The "All-American" Anti-Communist Missile
Noah D. Alper
[Reprinted from Issue of News & Views,
March, 1960, published
by the St. Louis Academy of General Practice]
At the time of this statement,
Noah Alper served as President of the Public Revenue Education
Council, St. Louis, Missouri
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A "capitalistic tinge" is said to be developing in the
Soviet Union. Incentive rewards are now given scientists, educators
and efficient producers. On the other hand, many claim we are moving
in the direction of Communism because of increasing controls of and
intervention in business by government, high taxes designed primarily
to redistribute wealth while, at the same time, interfering with its
production, and the growth of what all Americans once feared --
Paternalism, now called the Welfare State.
Both these trends please some superficial Americans who ignore the
essential facets of our way of life -- the dignity and liberty of free
men, and our need to achieve an economic environment which assures a
fuller growth of social justice and freedom, and a finer realization
of the basic ideals of the American Revolution; whose aim was to
evolve a State of Welfare rather than a Welfare State.
It is dangerous to assume that we some how gain by this Communistic
use of incentives and their seeming violation of the "golden rule"
of Communism -- "From each according to ability, to each
according to need." Actually such stimulation only adds to our
danger. We all know Communists have not given up their basic
objectives -- the public ownership of the "Implements of
Production" and the destruction of Capitalism - our Destruction
as a free people. And we must remember the many times tyrants of the
worst sort - kings, queens, emperors and dictators - have given,
economic incentives to a few in order to tighten their hold on the
people.
We live in perilous times. Today, self-deceit is more deadly than any
economic or propaganda missile the Communists can hurt against us. For
this reason sincere and effective inquiry as to the root or more basic
causes of our really fearful problems should be most welcome, even if
bad customs long accepted are severely challenged, and we are forced
to step on the financial toes of some hitherto highly privileged
people. Only in this way can we assure our survival and hope for an
ultimate rollback of Communism.
The programs of those called Conservatives and those termed Liberals
or Progressives need to be challenged by a better one - one more moral
and scientific; one that ends or greatly reduces the size of our
problems, and which does not merely change their form or add new ones.
By today's standards the leaders of the major parties from 1900 to
1930 were ultra-Conservatives. Yet, who can or will try to deny that
out of that era of supposedly conservative leadership came so-called "creeping
Socialism" - the Rooseveltian New Deal, the Truman Fair Deal, and
the modern-Republican "middle-of-the-road" Deal of President
Eisenhower. With such facts in mind, how can any thinking person help
but wonder why the so-called Conservative policy of the past failed to
prevent the startling and sizeable social, economic and political
changes which these various Administrations imposed on us? Just what
were these Conservatives trying to conserve?
On the other hand, can anyone who thinks say that the various liberal
administrations since 1930 have exposed or eradicated a single basic
economic error in the three decades they were largely in power? It is
because of this and the unending use of law-made remedies for each and
every single symptom that failures and disappointments piled up; our
problems compound in numbers and in degree; and we are more fearful
than ever. For these reasons is it unfair to suggest of modern
Liberals and Progressives that they, too, have failed; that they have,
in effect, only been liberal with other- people's money and
progressive like a cancer so far as justice, true prosperity and
freedom are concerned.
We live in a cause and effect world; all. our economic problems have
causes. Our problems seem many and complex because we view their
symptoms. A single remedy or "cure all" can hardly be
expected. Yet it is sheer folly to assume that there are no key-log
points at which we can work with a high potential for much general
betterment; or that there is no reconditioning process that can end
some problems while mitigating a host of others.
Great and known truths of economic science, hardly used at present,
are available. These, by their direct cause and effect patterns, tell
us what to do and what not to do to cleanse our system of its
man-caused pollution and to achieve its maximum efficiency of service
to man. We must identify and eradicate our bad economic policies,
which do so much harm to us and cause attempts of Government to do so
much good for people. We can no longer afford the luxury of trying to
defend the Free Enterprise (Capitalistic) system as a single package
deal, defending the bad with the food on a "love me, love my dog"
basis.
Immoral customs, laws assuring special privilege and protection for
segments of our industry and business and of our working people,
state-provided social welfare abuses, political grants of assured
profits mostly to rich farmers and some poor ones for not producing,
incentive and job-killing tax laws, etc., .are all involved and deeply
imbedded in the vitals of our economy. The power of economic science
to give us guidance for an amazing reversal of such economic nonsense
is beyond question. But this basic science, the only one that deals
with such a sad situation, has been and is constantly subjected to
planned interference. It is perverted by expert economists both within
and without the walls of our-educational institutions, whose ideas
inevitably lead" to the profit of special interests. As all
familiar with science and its arts know, when a science is involved in
problem areas the "scientific method" of inquiry will help
find the more basic cause; it will help develop the specific economic
remedy for its cure, as well. The process, an evolutionary scientific
one, always works; it has given us the automobile, the plane, the
radio and television, our system of communication and many of the
valuable improvements in our industrial and farming processes. By our
failure to use even a reasonable potential of economic science we have
failed to develop a true and "FREE" Free Enterprise;
Economy. This failure to do this is all that was necessary to produce
the bad social conditions that turned our economy in the direction of
the Welfare State or worse -- Socialism and Communism.
However, though few are aware of it, this is in process of being
greatly changed in the United States. As might be expected, new
freedom fighters are at work -- given confidence and encouraged by
knowledge of a purer science of economics than is now generally
presented in our schools. They are seeking to use its more scientific
and helpful revelations to end the harsh and grossly unfair economic
policies which reduced our country to a condition which rendered it
easily susceptible to the attacks of its enemies. The question is not
one of can it be done, or how, it is only one of education - of
placing the true facts before more of our people. In this all can be
interested and many can help.
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