Essay Introduction

In "Equality and Security," Dean Russell reflects on his upbringing in an orphanage to challenge modern concepts of government-guaranteed equality and security. recountinig a return visit to his childhood home, Russell contrasts the "forced equality" of institutional life with the freedom and responsibility of the outside world. He argues that true security is mental and spiritual, found in individual responsibility rather than government mandates. Russell critiques the "something for nothing" philosophy, the welfare state, and the use of force to achieve charitable ends, asserting that freedom is a condition of mutual non-molestation. He concludes that replacing moral law with government force ultimately destroys human dignity and the voluntary relationships essential to a free society.

EQUALITY AND SECURITY

Dean Russell

IT WAS June of 1934 when I left the orphanage where I was reared—the Odd Fellows Home in Lynchburg, Virginia. In July of 1951, I was invited to return as the speaker at a Home-Coming Day celebration the following September.

As I considered whether or not to accept the invitation, my thoughts wandered back to the place where I had lived until I was eighteen. My memories of milking the cows on cold mornings when I wanted to stay in bed were not so pleasant. But my memories of the smell of fresh earth as it was turned by the plow—and of walking barefooted in the furrow—were most pleasant. There was threshing time with its heat and dirt and dust, but there were also baseball and chapel and the library.

That wonderful library! I wondered if my Horatio Alger favorites were still there: Do and Dare, Work and Win, Ragged Dick, Strive and Succeed, and many others of the same general nature. Those are the once-popular novels for children that tell of an America where the poor boy from the other side of the railroad tracks could become the president of the bank, where the penniless orphan could become a great scientist, where there was no legal nor traditional caste system to hold a person back, where virtue was its own reward, and things of that general nature.

As those memories came flooding back, I decided to accept the invitation to return to my boyhood home as a speaker. I also decided that my speech would be mostly a discussion with the children about the perplexing problems of economic equality and material security in a world where most people have come to demand them as a birthright rather than as a reward for hard work and intelligent thinking.

In writing the formal part of my talk, I began with an ardent defense of the American form of representative government. And, unashamedly, I mentioned God and the traditional American way of life in the same paragraph. I did this because I have a deep faith in what both of them mean and represent.

But in writing about these things, I kept firmly in mind a few basic assumptions that seem to me perfectly obvious: No two persons are equal in ability or ambition; nor should they expect equality in their resulting material possessions. Security is mental and spiritual, even more than material. True and lasting security is to be found only in the privilege of each person to be responsible for the welfare of himself and of those who are logically dependent upon him. The primary purpose of government is to prevent any person from using force to impose his will or viewpoint upon any other person, thus leaving all persons free to seek and retain whatever security, possessions, and happiness they desire and are able to earn. Every person has a moral responsibility to voluntarily help his less fortunate neighbor who is in need.

Compulsory Equality

But how was I to give a convincing explanation of the realistic but now-unpopular concept of inequality in an admittedly insecure world to a group of boys and girls ranging in age from six to eighteen?

Then I thought of an approach that might help them to understand it. I remembered from my own experience that children in orphanages are generally reared under a system of absolute equality. They have equal clothes, equal food, equal housing, equal medical care, equal security, equal education, equal work, equal play, and all other such equalities. In fact, they already have, on a temporary basis, what many Americans demand from the government as rights for themselves and their children on a permanent basis.

When I lived under that system as a child, I distinctly remember that I didn't consider it at all desirable as a permanent arrangement. And I am happy to report a definite trend toward more individualism—less equality and more recognition of personal effort—in most private orphanages and similar nongovernmental institutions today.

When I entered into another form of forced equality and regimented security during my five years in the Army during World War II, I found no new evidence to convince me of their desirability. Quite the contrary! I was exceedingly happy to return to a realistic life of inequality and responsibility for my own decisions and welfare.

And so it is with most children in orphanages. While we are usually sincerely grateful to the people who have voluntarily provided us with a home while we are unable to care for ourselves, most of us look forward to the birthday that ends our guaranteed security; that terminates our unrealistic status of equality; that begins our complete responsibility for our own decisions—for better or for worse.

Two Types of Education

It can be stated, though, that children in orphanages may have one advantage—probably the only one—over children who are reared in normal homes where the parents so often use their votes to elect representatives who promise them government-guaranteed equality and security.

Children in most orphanages receive a realistic education in the direct connection between working and having. For example, in my orphanage, we knew that the cows had to be milked before we could have milk to drink. Before we could eat potatoes, we actually had to prepare the land, plant the seed potatoes, cultivate them, and harvest them. And we were early encouraged to save some of our few pennies for a future “capital investment,” such as a college education.

Possibly that concept is indeed old fashioned. At any rate, more and more American parents are teaching their children that the government should guarantee them—from the cradle to the grave—adequate housing, free education, equal medical care, an acceptable job with adequate wages, old age benefits, subsidies, protection against competition and reality, and many other so-called progressive social measures by government.

Nevertheless, I believe that all children would have a better chance of a successful adulthood if their parents—each in his own way—would teach them the vital and inescapable lesson that this “something for nothing” philosophy is false. For if any person—whether a child of nine, an adult of thirty, or an older person of sixty-five—can get what he wants without working for it, the evidence seems overwhelming that he won’t do much work.

A Philosophy of Government

My experience has been that if one is so bold as to question that modern philosophy of government, he will frequently receive some such answer as this:

“It is my patriotic duty to vote for the candidate who has the interests of the people most at heart. This is a government for the people. Its officials are my servants; they should do things for me and for all the other people who need help.”

Those people honestly seem to believe that the phrase “government as servant” means that government should give them material benefits—directly or through special laws. They don’t seem to realize that when the servant gains the power to support the master—and when the master becomes dependent upon the servant—the former relationship becomes completely reversed.

Persons and Groups

It is mainly when persons combine into mobs and other militant pressure groups that tolerance and an instinctive respect for others are lost in an illogical and mad attempt to force peaceful individuals and minorities to conform to the viewpoints and prejudices of the herd.

As long as transactions and relationships are left to the people themselves, there is a maximum of peace and progress. In a free society, it is only rarely that government—the organized police force—has to restrain some antisocial person from imposing his will upon others.

Helping One’s Neighbor

It has been my observation and experience everywhere I have lived that almost everyone is willing to help his neighbor who is truly in need—if the receiver respects the giver’s right to do it voluntarily and in his own way.

There is another group of persons who also claim “rights” to your property, but for a different reason: They are sincere and charitable persons who truly want to help their less fortunate fellow men; but they want to perform their charitable acts on a large scale with other people’s money, instead of on the basis of their own individual capabilities and with their own money.

This concept is sometimes called the “service state” or “welfare government.” The people who hold this concept are especially dangerous because their intentions are so good. The purity of their motives tends to obscure the ultimate evilness of their acts.

Moral Principles

I began by stating my conviction that a moral principle has the same value in the area of human relationships that a physical principle has in the area of physics.

For example, the moral principle summarized in the Commandment, “Thou shalt not steal,” is just as true and timeless as is the physical principle known as the law of gravity. Both have always been true, both are true today, and both will remain true forever—they are a part of eternal truth.

Moral and physical principles may, of course, be ignored. But the principles themselves continue to exist and to operate and to be completely oblivious of human desires.

The Eighth Commandment

If this is true—and who will deny it?—let us examine again the moral principle, “Thou shalt not steal,” and its bearing on the problem of helping our less fortunate neighbors.

It is my belief that an attempt to accomplish a good deed by evil means is no more logical than trying to grow wheat from tare seeds. Evil begets evil, just as surely as night follows day.

But, apparently, the vast majority of the American people believe that good ends can be achieved through evil means, thus justifying the means; that it is perfectly all right to take another person’s money by force, or by threat of force, if the proceeds are to be used to alleviate human suffering—provided, of course, that the taking is done with the sanction of the majority of the people.

Democracy

At this point, most persons will use the word “democracy” to justify this procedure. They will maintain that it is morally correct to take another person’s money if the majority of the people are in favor of it.

But legalities do not determine moralities. Might does not make right. The fact that 51 percent of the people may vote to take other people’s money and give it to poor widows with children does indeed make that act legal. But the act itself is still thievery—the taking of a person’s property without his consent—and all the man-made laws in the world cannot change its immorality.

Choice and Consequence

Most of us have rejected the concept of an absolute moral law. Probably this rejection is due more to lack of understanding than to deliberate design. But in either instance, the consequences are the same.

In the place of moral law, we have chosen to substitute the force of government as the proper means to deal with the problems of human relationships at home and abroad.

An Unanswered Question

I ended my talk by recalling that beautiful June day in 1934 when I had stepped so confidently into a life of my own.

I left my audience with this unanswered question:

Why is it that when these same peaceful and charitable individuals combine themselves into a group with a “cause,” they immediately begin advocating some plan to force their ideas upon me and upon other persons who think differently? Why?

About the Author

Dean Russell, a veteran of World War II, had just finished his graduate work in economics and journalism when he joined the Foundation staff in 1947. He is the translator of Bastiat's The Law. "Equality and Security" was published in 1952; "My Freedom Depends on Yours" and "When We Socialize Kilowatt-Hours" were published in 1953.

Attribution

Russell, Dean. "Equality and Security." In Essays on Liberty, Vol. 2, 338-364. Irvington-on-Hudson, NY: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1954,.