Guest Editorial | Future of Freedom Foundation

 

By Richard M. Ebeling

We live at a time when the U.S. government operates in arbitrary and discretionary ways. Government regulatory agencies have unrestrained powers over land use, business manufacturing and enterprise, the workplace, and the environment under broad legislative mandates. And proposals are now frequently being made for ad hoc restrictions and prohibitions on the freedoms of speech, press, religion, and association. The principle and practice of individual liberty, therefore, is under serious attack.

The history of liberty and prosperity is inseparable from the practice of free enterprise and respect for the rule of law. Both are products of the spirit of classical liberalism. But a correct understanding of free enterprise, the rule of law, and liberalism (rightly understood) is greatly lacking in the world today.

What classical liberalism has argued is that even the wisest and best men are mere mortals. They lack God’s omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence. Mortal men look at and understand the world within the confines of their own imperfect knowledge, from the perspective of their own corner of existence, and with extremely limited mental and physical powers compared with those possessed by the Almighty.

As a result, since no man may claim access to an understanding of man and his world equal to God’s, no man can claim a right to deny any other person the freedom to follow his conscience in finding answers to profound and ultimate questions. They are so crucial to man’s very being as a spiritual and moral person that they must be removed from the arena of politics and political control. They must be left to the private and personal confines of each man and his conscience.

Classical liberalism has always emphasized the inseparable connection between individual liberty and the right to private property. That has been based partly on the idea of justice: that which a man produces honestly and peacefully through his own efforts, or which he acquires through voluntary acts of exchange with others, should be considered rightfully his. The case for private property has also been made on the basis of utilitarian efficiency: when men know that the rewards from their work belong to them, they have the motive and the incentive to apply their industry in productive and creative ways.

Private property gives a person an arena, or domain, in which he has the ability to shape and design his own life, free from the control of political force. A community of individuals, each of whom owns varieties of property that he is at liberty to apply and use in various ways, provides a network of relationships of production, trade, and association among men outside and independent of the orbit and control of government. Private property gives reality to the ideal of individual freedom.

Where the rule of law is practiced and respected, the creative energies of man are set free. Each man is at liberty to employ his own knowledge for his own purposes, but the very nature of the free-market economy is that he must apply that knowledge and his abilities in ways that serve the ends of others in society as well.

People form connections, relationships, and associations with those around them as they discover opportunities for mutual improvement. Societal patterns take form; configurations of human interconnection take shape. But these patterns are not planned or designed; they emerge from the relationships that men choose to establish among themselves, with no conscious intention of generating much of the institutional order and structure that result from their market and social interactions.

None of us who cares about liberty can in good conscience avoid his responsibility in this matter. I will close with the words of the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, who was one of the greatest voices for liberty in the twentieth century: “Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction ... What is needed to stop the trend towards socialism and despotism is common sense and moral courage.”

Dr. Richard Ebeling is the BB&T Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Free Enterprise Leadership at The Citadel. A longer version of this article is posted on the website of The Future of Freedom Foundation (www.fff.org).

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