The Conservative Critique of the Welfare State
Will, George F.
The Conservative Critique of the Welfare State - What follows is an address by George F. Will, Assistant to Cohg~'ado's Senator Gordon"...
...Normal common sense is no match for appetites inflamed by the prospect of winning favoritism from the government...
...Finally, vast numbers of recently generated graduates -- and especially graduates from the humanities -- now claim they cannot find employment that they think is suitable for persons with their training...
...A fanatic is one who can change neither his mind nor the subject...
...It should monitor his education and his economic life...
...You either remember, or have heard of, the 1964 election which, as is well known, interred conservatism, there by saving the nation from Barry Goldwater, war domestic discord and other putative manifestations of conservatism...
...The welfare state is proof of the conservative belief that men, taken in the mass, are irreducibly self-interested competitors...
...Government should order and discipline competition...
...First, welfare state actions will inflict general damage on the competitiveness - - and hence the vitality and growth -- of the economy...
...Indeed, one scarcely knows what pro-welfare state argument to rebut...
...Willimn f. guckiey, Jr...
...The conservative rejection of the welfare state, like all truly philosophic judgments of political matters, rests on a conception of man, and proceeds to derivative judgments about the nature of the good regime...
...It holds that if only the government will free men from mundane concerns -- like providing for themselves - - then men will flower like green bay trees...
...Politicians, like the rest of us, like to do what they know how to do...
...Good Fences Above all, conservatism believes that a primary threat to the good life is the use of political power by some inviduals to invade the private affairs of other individuals...
...At the production end, scholars were allowed to redefine the scholars' task...
...I never know where Agnew is from day to day...
...but we should make fewer political decisions...
...correspondence (continued from page 81) have been written by a man infected with n i n e t e e n t h - c e n t u r y p r o g r e s s i v e Liberalism...
...welfare (continued from page 8) oThird, the nature of polities in a large and pluralistic society virtually guarantees that the welfare state will misuse its vast and meddlesome powers...
...and ministries of transport distort competition between road and rail, and are then pilloried whenever subsidised railway season-ticket rates are made slightly less uneconomic...
...I am sure of it, though the phone company tells me that it is not...
...But te important point is that if the welfare state were primarily an instrument of generous impulses on behalf of the disadvantaged, there would be less widespread criticism of it...
...The solicitousness on behalf of special interests is very obvious to - - and very much appreciated b y - - those special interests...
...eTbe state monopoly of the postal services has helped make the penny postcard what it is today...
...When the state denies to its citizens the right to import what it pleases when it pleases, it guarantees (say) the shoemaker a captive market...
...Rather, we should abandon the welfare state mentality which tolerates meddlesome government...
...Spiritedness make men unpredictable and unmanageable...
...But who believes the cities are better off -- let alone ten times better off - - than they were in 1939...
...Life would be rational and harmonious if only men were surrounded by a wellordered state...
...The welfare state is especially fond of import quotas...
...shoe wearers are not...
...Fourth, a free-for-all test of strength among such organizations is a test of strength, not equity...
...The fact of the matter is that I do not believe students should be forced to take "required literature courses" and my article was not meant to deal with that ugly phenomenon...
...Its recent history demonstrates an important ~ruth: the welfare state spends much time coping with problems it has created...
...its practices are a constant incitement to unneighborly behavior...
...A student is competent if he has hands to be held, or if he has his "own thing" to be done...
...Thus Conservatism favors the social conditions which infl~ct disciplining competition and Compel self-reliance...
...We must explain the principles and efficacy of freedom to the people...
...But, for reasons which I will come to, conservatives told them it would work out this way...
...And we must oppose government activities which inflame those ever-present human appeties which cause men to abandon principles...
...The result has been a subsidy system that promotes large farms, penalizes small farms, and stimulates the flow of population into the cities, where the poor buy food at high prices which the Federal government supports using their tax revenues...
...This does not mean that we should abandon democracy...
...Hardly anyone actually defends the welfare state anymore...
...and then (c) decides that, as dealing with this unnecessary trouble is its main occupation, the maintenance of the interference which causes this trouble is a high feature of its own professional interest or even (so it kids itself) of its political ideal...
...Competition 8 The Alternative October, 1971 of organized groups with very specific interests...
...Before long Government subsidies produced a vast expansion of graduate schools, and this produced an army of teachers...
...A ready supply of students was generated by keeping tuition costs far below the actual cost of the educational product, and far below the market value of the education to the recipient...
...What is yours...
...A large number of them want to be teachers, and the teacher market is again glutted...
...494, p. 481) Furthermore, as a result of their education, these students will receive higher lifetime earnings than those persons -- largely from poorer families -- who have not gone to a university...
...Such a state should have The Alternative October, 1971 7 an enveloping concern with the individual's welfare...
...Conservatives feel that good fences make good neighbors...
...If they can tap me, well - - bell -- they can tap just about anyone...
...This is how an artificial, Government-decreed "demand" for more education produced an odd supply of students and faculty...
...Such a "crisis" exists when the Government is having trouble concocting a supply to match the demand it has concocted...
...A Distinctive Political Style In fact, the real significance of the welfare state is that it represents a distinctive political style...
...Hence we faced a classic welfare state "crisis...
...It encourages immoderate hopes for the malleability of man...
...and it prevents the domination of a stable, solid and possibly tyrannical majority...
...Such discipline is encouraged by living in a society where men learn the need to their own energies for the satisfaction of their own appetites...
...But how does the welfare state escape the wrath of the general citizenry...
...The wily oriental gentleman displayed a diplomatic understanding of the epistemology of occidental Liberalism...
...But just to be on the safe side, a movement was begun to water down admissions policies and grading standards -- just a bit of insurance to see that the supply of diluted "competence" can keep pace with the deluge of Government funding...
...Before turning to the primary welfare state activities - - those that do not even pretend to be about welfare as normally thought of - - consider a bit of the record of the welfare state when it does attempt benevolence...
...You may have noticed that this year the Internal Revenue Service, bowing to the realities of life in the welfare state, announced that bribes to government officials constitute a legitimate business exPense deduction) Many Liberals recognize that what I have described is indeed the pattern of welfare state action...
...the teaching of methods of terror and other seditious conduct should be beyond the pale along with obscentiy and immorality...
...ministries of housing set up rent controls which thus distort patterns of housing use and create slums and homelessness, but are wildly unpopular whenever they at last allow rents to rise...
...As The Economist of London explains (15 May 1971), this "is par for the course m government enterprise: "There is a very clear historical point of descent out of effective idealism into obstructionist nuisance value by any bureaucracy, and it is important that this still very able commission should realise it...
...it is very solicitous of sellers of airline tickets and oil producers...
...The entrepreneurial spirit has served us well...
...To paraphrase Disraeli, upon seeing that the welfare state still has supporters, I find it easy to believe that the Egyptians once worshipped insects...
...He,is born under the domination of strong and growing appetites and passions...
...The most instructive example of welfare statism is at hand...
...To put the matter another way, the welfare state is the institutionalization of Harry Hopkins' well-known formula for political success...
...So the crisis continues...
...These interests receive the lion's share of the subsidies which, drawn from general tax revenues or imposed by government-enforced restriction of competition, are our major means for redistributing wealth...
...But university students pay a negligible share of the cost of their education...
...Conservataves understand that men need fewer "external" laws imposed by the state when they have stronger "internal" laws of personal discipline...
...Nobody is safe anymore...
...Liberals say: Never mind that he who pays the piper calls the tune...
...I wish to be diplomatic while a guest of this college...
...Their competition and cooperation gets things done...
...Fifth, a mandatory free-for-all is not liberty...
...But my philosophy and my function jeopardize the fulfillment of that wish...
...The social conditions of living should help men learn to master their appetites...
...No clients -- neither the few poor nor the many strong -- receive intelligent treatment from the welfare state...
...Both "tutorial Liberalism" and "flowering Liberalism" justify state proctoring of the citizens' productive and consuming activities...
...Usually the welfare state acts when some elected official finds it in his political interest to use the power of the state, and the money of the people, to promote the welfare of an interest group...
...Conservatives also believe that they foster government that is at best meddlesome and at worst dangerous...
...and to hurt most those with the least discretionary income--that is the poor...
...A free, booming, competitive economy -- not the mythical altruism of the welfare state -- is the only solid hope for the poor...
...what I had reference to were "'English majors...
...There is a great middle ground between letting students do what they damn well please and coercing them to do what they don't want to do...
...This welfare state should spare men the grubby experiences of looking after tb~ necessities of life -- such experinces might make him irritable...
...That assertion is not contradicted by the fact that John Lindsay supports rent control...
...Conservatives understand that not all forms of equality can be secured by government in a free society...
...This cost is born by the taxpayers, with low income taxpayers contributing an amount far in excess of the benefits their children receive...
...The term "welfare state" does not mean merely - - or even primarily - - a state given over to what we normally speak of as "welfare" - - that is the provision of relief to the poor and disabled...
...I~slie Fiedler Harvey's All Nite Grill Rochester, New York It is the duty of free government to avoid inflaming those appetites...
...This solved the other half of "crisis" at the consumption end: it redefined the idea of the competent student...
...George Meany, head of the A.F.L-C.I.O., excoriated the President's controls on wages and prices, calling them "discriminatory" against labor...
...In a rare moment of candor, FDR's closest advisor declared that FDR's political technique was to "tax, tax - - spend, spend - - elect, elect...
...And the ~ p l e --thanks to the comprehensive tutelege of the welfare state - - are rational and harmonious...
...Alert enl~-epreneurs understand that the government is now the primary creator of great private fortunes...
...My topic today is the conservative critique of the welfare state...
...Aid to dependent shoe manufacturers will insure that dependent children -- and the rest of us - - pay unneccessarily high prices for shoes...
...His reference to "high-schoolish prodding" is, shall we say, loading the dice...
...Rather, it is to control and elevate them...
...Irritable, spirited, unhappy men are hard to perfect...
...Government loves order, and it is easy simply to reduce liberty, making those who lose the liberty pay the added penalty of it in higher prices for everything they consume...
...Federal regulation of agriculture was supposed to save the small farms and slow the flow of population to the cities...
...This soothing argument cannot withstand the force of the three principal objections I have adumbrated above...
...Our welfare state is very solicitous about the welfare of cattlemen, and about textile and shoe manufacturers and cotton growers and growers of everything else...
...It fixes thousands of prices - - to keep them from falling as a result of competition...
...But .the poor particularly are not the kinds of clients toward whom a democratic welfare state will be especially solicitous...
...Conservatives believe that as the Bible says, man is "born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward...
...it is casual with the distinction between public and private affairs...
...And being rational, there are no significant or nasty disagreements as to what that common good is...
...God help us...
...A Reader e Enclosed is...
...No citizen can track down and effectively oppose even one percent of one percent of the government regulations, quotas, licensing provisions, protected monopolies, fixed prices and other hidden taxes which diminish his liberties and his discretionary income...
...equality of condition cannot even be approximated without allowing a despotic government to suppress every form of excellence, and every deviation from mediocrity...
...Most of the time the welfare state is acting as the defender of the strong against the disorganized who are being made to pay for the support of the strong...
...They fashioned an egalitarian definition-- one which would exclude no one, and therefore would not produce the embarassing "'crisis" of an insufficient supply of competence...
...Thus limited government results from requiring popular sovereignty to conform to the sovereignty of suvreme law...
...When the government intervenes in that competition and becomes a bestower of prosperity, the multiplicity of factions becomes a multiple attack on the public treasury and the public's liberties...
...The story is told of a Japanese delegate to an international conference of religious Liberals who, in a burst of ecumenical feeling, introduced himself to an American delegate by saying: "My miserable superstition is Buddhism...
...Factions are generally good for society...
...Polon's last point is a curious one...
...they know that, on the contrary, the coming of the welfare state just made the state an instrument which self-interested competitors try to capture for their private economic benefit...
...This is just the sort of paternalistic belief which will make a strong state act despotically...
...oToday there are ten times more government agencies dealing with the problems of the cities than there were in 1939...
...Liberals tell us it was not supposed to work out this way...
...I understand this to mean those who have by their own free will undertaken a serious study of English...
...Conservatism favors constitutional republicanism...
...But the number of faculty jobs and dormitory rooms expanded faster than the supply of competent people to fill them...
...The Welfare State on Campus I could go on, but why bother...
...But none of this was anticipated when the entrails of the first chicken revealed that there was a crying "'need" for a vast subsidization of higher education...
...Sometime after the Second World War the Government, figuratively speaking, went down to the basement of the bureaucracy, and there consulted the entrails of a chicken...
...Dependent children are well-known welfare state clients...
...Leroy "Satchel" Paige, the eminent baseball pitcher, was raised to the "Hall of Fame," and on 20 August the life sentence of Lt...
...Rather, as I shall explain, these measures only indicate the Liberal politicians' enthusiasm for using Peter's money to buy Paul's vote...
...Rent control was imposed in New York as a putative wartime necessity...
...THE dLTERN tTIFE October, 1971 The Conservative Critique of the Welfare State George F. W i l l What follows is an address by George F. Will, Assistant to Cohg~'ado's Senator Gordon" Allott...
...Conservatism favors government institutions which require disciplined political appetites...
...Not so...
...But any politician skillful enough to get to Washington knows exactly how to deliver import quotas and price supports for the cotton growers...
...Never mind, because the state is democratic, which means it is controlled by "the people...
...Second, few Americans have special pleading organizations at work in every area where government actions affect his producing and consuming activities...
...Thus ministries of agriculture all over the world exist to give uneconomic protection to farmers, but everywhere have turnips thrown at them...
...This is another welfare state "crisis...
...It is being stifled and diluted by regulation which aims to gubsti~te a bureaucracy's conception of rationality for market rationality...
...The conservative program is clear...
...As Liberals lurch from discredited assumptions to foregone conclusions, it becomes increasingly clear that the welfare state is fanatical...
...The civil service departments concerned build up interferences with the market, and thus create a lot of uneconomic pensioners who are wholly dependent on themselves, but who soon get very angry indeed with them for not giving them even more money...
...It exempts labor unions from anti4rust laws - - to enable them to restrict access to professions and thereby limit the number of competitors...
...3. Mr...
...Another Liberal philosophy should be called "flowering Liberalism...
...Thus the state should not spare men the necessity for such planning and calculating...
...That rent control creates slums is obvious to every thinking man who 6 The Alternative October, 1971 has studied the subject...
...This-can best be made clear by contrasting Conservatism with Liberalism...
...One Liberalism should be called "tutorial Liberalism...
...And the injuries done to the average citizen - - the diminution of liberty and disposable income - - are done indirectly and by unspectacular increments...
...and who know that the government's proper business is preserving for the citizens the freedom to mind their own business...
...But I know of no economist who does not acknowledge that such wage laws produce unemployment among marginal workers, especially among young blacks...
...The government has demonstrated, repeatedly and conclusively, that it is absolutely unable to plan and produce "liveable cities" or even "liveable neighborhoods" al~y more than it can succeed in the foreign policy version of welfare statism -- the grandiose project of "nation building" abroad...
...This argument has many flaws: • First, it is an interesting theory, but only a theory...
...The result is that today, after a quarter of a century of government action, we now have universities teaching remedial reading c o u r s e s . Just to complete the picture of this fiasco, consider two relevant details Most university students come from families in the upper income brackets...
...All our political decisions should be made democratically...
...Alternatively, a fanatic is one who doubles his effort after he has forgotten his objective...
...I am of a persuasion uncongenial to that by which, undoubtedly, you are seized: my miserable superstition is Republicanism - - the sort practiced by the Senator for whom I labor contentedly, and whose ADA rating is five (of a possible 100) and falling...
...Being harmonious, their only conception of goodwill is the common good...
...Shoemakers are organized...
...My first point is that by now opposition to the welfare state is as much a matter of unadorned common sense as it is a manifestation of conservatism...
...Second, those who believe in "flowering Liberalism" want a strong state to release men from competition, scarcity and the need to husband energies and curb appetites...
...At best the welfare state is a bland leviathan, a cumbersome, flabby, incompetent, expensive impediment to the people's energies...
...This is the argument for the welfare state as supplied by "tutorial Liberalism...
...M...
...The structure of the democratic welfare state determines its motives...
...The result was not the rational one -- to reduce the decreed spending...
...In Washington, D.C...
...But a multiplicity of factions is only a force for good as long as the government remains neutral as the factions compete for the rewards of life...
...Henceforth the scholar's task would be hand-holding -- to have "'meaningful human relations" with students...
...The average citizen senses the fact that his liberty and wealth are melting away, but he does not know how it is being done, or by whom...
...Sixth, if we consider governmentbestowed privilege a legitimate object of citizen lust, then we are accepting the Harry Hopkins-FDR degradation of the democratic spirit...
...Louisville Courier Journal "1 predict for The Alternative a leading role in philosophical and political battles to come...
...Author's Query I am interested in biographical materials on the kenetic l~oets V. Vichovich Viskorky, who was spoi-adically popular for a short time in July and August of 1970, and Milo Prune-Smith who is not yet popular...
...Liberals are always saying that about something - - Lyndon Johnson, or something...
...Earlier in my remarks I referred to the welfare state as a device for using Peter's money to secure Paul's vote...
...Welfare state measures continue to be written into the statute books, but that has virtually nothing to do with economic theory or political philosphy...
...Liberalism has two quite different, but equally disastrous, doctrines about man...
...Welfare state enterprises generate political pressures which guarantee that welfare state exertions will increase as the futility of previous exertions along the same line becomes patent...
...Cheese eaters are not...
...Competiton is messy and disorderly...
...This alone enables men to live noble lives, in cooperation with their fellow citizens...
...It is hard to know how to deliver "justice" for 205 million Americans...
...It is pernicious to argue that free government is functioning well just because all citizens have an equal right to enter the scramble for welfare state favoritism...
...The fundamental point is this...
...Representative government in a vast and complicated society responds with special sensitivity to the special pleading Inflation vs...
...It should prevent competition which results in inequality...
...One cannot really say that the welfare state has failed to achieve its objective because it has never had a clear objective...
...There are some desirable goals which a government should not pursue because government action usually exacts a toll in freedom lost...
...The democratic welfare state acts altruistically even less often than the average person does...
...They argue that all Americans are members of some such interest groups, and hence the scramble after governmentbestowed privilege is a democratic free scramble for privilege...
...then (b) finds that this interference is causing so much unnecessary trouble that dealing with this unnecessary trouble becomes its main occupation...
...But that claim is like Mark Twain's remark that Wagner's music is better than it sounds...
...tdtegulation of Irucking keep freight rates high...
...never mind that state support invariably means state control...
...The welfare state's typical combination of inadequate information and inappropriate motives insures that...
...Regulation of air travel keeps ticket prices high, thereby restricting the mobility of the population...
...Minimum wage laws are supposed to aid marginal workers by improving upon market forces...
...and it should maintain a broad neutrality as to the competitive allocating of resources among the producing and consuming activities of the citizens...
...The welfare state's habits undermine the citizens' inclination to mind their own business and to respect other people's private desires...
...Federal housing projects have resuited in an increase in slums and a decrease in the number of housing unRs available to the poor...
...Second, these actions will involve many indirect but keenly felt injuries to the poor...
...Such a critique must proceed from some distinctively conservative insights and values...
...This Liberalism is immoderately hostile toward man's passions and appetites...
...The only answer is to elect men who wil insist that the government mind its own business...
...That is, one clear result of the expansive activism of our expanded government is a lower living standard for the poor...
...Hence the average citizen is more apt to be bewildered than indignant...
...they recognize that the coming of the welfare state did not change man from a self-interested and competitive animal...
...Confronted with the welfare state's, dismal record and confused rationale, liberals resort to the claim that the irapulse behind the welfare state is benevolent, and "therefore" the welfare state is better than its record or rationales...
...Dependent farmers are more important...
...We are all under surveillance...
...I will repeat them here...
...It is ~he modern university...
...But that spirit is being transformed in two ways by the welfare state...
...In addition, the entrepreneurial spirit has found a new and unwholesome outlet in the competition for government favors...
...As a result, the net effect of government manipulation of the economy is negative for the poor...
...First, some supporters of the weZJare state - - those who believe in tutelary Liberailsm, want a strong state to exploit the malleability of man...
...For a nine-year subscription just clip this unique order form and, with the appropriate amount of money (one dollar for students and faculty members, four dollars for others), mail to: The Alternative -- Circulation Department, c/o The Establishment, R.R...
...The welfare state demolishes fences...
...And another thing...
...Not every American has a special pleading organization...
...The welfare state uses government power to compel certain kinds of producing and consuming activities, and thereby to compel a certain distribution of wealth...
...The chief beneficiaries of the welfare state ethos are the organized interests on whose behalf most government interference with the economy is undertaken...
...This has happened again and again even in the civil services of strong unitary states...
...Welfare state aid to dependent farmers insures that food for dependent children -- and for the rest of us -- will be unnessarily expensive...
...Government dispensations - - be they airline routes, television channels, radio frequencies or whatever - - are as lucrative as they are effective in generating graft...
...Rather, the result was another decree: change the idea of competence...
...He is imperfect and unperfectable...
...But the special interests - - the anions and shoe manufacturers - - know exactly how they have benefited, and they know exactly whom to thank, and how to thank them...
...Indeed, institutions must be accommodated to the ,fact that men are predominately self-interested and will remain so...
...In delivering this address at James Madison College on the campus of .M~chigan State University last May, Mr...
...Stanton Evans "...one of the most amusing and outrageous and interesting student journals in America...
...But it is now clear beyond peradventure that the disadvantaged are not the chief beneficiaries of this welfare state ethos which sanctions government activism throughout the economy in the interest of distributing privileges and re-distributing wealth...
...Eliminate material wants, elminate frustrations, and men will flower under the protecting umbrella of the welfare state...
...This "flowering Liberalism" conceives of man as a bursting pod, ready to explode spontaneously with good-natured creativity -- if only the state will release him from distracting responsibilities...
...But Liberals tell us not to worry about a despotic use of the welfare state's power...
...The welfare state suddenly found that a semantic fiat, revision of the meaning of "competence," created an elastic supply of "competent" faculty and students -- a supply sufficient to sop up the government's expenditures...
...Dairy men are organized on behalf of meat import quotas...
...That conservatism exists will come as a stunning revelation to many of you...
...That is a fair summation of the tactics of the New Deal, the spirit of the welfare state, and the degradation of democracy...
...Fix this rule firmly in your mind: welfare as commonly understood -- measures intended to help poor people -- is not the major issue when discussing the debilities of the welfare state...
...This doctrine says that man can be rendered perfectly rational and (thus) men can be perfectly harmonious social creatures...
...The Alternative would be a fine magazine if you'd cut the cursing and name-calling...
...This celebrates the passions...
...The "'crisis" was a paucity of competent people to produce and consume the decreed amount of edvcation...
...If I understand him correctly he is suggesting that when I condemn teachers" "who don't give a damn whether or not students read" that I am somehow or other making an argument for coercion of students...
...I am writing to the Washington Post to express my deep-felt anxieties on this score...
...The result is that Washington schools are 95 per cent black -- the lec~t integrated in the Nation...
...In short, self-reliance is good for the soul, and men of well-ordered souls do not need, and will not tolerate a leviathan...
...to corrupt the practice of popular government...
...Nor is it the incarnation of an imaginative social philosophy...
...The descent almost always comes when a bureaucracy (a) tries to interfere with market forces...
...Equality of opportunity can be secured...
...The task for reason is not to snuff Qut the passions or starve the appetites...
...It deals with national issues and personalities and offers insightful, original and sometimes offbeat reviews of current books...
...These activities include (of coarse) the production and consumption of houses, hamburgers, medicine and education...
...I am seeking a court injunction to stop this business because it is driving me and my poor cat crazy...
...Thus the only hope for free government is for the government to refuse to encourage the free-for-all scramble after favoritism...
...Regulation of the railroads has made them wbat they are today...
...But he is also bern with a nascent rational capacity...
...Will noted the Welfare State's assumption into heaven...
...Properly understood the welfare state is a panoply of laws and governmental institutions which, backed by the police power, regulate the productive and consuming activities of the citizens...
...This is majority rule expressed through representatives legislating under the restraint of fundamental law...
...But if men are spared the rigors of self-reliance, they will never develop the character which enables a mature man to use freedom productively in the pursuit of various excellences...
...By now it should be clear why I say that the significance of the welfare state lies not in its systematic application of an interesting economic theory...
...Such competition arouses spiritedness in winners and envy in losers...
...Conservatism denies that institutional tinkering can supply the permanent defects of human beings...
...Like all such laws, rent control will exist forever...
...it should enforce rules of decent market beavior...
...It certainly has not achieved a significant portion of the goals it has randomly adopted...
...On the contrary, the actions of a democratic welfare state on behalf of its most typical clients will hurt the poor in two ways...
...Obviously a critic of the welfare state need not be conservative, only observant and logical...
...Moreover, my function is to disturb your dogmatic slumbers by announcing an alarming bulletin: conservatism exists and is truthful...
...continued to page 23) The Alternative October, 1971 23 continuing crisis (continued from page 4) a verse of the hymn, "Amazing Grace," ending with an extraordinary corn shucking yell...
...After all, I know of no significant political figure of I any persuasion who does not acknowledge tat it is the clear moral duty of a society to provide decently for those who cannot provide for themselves...
...Conservatives believe that these Liberalisms rest on false assumptions...
...For a critique of the welfare state to be conservative, it must do more than remark that state's myriad failures...
...Indeed, reason is developed by the activity of planning and calculating for the provision of one's own wants...
...The essence of the welfare state conCeptis the idea of pervasive governement activism to replace market economic forces by political forces in decisions about the distribution of wealth...
...Such government will not mind its own business because it cannot distinguish its business from everyone else's business...
...Lacking such a law, the state monopoly would be without business...
...These motives cause it to distort the market's rational husbanding of resources...
...This monopoly is backed by an astonishing law that makes private enterprise in postal services a federal crime...
...From these it divined a clear-and-present "need" for a rapid and vast expansion of higher education...
...The essence of the welfare state myth is that the typical government action influencing the distribution of wealth is done on behalf of the disadvantaged...
...William Calley was reduced to twenty years...
...So Liberals adopt a fail-back justification...
...Lazy Joe Fish Slippery Bear Shoot, Indiana To the Editor: I think my phone is being tapped...
...The real significance of the welfare state is very practical and very political...
...Spiro T. Agnew "..,stands almost alone among a welter of New Left, radical and revolutionary publications...
...it is not primarily an instrument for coping with the weak and disorganized...
...I am sure that soon a second government chicken will be consulted for a "'cure" and all that we can know for sure about that cure is that it will make matters worse...
...They are both very, very strong and very dependent on the government...
...In fact "tutorial Liberalism" holds that perfect rationality and harmony are the "natural" conditions of men...
...Presto...
...Great American Series The freedom to speak is not absolute...
...The melancholy lesson is this...
...At that point expanding institutions were offering expanded job opportunities at inflated salaries...
...for a one-year subscription (9 issues) to The Alternative Name g e q Address City i State & Zip ° ' e $1.00 Studentor Faculty [ ] New [ ] e $4.00 Other [ ] Renewal [ ] e Save by subscribing f o r two years ($7.00) or three years t ($I0.00...
...As Madison said, the more the merrier...
...Perhaps a generous concern for the disadvantaged was the original motive for creating the welfare state, and thereby abandoning our healthy fear of comprehensive government...
...Something -something bad -- will be done, you can count on it...
...Liberal judges have concocted enough taws, and federal sociologists have concocted enough theories, to rationalize the Nation's most ambitous integration policy...
...Justice Douglas (341 U.S...
...Why does this come to pass...
...One day he shows up in Virginia, then he is in Tennessee, a week later in California...
...It is primarily an instrument by which the politicans cope with the strong and thnized...
...Meanwhile, our society is suffering a shortage of skilled technicians in a variety of perfectly respectable fields of employment, as anyone who is in need of a good mechanic will tell you...
...Indeed, it is my contention that, typically and almost inevitably, welfare state activity involves the subsidization of large economic interests which, because of their close association with the government, have developed a noxious combination of characteristics...
...But these acts of favoritism are rarely very obvious to the general citizen, who has much better things to do with his time than monitor the details of legislative and bureaucratic decisions...
...Envy makes men unhappy...
...There is no reason why a free society should have to tolerate this business...
...My best, George Carey Washington, D.C...
...Third, not all special pleading organizations are created equal in strength...
...That is we should employ less state power, and leave more decisions to private arrangements among free producers and consumers...
...That eliminates untidy competition from foreigners who make better shoes cheaper...
...Consider The Alternative The Alternative is an insipid iournal of polarizing inconclasm whose style is intellectual, argumentative and satiric or so they :~y...
...One name for this middle ground is "teaching," an art sadly neglected in universities...
...Were the welfare state primarily the instrument of generous motives, it would still be a failure...
...The Alternative is a welcome addition to the ranks of American opinion journalism...
...11, Box 360, Bloomington, Indiana 47401, Continental, U.S.A...
Vol. 5 • October 1971 • No. 1
