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SCI LIBRARY

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



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.