Interesting read, thanks. I didn't know that much about
Wendell Willkie. And while I agree with a lot of what he
says here, a lot of it can be proven wrong by hindsight...
are we materially better off now than we were in 1939? Seems
like 'the power of the State' has accomplished something
after all.


WENDELL WILLKIE: Deja Vu All Over Again - Or is it Still?
By Wendell Willkie (1939)


WILKE ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL
An address given by Willkie at the 44th Congress of American Industry on
December 8th, 1939

The history of government is the history of two conflicting principles: one
is the supreme importance of the State; the other is the supreme importance
of the individual. Either the people have believed that the State was merely
the voluntary creation of individual citizens, responsible to them and
designed primarily to protect their liberties; or else they have believed
that the State was an authority in its own right to which individual
citizens were subject and which could demand of them the suppression of
their own desires and talents. The individual versus the State--that is the
theme which more than any other has determined the course of civilization.

The distinction between these two philosophies is primarily one of
objective. To those who believe in the State, the purpose of government is
to increase its coercive powers, so as to regulate the way the people live.
This distinction transcends in meaning all other political distinctions. We
call England a monarchy, for example, and yet, ever since Magna Carta in the
13th Century, the rights of the individual in that country have been of
greater importance than the authority of the State. On the other hand, we
call ancient Greece a republic, and history regards few governments as more
efficient. But in ancient Greece, as in ancient Rome, the citizen belonged
neither to himself nor to his family; he belonged to the State and was
subject at all times to it peremptory and irrevocable demands. And in the
very antithesis of monarchy--namely, communism--the State, as we have seen
in Russia, owns the lives of the citizens completely.

It is not the form or title of government which determines its character; it
is its purpose.

The conflict between these two philosophies--the individual versus the
State--provided the impulse behind the formation of the United States of
America. This country was founded on the idea that the individual is the
source of the State's power and that the State was created by and of the men
in it, and existed only to serve them. In fact, the United States is the
only country which was organized on this principle from the very start. And,
for the first century and a half of our existence, we were fortunate in
living in a period when throughout the western world the doctrine of
individual rights was gaining over the doctrine of absolute State power.

This is no longer true today. In modern Germany and Italy the leaders of the
people proclaim the supremacy of the State. For a man to sacrifice his
personal beliefs, his moral standards, his livelihood and his God for the
sake of the State is regarded as a noble thing. For a woman to produce more
and more babies for the armies of the State is an action to be rewarded by a
medal. Even the two greatest liberty-loving countries of Europe--England and
France--have now, because of a war to defend their ideals, surrendered their
individual liberties and returned to an absolute government.

Today, the United States stands alone among the great countries in its
emphasis upon the rights of the individual.

To my mind this spiritual isolation is no particular cause for alarm. I do
not believe that we shall change our faith by any action from without. If we
change it, it will be because of some weakness within. And even then, we
shall not change it directly. It is bred in us too deeply. If we accept the
doctrine of the authoritarian state, we shall do so gradually, indirectly,
and perhaps, even unconsciously. We shall do so with the worthiest of
motives. We shall say, for example; "The newspapers print too much gossip,
let the government censor them; our economic future is too uncertain, let
the government do the planning; it is too hard to clean out our business
stables, let the government do it for us." We shall yield more and more of
our liberty under the delusion that we are giving it up only temporarily
until things get straightened out, and after the deal is made, it will be
too late. The Devil will have gone off with our birthright.

"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety,"
stated Benjamin Franklin, "deserve neither liberty nor safety."

There are many liberties which we in America regard as fundamental. But
tonight we are talking specifically of the right of free economic
enterprise. We have given the Federal government extensive powers over the
economic and financial mechanism of this country in the past few years, and
under these powers regulation was instituted in the name of reform. I
believe that much of it was desirable, but now we need to be careful lest
that power be used gradually, indirectly, to take away our liberties. We
need to re-examine the relationship between the people's government and the
people's industry on the basis of this question: Have we gone so far in
regulating free economic enterprise that we have taken the life out of it?

Regulation has crept up on us steadily. The amount of it now imposed upon
industry can be illustrated by the number of returns which must be filed
with the Federal government. Last year the President appointed the Central
Statistical Board to study this question. The report, of course, did not
include the returns which an industry must file with any one of the 48
states in which it might happen to be located.

To fulfill the Federal government's requirements alone, the Central
Statistical Board reported that about 21,000,000 returns of all kinds were
filed for farms, making an average of approximately three returns per farm
during the year. A total of 60,000,000 returns were filed by industrial,
commercial and financial enterprises, not including farms, or an average of
about 20 per enterprise per year. Each of these contained answers to an
average of about 65 questions. Every return filed adds to the power of the
Federal government over our private enterprise.

The most alarming feature of this concentration of power in the Federal
government is the creation of omnipotent commissions to exercise it. The new
fields of Federal control are administered by small Boards or executive
commissions, usually appointed by the President and responsible to no one
but the President. They are part of the Executive Department. But their
function is not executive only. They have two additional functions: one is
legislative, the other is judicial. These commissions write the rules which
make the laws effective. Then they administer the rules; and when the rules
are violated, they it in judgment on the violations.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, for example, makes the rules for
virtually all security financing throughout the country; for all of the
country's stock exchanges; and for the financial operations of the
utilities. When the rules are broken, the members of the Commission
prosecute the offender and sit as judges to decide the penalties. In the
same way, the National Labor Relations Board makes the rules government
collective bargaining and working conditions under the Wagner Act and then
becomes both prosecutor and judge with respect to violations of the Act.

James Madison, who was chiefly responsible for the Constitution of the
United States, stated: "The accumulation of all powers--legislative,
executive and judicial--in the same hand...may justly be pronounced the
definition of tyranny." And Lord Bryce said: "The separation of thee powers
is the fundamental characteristic of the American National Government and
upon it depends the freedom of the individual."

Moreover, the rules prescribed by a commission involve the factor of
uncertainty. Unlike the laws of Congress, they are not written in black and
white upon the statute books. They may be changed at any time, at the
commission's will. In the past five years there have been four chairmen of
the Securities and Exchange Commission; and at each change the utilities and
the stock exchanges and the corporations seeking capital have held their
breath, waiting to find out what the attitude and policy of the new chairman
would be.

For under commission regulation we do not have a government of laws. We have
a government of men, nd the conduct of an enterprise may be determined by
the caprice of a commission chairman. There isn't a man in this room who
does not recognize the importance of the good will of Washington's
commissions. There isn't a man in this room who does not know that if he
criticizes a commission today, he and his company may suffer for it
tomorrow. This is not a mere generality--it is a well- considered statement
with abundant proof in my mind and your experience.

There are many who will say that State control in America is different from
State control in Europe because in Europe it is exercised by a despotic
government in which the people have no voice. Seventy-five years ago this
argument was answered by one of the greatest of the English liberals."The
real issue," Herbert Spencer said, "is whether the lives of citizens are
more interfered with than they were; not the nature of the agency which
interferes with them.... If men use their liberty in such a way as to
surrender their liberty, are they thereafter any less slaves?"

Seven years ago the people of the United States set out upon what they
thought was a great liberal campaign. They wanted to shake from their
shoulders the burden of economic insecurity, of malpractices in business and
finance, of wasteful speculation.They wished to control, insofar as
possible, the conditions which limited the freedom of men.

Somewhere along the road we lost that objective. Instead of seeking to make
men free--free to fight their own battle against poverty and fear and
adversity under conditions that provided a fair chance to win--we decided to
let the government fight the battle. The government wore the colors of the
people's champion, but its conception of its function became authoritarian.
It acted from the top on behalf of the people.

I believe that attitude to be a serious error. You will remember that
democracy does not mean government for the people, only. As Lincoln was
careful to point out, it means government of the people and by the people.
The present government seems to have tried to take over the functions of
America's free economic enterprises, instead of taking care that those
enterprises should function honestly and encouraging them to function more
efficiently.

Now and then in its relations with private enterprise the government has
established a temporary "policy of appeasement," or "a breathing
spell,"--pleasant little intervals between hostilities. And when we have
optimistically believed these to be periods of government cooperation--some
government official has sounded the trumpet for a new attack upon the
people's industries. Each time the tired business man has settled down to
his business, with a somewhat happier smile on his face, he has been roused
by a new threat of government antagonism--much as the Egyptians used to
carry around a mummy with the last course of every banquet to indicate that
death was never very far away.

But government is not the only transgressor. Business, too, need to mend its
ways. For many years various sections of American industry have asked for
special legislation which offered a temporary benefit at the expense of
normal economic processes.

Business has asked for special subsidies and special tariffs, for special
protection against price cutters or low cost producers, for government
appropriations for this or that special purpose. Business cannot ask for
government interference at one time, and then indignantly reject it at
another.

And it hasn't been a pretty picture to see business, in the hope of
advantage, craven and afraid to take its case to the people.

Moreover, we have witnessed within the past few years a rapid increase in
the number of state tariffs and state regulations interfering with
interstate commerce. Such action is suicidal. The greatness of the United
States has depended partly upon this factor--namely, that it is the largest
free trade area in the world. Here, again, business must take an interest in
maintaining that free flow of commerce, from the lack of which Europe has so
greatly suffered.

In the past few years the government has contributed some brave words and
some moving phrases to the language of the American people. It has talked a
great deal about "security." It has talked about "truth in the market
place." It has talked about "economic planning" and "the more abundant
life." Thee passwords have not admitted us into the promised land nor even
into a land of promise; the unemployed still have no jobs and the young men
have no dreams. It is true that the State has become rich indeed; but the
people remain poor. The State has more power than it ever had before. The
State spends eight billion dollars a year. The State, with 70 percent of all
the world's gold, has the largest buried treasure in history and one which
is likely to be as profitless and as legendary as that of Captain Kidd.

All this the State has, but does the individual have more freedom and more
opportunity, or less? The dozens of commissions and agencies and bureaus in
Washington may have a more abundant life, but not the people whom they
serve.

From now on, our purpose should be not to augment the powers of the State,
but to increase the opportunities offered to the individual. We are a
hard-headed, practical race, and we have chosen the enterprise system as our
way of life, not for sentimental reasons, but because it has created more
benefits for more people in less time than any other.

I agree Doug....Wilkie is 100% right about Govt needs to stay out of
American business.
Govt needs to be small enough to drown in a bathtub.

I think the Dubia deals proves that Govt is of the people and for the
people. So many citizens were outraged they called there congress men
and demended the deal be nixed. W was blind sided by the people and was
straightened out and put on the straight and narrow by the people on
this one.

Joe

On Fri, 10 Mar 2006 05:50:04 -0800, Joe wrote:

I agree Doug....Wilkie is 100% right about Govt needs to stay out of
American business.
Govt needs to be small enough to drown in a bathtub.

I think the Dubia deals proves that Govt is of the people and for the
people. So many citizens were outraged they called there congress men and
demended the deal be nixed. W was blind sided by the people and was
straightened out and put on the straight and narrow by the people on this
one.

Mob Rule, it's a wonderful thing.

"Dave" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 10 Mar 2006 08:40:58 -0500, DSK said:

a lot of it can be proven wrong by hindsight...
are we materially better off now than we were in 1939? Seems
like 'the power of the State' has accomplished something
after all.

Post hoc ergo proptor hoc.

Annuit coeptis novus ordo seclorum

Lloyd Bonafide

I thought proptor is spelled with an e.. propter.

--
"j" ganz @@
www.sailnow.com

"Dave" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 10 Mar 2006 08:40:58 -0500, DSK said:

a lot of it can be proven wrong by hindsight...
are we materially better off now than we were in 1939? Seems
like 'the power of the State' has accomplished something
after all.

Post hoc ergo proptor hoc.