GOVERNOR WHITCOMB
Wellesley, Sir Arthur
by Sir Arthub Wellesley Governor Ed Whitcomb, the man who escaped from Corregidor, has begun the long and painful process of helping Indiana escape the restrictive grip of liberalism. From...
...And that is a position we must cherish and preserve...
...Where would the oil barons be without tax privileges...
...Government can eliminate artificial barriers which it has itself erected, such as grandfather clauses...
...To the libertarian these arguments are fatuous...
...A larger staff is used as a pretext for demanding bigger budgets each year...
...Reversing the current liberal passion for the rights of the criminal, an emotion which has helped foster the current nationwide crime wave, Whitcomb states his philosophy thusly — "Compassion for criminals is not enough...
...In his first address to the Indiana General Assembly, Whitcomb articulated his conservative bias toward limited government...
...Hoosier government," the Governor said, "has been forced to keep within bounds on spending...
...It is not possible for government to do all we might like...
...It is a tragic reminder that the road to liberalism is paved with good intentions...
...Finally he is aware that the "needs" aren't primarily demands of taxpayers but of special interest groups who benefit from government spending...
...Punishment is a necessary precondition to rehabilitation...
...Robert Rock, his Democratic opponent, was forced on the defensive on the issue as Whitcomb began gaining in the polls...
...Their political futures are almost entirely dependent on whether they stick with the Governor on his promise of no higher taxes...
...Local problems cannot be solved at the state level...
...Whitcomb, who had started out as a relatively unknown candidate, swept into office with an over 100,000 vote margin...
...Whitcomb also pointed out in his legislative address that government, if overly centralized at the state level, can be as oppressive as the Federal government already is...
...With Goodman, the libertarian believes that, "these persons are deluded...
...If this were true, everyone in liberal Great Britain or Communist Russia would be rich...
...This acquiescence is due to what Paul Goodman says is "the assumption, now appallingly unanimous among the ordinary electorate, professional politicians, most radicals, and even political scientists who should know better, that politics is a matter of 'getting into power,' and then 'deciding,' directing, controlling, coercing, the activities of society...
...Order, of course, is the very foundation of individual freedom...
...Rocky is reduced to raising his state budget again and demanding (pleading is more accurate) for the Federal government to bail him out...
...state government in Indiana has overexpanded on the assumption state government can best solve local problems...
...In summary...
...Mayor John Lindsay has done the same thing at the city level and is faced vsdth the same crisis that confronts Rockefeller...
...The Federal government, ironically, claims solicitous concern for Negroes who complained bitterly to the Kemer commission of the devastation wrought by urban renewal...
...The resident of each community knows better than anyone else what must be done...
...Rehabilitation of criminals is not enough...
...Mencken delighted in goading the "sacred cows," and today the bovine of Dean Epstein's breed receives more lean-witted reverence than all the scravmy hoofers of India...
...He endorses stop-and-frisk legislation which permits the police to search any person they have good reason to suspect has committed or intends to commit a crime...
...Each particular level knows best how to solve its problems because it is most familiar with them...
...This brief essay only can offer an outline of what libertarianism is, but cannot really make clear the wide range of diversity within libertarianism...
...Rock ended the campaign in virtual agreement with Whitcomb after earlier saying he felt a tax increase was probably necessary to meet the "needs" of the state...
...On the other hand, the fewer government workers there are, the fewer people there are who can sit around and dream up ways to expand the government and spend the taxpayers' money...
...The libertarian fights any attempts by individuals or groups to assert monopolistic controls...
...Intrusion from a higher level of government, no matter how well intentioned, usually only compounds problems at a lower level, because the intrusion involves uniform solutions to a diversity of problems...
...As Negro militant hatred has sprung to life white bigotry, once lethargic and increasingly in disrepute, is reawakening with alarming vigor...
...In the sphere of morality and religion, the libertarian believes the range of legal pronouncements should be severely limited...
...Only the individual can eliminate his own prejudice...
...The exercise of restraint (in meeting the government's needs — codeword for demands of the lobbyists and special interest groups) can be beneficial" because restricting the activities of government is the same as freeing the private sector to tackle its own problems...
...Recognizing this, the Govemor has addressed himself to Indiana's growing crime problem...
...More and more government," he said, "is not the answer to all the problems of society...
...The underlying motive behind Whitcomb's war on crime is the realization that a captive in his own home is not a free man...
...A basic liberal thesis claims that government can order wealth into existence through simple fiat...
...A free society requires that government at the lowest possible level should solve public problems...
...From his pledge to hold the lid on state taxes to his promise to make Indiana safe for the lawabiding majority, the state's new Republican governor is an imabashed conservative in the heartland of Midwestern conservatism...
...In recent years, during which the Federal government has actively intruded into virtually every aspect of the racial question, intolerance has increased, not diminished...
...Federal urban renewal, for instance, was intended to rebuild cities...
...To correct this trend Whitcomb, in his first official duty as governor, cut state employees by ten per cent...
...In another sphere, the libertarian considers economic freedom a necessary means to and condition of political freedom...
...The liberals believe a criminal has a right to commit a crime before he is stopped, a rather difficult way to stop a murder...
...Thus, such beliefs and practices "which do not directly interfere with the protected sphere of other persons do not justify coercion...
...Naturally these themes inhere throughout William Nolte's excellently edited collection of Mencken's early writing...
...h o w curious that Epstein missed them...
...The point he was making is that empire building is an an engrained instinct of government bureaucrats who spend considerable time adding to the size of their staffs even though the total work load does not rise proportionately...
...The vacuum is filled by the strong whose whim becomes law, which is what happened in Germany in the early 'thirties when the National Socialists battled the International Socialists (the Communists) to determine whose might would become law...
...Implicit in Whitcomb's warning about "more and more government" is an awareness that in the United States the traditional role of government has been negative...
...Free government was conceived of as a preventive force to assure the safety of the people from foreign aggression and domestic disorder (crime...
...This is where the real economy vsdll be realized in Whitcomb's order...
...When he breaks the law, he does so of his own free will and must be punished to deter him and others from future criminal action...
...This distinguishes him from today's five and dime gadflies and lends a perspicacity to his social criticism that will always elude dilettantes like Murray Kempton and Russell Baker...
...Whitcomb believes in all aspects of fiscal sanity...
...Mencken devoted years to defending writers like Joseph Conrad and M a r k Twain and only a cartoonist like D e a n Epstein could depict Mencken uniting with those m o d e m liberals w h o busily interdict Conrad from libraries and expurgate Twain...
...The Governor's remarks about solving local problems at the local level also holds true for state problems...
...Popular authors of that era wrote as inspidly and homogeneously as they do today (though motivated by runny hearts rather than drippy glands) and readers m a y test the validity of Mencken's criticism by contrasting the stature of Joseph Conrad with Marjorie Benton Cooke, the N o r m a n Mailer of her time...
...Certainly, he exhibited The N e w Republic's social elitism but never its ineffable condescension...
...matters which should be purely the concern of the individual...
...V...
...by Sir Arthub Wellesley Governor Ed Whitcomb, the man who escaped from Corregidor, has begun the long and painful process of helping Indiana escape the restrictive grip of liberalism...
...rather they form coalition of all those who value the individual and liberty, imited against collectivists and coercers of all brands...
...Where would the militaryindustrial complex be without its use of governmental power and influence As for the alleviation of poverty, the pretext used by present political forces to aggrandize more state power, some libertarians believe a negative income-tax scheme might be a means of solving the problem, while keeping the market intact, centralization at a minimum, and individual freedom at a maximum (see Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom, Chapter 12 for an elaboration of this point...
...Libertarians are not of either the left or the right...
...Whitcomb's purpose is to make certain that the criminal will receive swift and certain punishment which is society's way of communicating the fact that it won't tolerate violations of its laws...
...Fortunately, the U. S. government is not yet insolvent...
...Exhibiting intimate knowledge of Mencken's work, Nolte has assembled a lively collection of book reviews, articles and distended horselaughs which will acquaint the readers with the most crucial facet of Mencken's work...
...During the campaign political pundits warned Whitcomb that his tax stand would be disastrous because it didn't take into consideration the state's growing "needs...
...And despite the tremendous expansion of Federal expenditures to meet the "needs," there are ever more "needs" to be met...
...Though today venerated as a rollicking gadfly he was a disciplined literary critic and skilled philologist...
...There can be no freedom in a criminal anarchy...
...Freedom can be fully exercised only if the lawabiding can come and go as he pleases, without fear of criminal assault...
...The liberal approach to the problem is to disarm the lawabiding in hopes that the lawless will also obey the law, in this (Continued on Page 12) REVIEWS r#-»#^**#»#^'»-»#»##*#.»##'#.»##^#^.#^^v»^#^^^^^sy.»^s»^.»s» (Continued from Page 4) march into his living room...
...If their residence in the tabernacles of contemporary American culture would not draw Mencken's fire surely their rigid control of artistic expression would arouse the acid in his pen...
...From 1908 to 1923 Mencken, as literary critic of the Smart Set, stood practically alone as advocate for beleaguered writers like Conrad, Twain, Dreiser and Shaw...
...The Governor knows that "needs" are paid for by the taxpayers, thereby reducing his ability to meet his own needs...
...Which is an acknowledgment that some problems can be solved only by individuals working singularly or volimtarily in cooperation with one another...
...H e believes, like his West Coast counterpart, Ronald Reagan, that the individual is responsible for his conduct...
...Quoting Goodman again, "Historically, this system of voluntary association has yielded most of the values of civilization . . over the centuries, not only scientific truth, but most other objective values, like beauty or compassion, have thrived by voluntary association . . . almost by definition, the progress of social justice has been by voluntary association...
...Governor Whitcomb is determined that state government shall be the servant and not the master of the people of Indiana...
...W e can solve our local problems in each community...
...It has, however, only victimized the people it was supposed to help — primarily the poor Negroes...
...He sees the draft as a repulsive violation of individual liberty, ushered in through apathetic acquiescence to governmental omnipotence...
...It is a clear rejection of the liberal theory that government can compel — through force if necessary — solutions to sociological, ethical and economic problems...
...The proof lies in a poll by the Indianapolis News, in which sixty-three per cent of the Hoosier interviewees supported Whitcomb's stand against increases in state sales or gross income tax...
...Unfortunately, a Democratic Congress isn't likely to help a Republican governor...
...He brings common sense and integrity to the government of Indiana, insisting that the state should do only those things that local government cannot do and which the people want done...
...One cynical adviser to the Govemor said that the ten per cent reduction could be made simply by going through government offices and firing everyone foimd asleep on the job...
...These "needs" are never met because the lobbyists constantly escalate their demands...
...In the words of F. A. Hayek, the libertarian holds that "neither moral nor religious ideals are proper objects of coercion, while both conservatives and socialists recognize no such limits...
...r»#^#»##»^#^»»»#»»##»#»#»»# L I B E R T A R I A N I S M (Continued from Page 3) pulsory service were instituted for everyone...
...12...
...To assure the safety of the lawabiding, Whitcomb suggests a number of deterrents including longer sentences for offenses iftvolving firearms...
...VII...
...The libertarian does not reject personal morality or religion, but opposes legislative coercion on their behalf...
...He believes the free market, voluntary association, decentralization, and individual choice in addition to fostering freedom, provide the best results...
...A more trivial instance of what libertarians oppose is the welter of university regulations dealing with housing hours, visitation, and the like...
...While his more liberal counterpart on the national ticket, Richard Nixon, produced almost no coattail victories in congressional races, Whitcomb ran ahead of the President in Indiana, with the result that the Republicans control both houses of the state legislature...
...VI...
...In his inaugural address he praised the state's constitutional prohibition against going into debt...
...These remarks express the realization that a government which does not maintain law and order fails to fulfill its first duty to the people...
...W H I T C O M B (Continued from Page 7) case at least, and give up their guns, too...
...Racial attitudes are another instance in which government dictation more often than not is counterproductive...
...it cannot, however, make people of different races love one another or even get along...
...Nelson Rockefeller has all but bankrupted the state of N e w York in learning what Whitcomb has known all along...
...H e believes that government should not spend beyond its means and that government expenditures should be made only in the interests of the public...
...The safety of our citizens must come first...
...They are taking a base and impractical, and indeed neurotic, state of affairs as if it were right and inevitable...
...Only when the criminal becomes convinced that crime is not a paying proposition is he likely to act in a socially acceptable manner...
...Laws prohibiting use of marijuana, certain sexual activities, and other censorship laws...
...Axing employees also warns those remaining that they are expendable if they don't work...
...Wealth is a product of individual productivity, not redistribution and confiscation (theft) of income and property by government...
...Local government will benefit if more of the local problems can be dealt with at the local level," he said...
...The Grovemor, not as dumb as his detractors, stuck to his pledge to give first priority to the needs of the taxpayers...
...While foes of the market register alarm at monopolies which supposedly would abound in a free system, the libertarian knows monopolies have never formed except when abetted by the state through tariffs, state subsidies and special legislation...
Vol. 2 • May 1969 • No. 4
