A few years after the founding of The Future of Freedom Foundation some 20 years ago, a donor who had been giving us $1,000 a year telephoned me and asked me to write an op-ed in favor of school vouchers and send it to newspapers in his state. I told him that we could never do such a thing. FFF’s mission, I reminded him, was to present an uncompromising case for libertarianism, which included an end to all government involvement in education. He bluntly told me that if I would not write such an op-ed, he would cease his support of FFF. He never donated to us again.
Over the years, we have had friends and supporters beseech us to modify our positions to make them more palatable and acceptable to people. Why not call for reform, privatization, or gradual phase-out of such major welfare-state programs as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid rather than for their immediate repeal? Why not call for reductions in income-tax rates rather than for the repeal of income taxation and the abolition of the IRS? Why not call for increased levels of legal immigration rather than for opening the borders to the free movements of goods and people? Why not call for reductions in the number of overseas troops rather than for their complete and immediate withdrawal from all foreign countries? Why not call for reductions in foreign aid rather than for an end to it? Why not call for school vouchers or tuition tax credits rather than for a complete separation of school and state? Why not call for limited regulation rather than for enterprise totally freed from government control? Why not call for legalization of marijuana rather than for all drugs?
The obvious question arises: Why do we do it? Why do we maintain a strict, no-compromise presentation of libertarian principles here at The Future of Freedom Foundation?
There are three primary reasons that our stance here at FFF continues to be based on an uncompromising perspective.
First, when a person concludes that a particular action is morally wrong, it seems to me that there is only one position that he can rightly take: to end it immediately or to call for its immediate end. Any continuation of the action, even with the intent of gradually bringing it to an end, continues an action that is morally wrong.
Suppose a 75-year-old woman has been embezzling from her employer for 20 years. One day she is caught. She says, “I’ve become dependent on the money, and I can’t make it in life without it. Would it be okay to gradually phase out my embezzlement over a period of time?”
Most people would exclaim, “Unacceptable!” because they recognize that the money rightfully belongs to her employer. The woman, no matter how much she needs the money, has no right to take her employer’s money against his will. She can ask him to help her out on a voluntary basis, but he has the right to say either yes or no. Moreover, others have the right to help her with their money, but no right to force her employer to continue funding her.
This principle applies just as forcefully when government enters the picture. The fundamental immorality of an action is not converted into something moral simply because the government is now performing it. Since it’s morally wrong for one person to take another person’s money against his will, it is equally wrong for the government to take a person’s money against his will in order to give it to someone else.
Consider our embezzlement example. Suppose our little old lady goes to the government and asks it to tax her employer an amount equal to what she was embezzling and to give the money to her. Would anything change in a moral sense? Of course not. Taking what doesn’t belong to you remains morally wrong whether you’re doing it yourself or having someone else do it for you.
That is why you have never seen FFF supporting any proposal that reforms, modifies, tinkers with, or continues any regulatory or welfare-state program whatsoever, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public schooling, corporate grants, foreign aid, the drug war, and the like. On moral grounds, we have always called for their complete and immediate repeal.
The second reason for our uncompromising stance is that we have a complete faith in freedom, free people, and free markets. We have no doubt that freedom works. People have a remarkable resiliency, a trait that best manifests itself in an environment of freedom.
Reform plans convey doubts about freedom. They say to people that complete and sudden freedom can’t really be trusted — that government force is needed to manage the transition from a controlled society to a free society. Of course, that just feeds into the mindset of people who have become dependent on the welfare state — people who cannot imagine that they could ever survive without their dole.
One of the most horrific consequences of the welfare state has been the damage that it has done to the traits of self-reliance, independence, and can-do that once characterized the American people. The welfare state has succeeded in producing frightened, helpless people with a dependency on the government.
Yet such a mindset is reversible, and the best method for reversing it is complete and immediate freedom, entailing an immediate termination of the welfare-state doles.
Some people would say, “But that would be cruel. We should instead reform the program or phase it out over a period of time to give people a chance to adjust.”
But doesn’t that simply continue the dependency (and the immorality)? Doesn’t it also communicate doubts to people regarding the efficacy of freedom?
When slavery was brought to a sudden end in the United States, every one of the slaves was thrown into the insecurity and uncertainty that freedom entails. Having been dependent on their owners for generations for the essentials of life, they had absolutely no experience providing for themselves in the free and open marketplace. Undoubtedly there were those who had argued that it would be cruel to free the slaves so suddenly. “We should ameliorate their condition but phase out the system gradually,” they may have argued. “Otherwise, the newly freed slaves won’t be able to survive.”
But others, including me, would have argued, “Completely and suddenly freeing the slaves is the only moral position to take. Reform plans to improve their condition and schemes designed to gradually bring their slavery to an end only continue the immorality. Freedom might well prove to be difficult, but they will cope and prosper. Don’t permit your concern for the plight of the slaves to serve as an excuse to continue their slavery; instead offer to assist them, if they in fact need help after they are freed.”
The same principle applies to all aspects of the welfare-state serfdom under which Americans have lived for generations. If former slaves could adjust to a life of freedom, so would former recipients of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, corporate grants, military largess, and all other forms of welfare. Once freed from dependency on the government, people would quickly adjust, sustaining themselves either through labor or through the voluntary charity of others. Moreover, freeing people from the burdensome taxes that fund those programs would immediately energize the private sector, thereby expanding jobs and charity.
The third reason for our uncompromising approach is that it enables FFF to serve as a place for people to go who wish to learn the genuine libertarian position on the burning issues of the day. If we, as a libertarian educational foundation, were advancing such things as Social Security reform plans, health-care IRAs, income-tax reduction, school vouchers, regulatory reform, controlled borders, the drug war, the war on terrorism, undeclared wars of aggression, reduced troop levels overseas, torture, assassination, the war on terrorism, or violations of civil liberties, there would exist the distinct danger that people might conclude that libertarianism encompasses statist proposals. But of course, it does not.
We must never give up hope of achieving freedom in our lifetime, and we must never be willing to settle for reforming or improving the modern-day serfdom under which we suffer. The achievement of freedom in the short term is entirely possible, and we might be a lot closer to our goal than we can ever imagine. It is more important than ever that we maintain strict adherence to our libertarian principles. By doing so, we increase the chances of building on the heritage of liberty of our ancestors and leading the world to the highest reaches of freedom ever seen by man.
