you have taken from its rightful owners or educate my children at the public expense or grant me incentive subsidies or assure my well-being when I shall be fifty years old? By this means I shall reach my goal in all good conscience, for the law itself will have acted for me, and I shall have all the advantages of plunder without enduring either the risks or the odium.”
As, on the other hand, it is certain that we all address some such request to the state, and, on the other hand, it is a well-established fact that the state cannot procure satisfaction for some without adding to the labor of others, while awaiting another definition of the state, I believe myself entitled to give my own here…. Here it is: The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.5
Justice or Injustice?
Once government is permitted to stray from its proper purpose everyone will want to prosper at the expense of others, and thus does government become an instrument of injustice, rather than of justice.
In any society the lives, liberties and property of all citizens are affected by their government. If the government acts in any way except to protect these rights, it automatically becomes a violator of these rights. Such a government is obviously unjust.
There is a very simple way to test whether government has become an instrument of injustice. If government taxes away the fruits of labor of some and gives it to others to whom it does not belong, that government has become an instrument of injustice.
If government policies benefit one group of the citizenry at the expense of others, that government is perverted.
The tragedy of such perversion is that such practices mushroom. The special interest groups multiply rapidly, each demanding their “share” of the plunder. The inevitable consequences are greatly increased taxation, in the direction of total confiscation of property by the state, and inflation, the “cruelest tax of all.”
When a government becomes an instrument of injustice, its people are in very real danger of ultimately losing all their liberties, as all actions of government are considered just and right simply because they are acts of the government.
Those who raise their voices in warning are labeled “reactionaries,” “subversives,” or at the very least, “extremists.” Those who thus attempt to defend their lives, liberties and property from plunder by the state, become enemies of the state—criminals.
When government is observed infringing upon the liberties and property of some for the benefit of one special group, other special interest groups will soon organize political organizations and lobbies seeking special plunder for their group.
As a consequence today we observe the seats of government at all levels overrun by these special interest groups seeking ordinances and legislation to enable them to participate in the plunder.
Man’s rights are endangered from only two sources: criminals and government!
In the early paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence we read:
… to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…
“To secure these rights” means it is the purpose of government to protect man’s rights to life, liberty and property from those who would threaten them: criminals.
We hear a great deal these days about certain “rights.” There are claims that we have a right to medical care; a right to full employment; a right to decent housing; a right to public accommodations; a right to a “living wage,” and on and on ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
Such claims are not rights; they would impose obligations on others for each implies others will be forced to provide the medical care, the jobs, the housing, and so on. The only way this can be achieved is by confiscation of the property of others to pay for such privileges.
Coercion is destructive by its very nature, consequently nothing progressive can possibly come from its use to achieve ends. Government’s only means for the achievement of ends is through coercion; government is force; government is coercion!
In providing privileges for some at the expense of others government, which is instituted to protect our liberties and property, becomes the violator of these rights.
Freedom exists only in an absence of coercion. Freedom implies free choice, voluntarism, willingness. Freedom can exist only in a just society. But justice exists only in the absence of injustice!
Freedom can exist only where government is restricted to its only true purpose—defense of life, liberty and property—acting to prevent injustice and thus preserving justice. Like justice, freedom is a negative condition. It is a state which exists in the absence of coercion or molestation, when no individual coerces or molests another.
When any person uses coercion or the threat of coercion to impose his will or point of view on another person, freedom is abolished!
4. The Economy
The fundamental economic question to be answered in any society is “Who is to get how much of what?” The competing answers to that question are embodied in the ideological struggles in which we find ourselves engaged today.
There really are only three ways to answer this fundamental question. Dr. F. A. Harper analyzed these in his book, Liberty: A Path To Its Recovery, as follows:
1. Each person may have whatever he can grab.
2. Some person other than the one who produces the goods and services may decide who shall have the right of possession or use.
3. Each person may be allowed to have whatever he produces.
These three methods cover all the possibilities; there are no others.6
The first is readily recognized as the law of the jungle; the second is that utilized by all authoritarian systems, while the third is the only method consistent with individual freedom.
“Who is to have how much of what?” That is the question. Communism has an answer, as does National Socialism and Fascism. The Fabians and Democratic Socialists think they have the answer. But when all these systems are analyzed, they come out the same, differing only in degree: The State will determine who is to get how much of what! This obviously means the economic questions will be answered by force and coercion.
But there is a better way: let the free market, willing exchange, profit and loss system determine what will be produced and in what quantity; who will produce it for what compensation; and who will receive it at what price.
There are really only two choices: to answer the economic questions by free choice—or by coercion!
5. Capitalism
The system of economic organization under which our nation developed and flourished is capitalism, although it is known by many other names such as free enterprise, individual enterprise, the market system, etc.
It developed gradually during the Industrial Revolution and reached its peak during the “Century of Progress”-1830-1930. Since the turn of the century it has been under constant attack by those who would change the system, for whatever reason, from one of private control to one of political control, so that today it bears slight resemblance to the system under which the material welfare of our people expanded eight-fold.
The fantastic standard of living enjoyed by our people has been the direct result of this market system, in spite of tremendous handicaps imposed upon it by stifling government intervention.
All the major economic problems we have experienced can be traced directly to government intervention in the market, including depressions, unemployment, surpluses, shortages, high prices, and many more. The way government causes such problems will be touched on later.
Yet in spite of the interventions of government in the economic affairs of our people, capitalism is the most just, the most equitable, the most productive, the most moral—and the only economic system compatible with individual liberty.
Congressman Philip M. Crane of Illinois has stated, “Capitalism is, in its simplest imperative, freedom applied to economics.”
That simple sentence states quite clearly why capitalism is the best economic system and why we must return to it!
Read Part Two of the article here.
—FOOTNOTES—
1Ludwig von Mises, The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science (Princeton: Van Nostrand, 1962), p. 98.
2Leonard E. Read, et al, Cliches of Socialism (Irvington-on-Hudson: Foundation for Economic Education, 1970), pp. 92-96.
3Quoted in Dean Russell, “Basis of Liberty,” Rockford ( Illinois ) Morning Star, January 7,
4Frederic Bastiat, The Law (Irvington-on-Hudson: Foundation for Economic Education, 1961), p. 6.
6Frederic Bastiat, Selected Essays on Political Economy (Princeton: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1964), p. 143.
6F. A. Harper, Liberty: A Path To Its Recovery (Irvington-on-Hudson: Foundation for Economic Education, 1949), p. 28.
7Dean Russell, “Economic Growth,” The Freeman, (April 1963), p. 28.
