Friday, November 17th, 2006
Charles Murray's Keynote Address at Atlas Freedom Dinner
Washington DC, November 16, 2006 --
Being invited to address the Freedom Dinner, and on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Atlas Foundation, is a great honor. Antony Fisher’s idea for the Atlas Foundation was brilliant. Its leadership under Fisher, then John Blundell, and since 1991 under Alex Chafuen, has been inspired. The Atlas Foundation’s impact has been both global and incalculable. All we can know for sure is that its impact has been huge.
But I have to admit that I wondered exactly why Alex decided on me when there are so many attractive choices, some of whom have been at this podium tonight. Then I realized that Alex knew that the Freedom Dinner would take place just one week after the mid-term elections and Alex, knowing what was going to happen in that election, knew that the last thing he wanted for this celebration was a dinner speaker who would spend a funereal half hour dissecting the election results and prescribing practical next steps. And Alex, having read my books over many years, knew that I barely register that a real world of politics even exists, and that, above all, I don’t do practical. But regarding the elections, I can’t resist stealing the line that a great friend of liberty, Antonio Martino, used at the Mont Pelerin Society meeting in Guatemala last week. Reflecting on his recent tenure as Italy’s Minister of Defense, Antonio said, “After five years in government, I now have the same respect for politicians that the pigeons of Rome have for statues.” Think about the way the late lamented political campaign was conducted, on both sides, and I think you’ll see the relevance of that remark.
This evening I am not going to think back one week, but twenty-five years. And I am not going to think forward to the 2008 election cycle, but to 2031, twenty-five years into the future.
Twenty-five years ago this very date, November 16, here was the New York Times on Ronald Reagan under the headline, “Does the Emperor Know?”
“More and more people are looking past the smile and worrying about the substance of issues. And more and more are asking whether the President is able to deal with substance…. The evidence of chaos in both foreign and domestic policy-making has been so overwhelming lately that solid Republicans are voicing their concern…. It is this context of growing doubt about Mr. Reagan's grip on events that makes the Stockman affair so awkward politically. For people are bound to start wondering whether the President understands what his Budget Director has so dramatically admitted, that the economic miracle he promised does not exist and never will.”
I did not have to go searching through the archives looking for a dismissive quote for this speech. I just searched for “Reagan” in the New York Times for November 16th, 1981, and bingo. Those of a certain age in this audience will recall that relentless drumbeat of pressure during the winter of 1981/82 to change course that was being pounded every day, in an era when a few like-minded newspapers and magazines and three television networks dominated what the American people heard and read.
Twenty-five years ago, we were coming off double-digit inflation, Jimmy Carter’s malaise, a conviction among the intelligentsia—including even Henry Kissinger, by the way— that the best we could hope was to delay the inexorable Soviet advance. We lived in an era in which the phrase “free market” was treated as derisively as the word “Reaganomics.”
Think of the change. Think of the night-and-day, world-turned-upside-down change that has occurred since then. The current political mess is trivial in comparison with the transformation that we have witnessed since the year in which the Atlas Foundation set up shop.
And in giving thanks for that change, let those of us who have the luxury of ignoring practical politics pay tribute to the two towering practical politicians who made it happen, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Every time I hear it said that large historical forces govern history, I recall that in March of 1981 the ricocheting bullet from John Hinckley’s gun penetrated to within a fraction of an inch of Ronald Reagan’s heart, and I try to imagine what the world would be like today if it had gone one inch farther.
But the large historical forces are important too. It is said that luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Reagan and Thatcher were the opportunity. Hayek and von Mises and Friedman, and others like them, were the preparation. And that’s where the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, and AEI, and Cato and Heritage, Hoover and Fraser and the dozens of think tanks around the world that Atlas has fostered come in. It is our job to do the preparation for the next great transformational step in the direction of freedom. What are the resources that we have for accomplishing that task? When our successors meet to celebrate Atlas’s 50th anniversary in 2031, what will be the counterpart of Capitalism and Freedom ? What will that book have said?
Here are three themes that I think will play a part in shaping the struggle of ideas: First, a transformation in tools. Second, a coming crisis in the moral foundation of the left. Third, a shift in the focus of freedom, from markets and economics to freedom as the basis for living a satisfying human life.
The transformation in tools is already upon us. Every change in information technology gives the individual more power over his own life and more independence from centralized institutions, whether those institutions be libraries, the downtown office building, CBS, or the post office. Every change in information technology also undermines the authority of the state. Yes, in one sense the new technology gives the government more potential for keeping us all under closer surveillance than ever before. But in practice, the race between the power of the state and the power of the individual is determined by the computer geeks and nerds, and all the talent works for one side, the individual. Brilliant chip designers and programmers and hackers don’t want to work for the government. So I have no doubt that the government will try to regulate the internet, for example, and am utterly confident that spontaneous revolt in the private sector will foil those attempts in all important respects. When it comes to the action in tools, the government is on the outside looking in.
And what action we are going to see. Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google is on record predicting that we are only ten to twenty years away from having hand-held devices that give us instantaneous, searchable internet access to the sum total of human knowledge—not just access to the references, but to the actual text, images, and sound of the information. Sounds crazy. Except that Google right now is in the process scanning the complete libraries of Harvard, Oxford, Stanford…on and on…at the rate of several thousand books a week. And that’s just one of a dozen extraordinary applications that will be available ten or twenty years from now, the other eleven of which aren’t even imaginable. I predict that every single one of them will put more power in the hands of individuals, and, in practice, make it more difficult for the government to coerce.
The coming crisis in the moral foundation of the left is not as obvious. It is even more certain. For the last forty years, the battle cry of the left has been “equality,” measured and promoted according to this premise: Any differences among groups in the important outcomes of life—income, occupations, health, education, and the like—are the result of bad and/or evil human behavior. Everything that we associate with the phrase “politically correct” eventually comes back to the equality premise. The proliferation of college courses that frame every issue, from the American Revolution to the analysis of Shakespeare’s plays, according to “race, gender, and class” derives from that premise. And at second hand, the penumbra of the equality premise will be visible in just about every legislative proposal that the new Democratic majorities will put forth in the coming session of congress.
That premise is within a few years of being as discredited as the notion that the earth rides on the back of a turtle. The explosive growth of genetic knowledge means that within a few years, science will definitively demonstrate precisely how it is that women are different from men, blacks from whites, poor from rich, or, for that matter, the ways in which the Dutch are different from Italians. There is no reason to fear this new knowledge. Differences among groups will cut in many different directions, and everybody will be able to weight the differences so that their group’s advantages turn out to be the most important. Dutch and Italians will both continue to be quietly thankful that they are not the other, as will men and women, blacks and whites, English professors and engineers. But groups of people will turn out to be different from each other, on average, and those differences will also produce group differences in outcomes in life, on average, that are not the product of discrimination and inadequate government regulation, but just the product of human beings behaving as they see fit.
People with whom I discuss this often say to me that the new scientific knowledge won’t make any difference; the left will just ignore it. I disagree. Over time, new knowledge about the way the world works—hard new knowledge, not a matter of political opinion—changes the premises that people bring to their opinions. Ten years from now, the Larry Summers affair at Harvard will appear ridiculous to everyone. Everyone. And a void will have developed in the moral universe of the left. If social policy cannot be built on the premise that group differences must be eliminated, what can it be built upon?
The answer is one that we in this room have always known: Differences in groups tell us nothing about what the person before us has brought to the table. The new premise is that people must be treated as individuals, not as members of groups. The success of social policy is to be measured not by equality of outcome for groups, but by open, abundant opportunity for individuals. It is to be measured by the freedom of individuals, acting upon their personal abilities, preferences, and aspirations, to pursue happiness.
Substituting this premise won’t end the left’s passion for redistributing wealth. Indeed, the new scientific knowledge about the genetic sources of differences will give the left a new argument for redistributing money as a way of compensating for nature’s unfairnesses. But that’s not the point. Redistributionist policies may raise our taxes, but they are not nearly as dangerous to freedom as the state that insists on micro-managing how employers hire and fire, that tells high schools how they allocate their funds for their sports programs, and that puts a regulatory straitjacket on every form of freedom of association. Do not underestimate the degree to which the left’s agenda has been founded on the equality premise. Do not underestimate the degree to which losing that premise will throw the left into disarray. Science is about to give us the opening to revitalize individualism as the moral basis for thinking about the purpose of government. Seizing that opportunity will be one of the crucial tasks facing the advocates of liberty over the next twenty-five years.
Now I come to what I see as central change in the argument for liberty between the last quarter century and the next quarter century.
Most of the great proponents of classical liberalism in the 20th century were economists. They themselves understood the full ramifications of freedom, just as Adam Smith knew that Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments were really two halves of the same vision. Nonetheless, much of the practical political appeal of classical liberalism has been based on the economic advantages of free markets. So while the people in this room may know all about natural rights and the principled case for freedom, the reason free markets made such dramatic progress over the past quarter century has had mostly to do with the pragmatic fact that giving people at least a certain amount of freedom tends to be associated with faster growth in GDP.
As wealth continues to increase in the advanced West—and it has been doing so with almost mathematical predictability for decades now—the economic incentives to expand freedom lose much of their force. Politicians around the world are getting better and better at doling out the amounts and types of freedom that will keep their economies growing without seriously interfering with the intrusiveness of government. Meanwhile, electorates that are increasingly wealthy are less energized by economic arguments for limited government.
So how is the case for limited government to be made? In thinking the answer, a good place to start is by thinking about this proposition: The real problem advanced societies face in the next twenty-five years has nothing to do with the usual list of social problems such as poverty or health care. The real problem is how to live meaningful lives in an age of plenty and security.
Throughout history, much of the meaning of life was linked to the challenge of staying alive. Staying alive required being a contributing part of a community. Staying alive required forming a family and having children to care for you in your old age. The knowledge that sudden death could happen any time required attention to spiritual issues.
Life in an age of plenty and security requires none of those things. Being part of a community is not necessary. Marriage is not necessary. Children are not necessary. Attention to spiritual issues is not necessary. It is not only possible but easy to go through life with a few friends and serial sex partners, earning a good living, having a good time, and dying in old age with no reason to think that one has done anything more significant than while away the time.
Perhaps, as the song says, that’s all there is. That seems to be the attitude of an increasing number of European young adults. Secular, childless, preoccupied with the length of their vacations and the security of their pensions, they appear to have decided that the purpose of life is indeed to while away the time as pleasantly as possible, and that the proper function of government is to enable them to do so with as little effort as possible. Such is the appeal of the extensive welfare state.
I don’t buy it. In the long run, I don’t think any thoughtful person buys it. Life can have transcendental meaning, whether we define “transcendental” according to the great religions or the great philosophers. But that meaning must, by definition, be acquired through our engagement with the world around us. Furthermore, the varieties of engagement are limited. Let me make an ambitious claim, and invite each you to see if you can tell me why I’m wrong.
When all is said and done, there are just four institutions through which human beings imbue their lives with meaning: vocation, family, community, and faith.
It is not necessary for any individual to make use of all four. Some people live deeply fulfilled lives who are in love with their vocation and are indifferent to family, community, and faith. Others live for spouse and children. For others, faith is everything. I do not array the four institutions in a hierarchy. I merely assert that these four are all there are. If the human beings in a society are to pursue happiness, those four institutions must be vital and rich, for it is through them that happiness is pursued. Seen in this light, the purpose of government is to ensure that they are vital and rich.
And here comes the paradox: The only way that government can achieve that goal is leaving those institutions alone—protecting them against predators, yes, but otherwise leaving them alone.
If you want a symbol of what happens when government tries to help, I invite you to drive through rural Sweden, as I did a few years ago. In every town was a beautiful Lutheran church, freshly painted, on meticulously tended grounds, all subsidized by the Swedish government. And the churches are empty. Including on Sundays. Or take a look at the countries with the most extensive networks of child allowances, free day care centers, and generous maternity leaves. You are also looking at countries with fertility rates far below replacement, plunging marriage rates, and soaring illegitimacy ratios. Go to countries in which the jobs are most carefully protected by government regulation and mandated benefits are most lavish. You are also looking at countries where work is most often seen as a necessary evil and the proportions of people who say they love their job are the lowest.
The more government tries to help, the feebler these institutions become. The explanation for the paradox is simple. The real problem with the welfare state is not that it is inefficient in dealing with social needs (though it is), nor that it is ineffectual in dealing with them (though it is), nor even that it exacerbates the very problems it is supposed to solve (as it does). The real problem with the welfare state is that it drains too much of the life from life. Children do not become deep sources of satisfaction despite the difficulties of raising them, but because of them. A vocation does not become a deep source of satisfaction because it is easy, but because it is challenging. A community does not become a deep source of satisfaction because it is subsidized, but because it has responsibilities that only the community can meet.
The modus operandi of the welfare state is to say, “We’ll take the trouble out of that” when “the trouble” it wants to take out is in fact not trouble at all, but the stuff of life—the elemental events associated with birth, death, growing up, raising children, comforting the bereaved, celebrating success, dealing with adversity, applauding the good, and scorning the bad—coping with life as it exists around us in all its richness.
It is no surprise that the advanced world has evolved toward the welfare state. It is human nature, especially in the early stages of life, to take the easy way out if the easy way out is offered. But, thankfully, it is also human nature for adults to think about what constitutes a life well-lived. The clichés of American English reflects the lessons we mature—“nothing worth having comes easily,” “I pull my own weight,” “he’s a stand-up guy,” “you take out what you put into it.” There is a reason clichés become clichés: They express truths. In this case, the truth is that for life to have meaning, one’s life must be spent doing important things, challenging things, and taking responsibility for them
I do not think that what I have just said falls in the category of an argument that has to be made. It falls in the category of things that all of us instinctively understand. I even think that agreement crosses party lines—that if Nancy Pelosi and I went out for a few drinks and got to talking about this stuff, she and I would find a lot of agreement. With this proviso: the Nancy Pelosis of the world will agree that these are truths about their own lives, but we can’t expect them to apply to everyone. That it’s okay for people with money and education to live by these principles, but we must make exceptions for the less fortunate.
In response to that objection, advocates of liberty are going to have to adapt to some realities of a world that is growing ever richer. I’m already trying to do my part. Last spring, I published a book entitled In Our Hands, which proposed replacing all transfer payments with, in effect, a guaranteed floor income for every American citizen age twenty-one and older. It’s sort of Milton Friedman’s negative income tax on steroids. Some of my libertarian friends have taken exception to my proposal. My friend Ed Crane, for example, refers to In Our Hands as “that wacko book you wrote.” But I think there are a couple of realities that have to be faced. One reality is that some people really do get the short end of the stick on a variety of dimensions over which they have no control. They are legitimate objects of our concern. And whereas we may be convinced that the best way to respond to their condition does not require the intervention of government, the other reality is that we’re never going to convince a majority of our fellow citizens. Western societies are simply too rich for a political coalition to come to power that proposes doing away with income transfers to people whom everyone agrees really are in need.
If we are to speak persuasively to our fellow citizens, we will have to come up with a grand compromise in one way or another, offering our opponents big government in terms of providing economic resources to the less fortunate if they will offer us small government in terms of the government’s ability to stage-manage peoples lives. I think a universal, no-strings grant is the best way to do that, but I’m open to alternatives. My point is this:
We are not going achieve the next great movement toward liberty by promising tax cuts. We are not going to do it by promising higher economic growth rates. We are not going to do it by economic arguments, period. Rather, we are going to do it by convincing people that what is true of their own lives is also true of others’ lives.
When Nancy Pelosi, after those couple of drinks I was talking about, agrees that her life has been given dignity and meaning by vocation, family, community, and faith, we can’t let her off the hook when she says “but we can’t expect everyone to be like that.” Everybody is like that.
The great task, and the great opportunity, for the advocates of liberty over the next twenty-five years, is to say that we are all truly brothers and sisters under the skin. To say that human dignity is for everyone, a life with meaning is for everyone, and that the route to that dignity and to that meaning is freedom.
Heritage remarks on Charles's Murray Keynote Address