Summit Ministries

By James P. Gills, Ronald H. Nash

Government is Too Big

The biggest problem with America today is that the federal government is too large. With an ever-growing appetite, government gobbles up our few remaining freedoms, leaving us with increasingly complex rules and regulations that are impossible to understand. And then it raises our taxes so that it has enough money to keep on growing.

Government has gotten too big! "The Lord's Prayer is 66 words. The Gettysburg Address is 286 words. The entire Declaration of Independence is just 1,322 words. Yet, the government regulations on the sale of cabbage total 26,911," Rep. John T. Doolittle said in August 1994.

A system in which government bureaucracy runs the country is called Statism. As Statism's power grows, the government intrudes further and further into the lives of its citizens. Today, governments throughout the world build large bureaucracies that reduce the quality of life for their citizens and limit their freedoms.

And in our country, Americans increasingly have looked to the federal government, a Statist government, to solve their problems and be their provider. Statism kills individual initiative and destroys a sense of individual responsibility because they conflict with the goals of big government. Indeed, Statism has subverted the very goals of our Founding Fathers and it is destroying our society.

But no more. Since supporting the Contract with America in the 1994 congressional election, Americans have started to say, "Enough is enough." It's time to put a stop to Statism. Together we can limit big government's intervention in our lives. We can limit citizens' dependence upon big government. We can limit the amount of money that big government takes from our wallets. Capitalism, not Statism, is the path the Founding Fathers set as the course for America; and this is the route for a successful America.

A Continuing Battle

The big political story since the 1994 congressional election has been the effort of the new Republican majority in Congress to reduce the size of government; to eliminate useless, inefficient and wasteful programs; and to allow Americans to keep just a bit more of their own money.

Students of American history know that this concern with our nation's large and oppressive central government is not new. More than 200 years ago, the Founding Fathers struggled with this issue when they put together the kind of government prescribed in the U.S. Constitution.

In heated debate, the Founding Fathers argued about how much power they should give to the federal government. Their experience with the King of England taught them that the more powerful and distant a government is, the less respect it has for the rights of its citizens.

They applied this lesson well. Their first effort at government after the Declaration of Independence left America essentially with 13 separate governments-the states. But that didn't work. So they went back to the drawing board to see if they could come up with something better. And they did.

They designed a central government strong enough to defend American citizens from foreign aggression and to settle disputes among the states. But they also wanted to protect states' rights. They recognized that people in different regions of the country have different interests. This "doctrine of states' rights" means local governments should have the power to make decisions. The government closest to the people should protect regional and local interests.

This doctrine applies today. For example, why should the citizens of Florida be taxed by the federal government so that the residents of New York City can ride a subway at a greatly reduced price? How can a central government know and care about all the problems of every neighborhood in the nation? There come times when the federal government can only get in the way of community efforts to deal with local problems. And the federal government's inefficiency, cost and graft waste money that belongs to the citizens of this nation.

A Balancing Act

The Founding Fathers were realists when it came to human nature. Throughout history, kings, even the kings of Israel, and other people in absolute authority were usually corrupt. Any group of leaders could not be trusted with unchecked power. So the Founding Fathers created a complicated system of checks and balances, making it difficult for any person or group to get absolute power.

Even though the Founding Fathers believed government is necessary to control human passions and selfishness, they thought government itself could become a menace should it grow too strong.

The proper balance between freedom and order requires sufficient governmental power to suppress criminal activity, while at the same time ensuring that too much political power is not concentrated in the hands of a few people. The political system outlined in the Constitution finds the balance between freedom and order.

The framers of the Constitution had their reasons for wanting to limit the power of government. History had taught them only too clearly about the tendency of government to become a major instrument in depriving men of liberty.

"To expect self-denial from men," John Adams wrote, "when they have a majority in their favor and consequently power to gratify themselves is to disbelieve all history and universal experience; it is to disbelieve Revelation and the Word of God, which informs us the heart is deceitful in all things and desperately wicked."

Another Founding Father, James Madison observed, "It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices [as checks and balances] should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." (The Federalist, #51)

But, of course, men are not angels, and since a government must be established, it must be a government that cannot abuse its authority. "You must first enable the government to control the government; and in the next place oblige it to control itself," Madison wrote.

One of the most obvious signs of the Constitution framers' belief in a minimal government was the document's clear restriction on the powers of the federal government. The Constitution did this, first, by spelling out the only powers actually granted to the central government, such as the power to wage war. Second, it listed specific prohibitions ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.") Third, it declared in words too plain to be misunderstood that all powers not expressly delegated to the federal government were then reserved to the individual states and the people. Power must be diffused between both the central and state governments.

Nineteenth century liberals, such as England's John Stuart Mill, believed government should be limited because men are essentially good. The American Founding Fathers, grounded in their Christian heritage, believed that government should be limited because men are essentially evil. Consequently, they developed a political system in which bad men can do the least amount of harm.

The Right Role for Government

The basic functions of government in the early years of our country included: (1) protecting Americans from the threat of foreign aggression; (2) protecting Americans from violence, fraud or other wrongful interference; (3) settling conflicts among the rights of individuals, business, local governments or others.

In the more complex world of today, Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist from the University of Chicago, describes other legitimate tasks of government:

A government which maintained law and order, defined property rights, served as a means whereby we could modify property rights and other rules of the economic game, adjudicated disputes about the interpretations of the rules, enforced contracts, promoted competition, provided a monetary framework [basis for sound money], engaged in activities to counter technical monopolies and to overcome neighborhood effects widely regarded as sufficiently important to justify government intervention, and which supplemented private charity and the private family in protecting charity and the private family in protecting the irresponsible, whether madman or child-such a government would clearly have important functions to perform. [1]

A Grab for Power

The ink on the paper was not even dry before Statists were attempting to subvert the Constitution's restraints upon the expansion of government. Just as the water coursing through the Grand Canyon has cut through solid rock over centuries, so liberal efforts have successfully undermined the intentions of the Founding Fathers by finding ways to expand governmental power and control in almost every area of American lives.

When any liberal thought America had a problem, the call went out empowering Congress to pass legislation creating a new branch of the federal bureaucracy. It's a cycle that stagnates the economy: a flood of new laws and regulation, followed by an increase in taxes to pay the bill.

Unfortunately, everyone would sit back and watch things get worse. The result was the growing size and power of the federal government. This has been the Washington way, the liberal way, of doing business.

The liberals of today who advocate bigger government would like us to forget the concerns of the Founders. They ignore the directives of the Constitution, and instead support the transfer of increasing amount of political power to the central government.

Until the election of President Reagan in 1980, liberalism in the Republican and Democratic parties differed largely in the preferred pace for this transfer. But in the last decade, the rising chorus of voices shouting for an end to the bloated federal bureaucracy has grown louder and louder.

How Statism Hurts Society

Advocates of big government want to convince us that we can't get along without its programs and agencies; they claim that local and state governments can't do it and that volunteer groups can't do it. Statists say that the bigger the government, the better.

But when government has too much power in a Statist system, it chokes out all growth, destroys initiative, tears down society and productivity, and stagnates the economy.

No government is so smart or efficient that it can carry out the individual's needs on a collective scale. Under Statism, government controls people in ways that the bureaucracy says will benefit them, but which really benefit the bureaucracy. When government controls people it takes away their individuality, their character, their responsibility and their initiative. At its worst, Statism becomes totalitarian and undermines personal freedom.

Bureaucrats use their power to make the Statism work for them-at the expense of individuals' drive, determination and responsibility. Higher taxes is only one of the cost-taxes are never the end of the Statist's strategy. There must be more petty regulations and more aggressive collection of fines.

Statism hinders businesses from expanding and even causes them to cut back their operations and their work force. Statism forces businesses to raise prices; it results in decreased productivity.

Look at the problems when East German and West Germany united. Those from East Germany didn't know what individual responsibility was. They lacked that initiative, that freedom, that ability to get up and go, because they had been in a Statist system. The East German people had been ruined by their socialism. They will have to be retrained or wait for another generation to come around so that the people will have the desire to work to become truly independent and productive.

Predicting what would happen in the Soviet Union over the 70 years, Ludwig von Mises was right on target in his book Socialism. He wrote that the individual would be suppressed, and there would be an elite class of politicians. He said the Soviet Union would suppress neighboring countries, and those countries would revolt and break away. He predicted almost precisely what eventually happened in the 1980s.

So it is; time changes nothing. In Europe, Asia or North America, big governments never learn.

Statism in America

America follows after many other Statist systems. The Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., recently published a Handbook for Congress that provides many examples of how American government has become bloated beyond reason. It points out how the federal government was originally conceived as a limited institution, with powers that were spelled out. Government was never intended to be an institution that bureaucrats could use to fulfill their individual aspirations.

One of the subtle ways Statists increase bureaucracy is by raising agencies to the Cabinet level. This gives influential interest groups political status. The first Cabinet had four members: the Treasury, the State Department, the Department of War (now Department of Defense) and an Attorney General (now the Department of Justice). We now have 14 agencies, with ever-expanding agendas. These new agencies have accomplished little, have been hallmarks of ineffectiveness and are now permanent fixtures of waste. A new vision for a freer America must include a commitment to reversing this direction.

Rising Medical Bills

Medical costs would be drastically reduced if there were no third-party intervention from government, insurance companies or unions. The government wants to take over responsibility for health care, and this would destroy the greatest opportunities in health care of any nation in the world.

Before the onset of extensive third-party intervention, including Medicare, medical schools would frequently ask medical students to get a good history and physical exam, and make a diagnosis. Any tests needed to be justified, and the expense was pointed out to the patient.

Then came Medicare and all the insurance companies. Third-party intervention has really run up the cost of medicine. Now, when a patient is seen, whether in a medical practice or a medical school, the first thing done is a battery of tests.

The increased cost is enormous, and the doctor shrugs it off, saying the insurance company will pay for it. The patient shrugs it off, saying the insurance company will pay for it. And the insurance company shrugs it off as well, simply charging higher premiums passed on to the insured. So the consumers pay, and pay dearly, for the increased cost of medicine, which is due largely to third-party involvement.

Look at an example in the area of eye care. A diabetic presenting with a simple Sixth Nerve Palsy (weakness of the nerve causing the inability for the eye to turn out) in the past was treated with simple observation.

If this was an isolated symptom, it almost always was resolved in four to eight weeks, and the patient only needed observation. The cost to society: less than $100.

In the present environment, the attitude of the patient, the doctor, the health care facility and the pressures from the legal arena cause many of these patients to have complicated and expensive tests such as MRI, CAT scans and blood work, leading to thousands of dollars in medical bills. The eventual outcome is the same—resolution in four to eight weeks.

The miracle of fair and equitable pricing for health care is lost when third-party payers, including the government, intervene. Market forces cannot keep costs down when these third parties are involved. The solution is to return to consumers the control of medical care spending through the use of medical savings accounts known as MSAs.

Medical savings accounts are a dramatic change in how people pay for health care. People can take the money spent on health care—their own premiums as well as the money employers or the government spends-and split it into two funds. One is a health insurance policy to cover catastrophic care. That policy would have a higher deductible, but it also would have much lower premiums.

And what happens to all the money that used to pay skyrocketing premiums? It goes into a medical savings account, a tax-free account similar to an Individual Retirement Account. From this fund, a person can pay for routine medical care, without the high premiums that come from insurance.

The savings for consumers are dramatic. And they get control of their health care back from third parties.

Third-party payment for medical care has allowed all the involved parties to give up their responsibility to the government or the insurance carrier. No one any longer feels responsible for the economic outcome. Everything in medicine should have an economic as well as a medical justification.

In my practice, as I look at a patient and am thinking about a cataract extraction, I ask myself, "Would I pay for this out of my own pocket for myself or for one of my family members?" Only if my answer is "yes," do I consider recommending surgery for this patient.

The time must come when the responsibility for the cost of medical care is put back in the hands of the patient and the physician. We must eliminate the excessive influence of third-party payers.

Statism and the FDA

Dr. Ralph Berkeley was visiting Korea, studying lasers used in refraction surgery-a procedure called LASIK. Dr. Berkeley asked about the cost of the instrument the Korean doctors were using. One doctor turned to Dr. Berkeley and said, "Oh, you can't afford it. You're from the Third World country."

The Korean doctor said this in jest. But he really was speaking the truth. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other government restrictions are making us a Third World country in medical care. The FDA is supposed to review the safety and performances of medicine, products and devices before they can be used in the United States. The review is supposed to protect the public from unsafe methods and products. But it doesn't work that way.

The FDA's complicated review process hurts our medical care in many ways, writes Dr. Albert C. Neumann, in a report to the Outpatient Ophthalmic Surgery Society. Because the process is so complicated, he says, it takes too long for new technology to be approved, publicized and used, making it obsolete before it's even available to the public. Manufactures incur high costs while their products are being reviewed. This hurts consumers in two ways: manufacturers may have to increase the cost of products already approved to pay for the arduous review process for new products. And the expensive review process makes products more expensive when they're finally approved.

Here's one example Dr. Neumann cites about how the FDA has hurt American medical care. The use of a kind of laser for some eye problems had been approved for several years. But the FDA hadn't approved the laser's use to correct other problems that would eliminate the need for spectacles-photorefractive keratotomy or PRK. So, many Americans went to Canada, Europe and Mexico to have the laser surgery performed. In fact, more than half the patients having PRK in Canada were from the United States.

There are three problems with this. First, there's a danger to the U.S. citizens, who don't get proper follow-up care back home after the surgery. Second, doctors in the U.S. don't get to study the patients. And third, it's a loss of U.S. revenue.

"FDA policy should reflect the great interest exhibited by U.S. patients, demonstrated by their willingness to travel abroad for treatment unavailable in the U.S.," Dr. Neumann writes.

Ophthalmology is not the only field of medicine hurt by FDA policies and procedures. A 1995 report by the Cato Institute says, "In the past four years, the FDA has drastically slowed the rate at which it approves new or improved medical devices. It has pursued an aggressive enforcement strategy that treats all regulated firms as suspected felons, restricting its communication and cooperation with them and substantially increasing the number of punitive actions. In response, increasing numbers of firms have moved their operations abroad or begun planning to do so.

"The FDA's regulation of medical devices has produced little if any benefit but imposed large and increasing costs. Those costs are not just economic; they also include deaths and human suffering." [2]

The Education Crisis

Education at all levels in the United States has reached the crisis stage. No response to this crisis that ignores the culpability of our bloated and foolish government can possibly be adequate. Statism has reached into our classrooms and with its influence our school children and college students suffer.

One event that helped bring the plight of American education to public attention was the 1983 publication of a report from the National Commission of Excellence in Education. The report carried the ominous title, "A Nation at Risk."

The most widely quoted paragraph from the report warns that: "The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and as a people."

The report goes on to say, "If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves." It is impossible to understand America's educational crisis without seeing the role that big government has played in bringing this about. [3]

Samuel Blumenfeld has stated, "The plain, unvarnished truth is that [American] public education is a shoddy, fraudulent piece of goods sold to the public at an astronomical price. It's time the American consumer knew the extent of the fraud which is victimizing millions of children each year." [4]

A large number of U.S. congressmen believe that our government exercises far too much control over education. They are sponsoring "The Back to Basics Education Reform Act"-a bill that would eliminate the Department of Education. The bill says, "The intrusion by the Department of Education into education policy has not benefited the quality of education in this nation...(It) has fostered over-regulation, standardization, bureaucratization, and litigation in United States education."

In a June 1995 letter urging colleagues to support the bill, these congressmen wrote:

Since 1979, this nation has had a large federal education bureaucracy. In that time, the budget for the Department of Education has grown from $14 billion to $33 billion. The Department employs 5,100 bureaucrats who administer more than 240 separate programs. Yet, in all of this time it is quite evident that this bureaucracy has not taught a single child as can be seen in the fact that test scores for American children have stagnated or declined. American children are now ranked academically among the lowest in the industrialized world, while our illiteracy rate is one of the highest.

How bad is it? Time magazine reported that 13 percent of American 17-year-olds are functionally illiterate. [5] They fall below the minimal level of competence in reading, writing and mathematics. The same issue reported an illiteracy rate for minority 17-year-olds at 40 percent.

Look at the Department of Education's own numbers: It estimates that our educational system has left us with 24 million functionally illiterate people. These are not people who never went to school; most of them spent eight to 12 years in public schools.

Chester E. Finn Jr., a professor at Vanderbilt University, cites the dismal finding of the National Assessment of Education Progress: only 5 percent of American 17-year-olds can read well enough to understand a literacy essay. [6] That means the 95 percent of today's 17-year-olds cannot read well enough even to understand the Bible!

A culturally illiterate person is someone who is ignorant of the basic information needed to get along in society. An astonishing 32 percent of American 17-year-olds do not know that Columbus discovered the New World before 1750! Forty percent are ignorant of the event that precipitated America's entry into World War II. Forty-three percent did not know that World War I occurred during the first half of the 20th century. This cultural illiteracy about history is not unique to the backwoods of some third-rate nation.

This abysmal ignorance exists among American youths who have had 11 years of public school education and who are one year away from getting a high school diploma.

Conditions at America's colleges and universities are just as bad. According to Charles J. Sykes, the modern American university is "distinguished by costs that are zooming out of control; curriculums that look like they were designed by a game show host; nonexistent advising programs; lectures of droning, mind-numbing dullness often to 1,000 or more semi-anonymous under-graduates herded into dilapidated, ill-lighted lecture halls; teaching assistants who can't speak understandable English; and the product of all this, a generation of expensively credentialed college graduates who might not be able to locate England on a map." [7] "Behind its ivy-colored camouflage," another writer observes, "American higher education is a fraud - untrue to its students, untrue to itself." [8]

Welfare's Wasteful Bureaucracy

Less than 25 percent of all the tax dollars allocated to fight poverty at every level of government reaches the poor. The other 75 percent pays for overhead. [9] Clearly, the bucket used to carry money from the pockets of the taxpayer to the poor is leaking badly.

As economist Thomas Sowell notes, most of the tax dollars collected to fight poverty end up "in the pockets of highly paid administrators, consultants, and staff as well as higher-income recipients of benefits from programs advertised as anti-poverty efforts." [10] The real beneficiaries of liberal social programs are not the poor and disadvantaged, but the members of the governmental bureaucracy who administer the programs.

America could raise every poor person in the country up to the poverty level in one week and reduce the budget for poverty programs by 75 percent, simply by eliminating the huge bureaucracy that stands between the poor and the federal treasury. Big government wastes money.

It is clear that America has been spending more than enough money on poverty; but it has not spent that money very wisely. In the words of Florida State University economists James Gwartney and Thomas McCaleb, "The problem of poverty continues to fester not because we are failing to do enough, but rather because we are doing so much that is counterproductive." [11]

Hurting, not Helping, the Poor

America has been spending more than three times as much on poverty than would be necessary to raise every poor person in the country above the poverty level. But much more is at stake than the enormous waste of resources. A number of recent studies have shown how well-intended but economically unsound governmental policies have helped poverty become more entrenched in our society. These studies document how the very War on Poverty programs that were supposed to end poverty have made the plight of the poor worse.

It is easy to forget that before the War on Poverty began in the mid-1960s, people at the bottom of the economic ladder were making rapid strides toward improving their economic situation. Between 1950 and 1965, the percentage of poor Americans was cut in half (from about 30 percent to less than 15 percent). This remarkable decline took place during the 15 years before the start of the War on Poverty. Poverty in America fell most rapidly during the Eisenhower-Kennedy years, when welfare assistance was only a fraction of what it became during the 1970s and 1980s. [12]

The most rapid growth of poverty programs began about the time poverty in America reached its lower level. [13] When the War on Poverty programs were just beginning in 1965, the percentage of poor families in the U.S. had dropped to 13.9 percent. This decline occurred without any help from any Great Society programs. The common wisdom in the mid-1960s was that the massive aid to the poor that started flowing under the War on Poverty would continue to reduce poverty.

But just the reverse took place! Soon after huge increases in tax transfers began, the progress against poverty slowed, then stopped, and then went into reverse. As Charles Murray documents in his book Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980, progress in reducing poverty stopped abruptly at the very time when federal spending on social-welfare programs began to climb astronomically. [14]

Many people believe that significant progress against poverty did not begin until the programs of the Great Society got into high gear. But the truth is that once those programs started, the improvement of poor people in America began to stop. While poverty had declined from 1947 to 1968, it remained in 1980 where it was in 1968 even though social-welfare spending had multiplied 400 percent between 1968-1980.

Even the constancy of the poverty level throughout that period hides some important information. Poverty rates for poor people over the age of 65 declined during the 1970s. But the poverty rate for families under the age of 25 jumped dramatically and has continued to climb. In 1968, the poverty rate for families under age 25 was 13.2 percent. In 1982, this figure had doubled to 26.1 percent. This climb took place during the decade when the most aid was being given.

In the three decades since the beginning of the War on Poverty, the U.S. has spent at every level of government very close to $5 trillion ($5,000,000,000,000) to end poverty. And the total bill for poverty programs continued to climb during the Reagan, Bush and Clinton presidencies.

However, the very social-welfare programs that were supposed to eliminate poverty have increased it and institutionalized it. There are more people living below the poverty line today than before the start of the War on Poverty.

The poor suffer from less education, higher illegitimacy rates and more unemployment-all traceable to the very programs that were supposed to improve the lot of the poor.

The Poverty Trap

The quality of life among America's poor is far worse today than before the advent of Great Society; and the likelihood of the poor escaping from the poverty trap is much less. For example, the growing number of food stamp recipients reveals rapidly increasing welfare costs: 9 million in 1980; 16 million in 1990; 19 million in 1991; and 23 million in 1992. [15] Additionally, in 1994, the government's expenditures on food stamps were $25.5 billion. [16] Total U.S. expenditures on social welfare for selected years amounted to: $303.2 billion in 1980; $616.6 billion in 1990; $676.4 billion in 1991; and $749.4 billion in 1992. [17] These numbers hardly suggest that we are winning the War against Poverty.

What our nation did in the name of humanitarianism was create a system that has institutionalized poverty and trapped millions who, along with their children, may never be able to escape, according to Charles Murray. While our goal was giving the poor more, what we really did was create more poor. We thought we were breaking down barriers that would help the poor escape from poverty, but what we ended up doing was building a poverty trap from which little escape seems likely. [18]

James Gwartney, FSU economist, throws important light on the failure of the welfare system: "Seeking to promote the welfare of the poor, the disadvantaged, the unemployed, and the misfortunate, well-meaning citizens (including a good many evangelical Christians) have inadvertently supported forms of economic organization that have promoted the precise outcomes they sought to alleviate. For too long socially concerned Christians have measured policies by the intentions of their advocates, rather than the predictable effectiveness of the programs. Put simply, in our haste to do something constructive, we have not thought very seriously about the impact, particularly in the long-run, of alternative policies on the well-being of the intended beneficiaries." [19]

Giving People Motivation, not Money

One of the most important lessons we can learn from economics is the importance of incentives. For example, if we understand what makes people tick, we can usually predict how they will respond to new incentives.

Say a society establishes programs that provide unemployed people with cash and other benefits such as food stamps, school lunches, public housing and Medicaid. If the total of these benefits is as much or more than what they would earn by working (after taxes), than we're in trouble because many of these people will choose to remain unemployed. If a welfare program is set up in such a way that it provides incentives for unmarried women who become pregnant to remain unmarried, we should not be surprised when the rate of illegitimate births increases. In economics, you get what you pay for.

The death of ingenuity, hard work, common sense and know-how represents the influence of humanism and Marxism on the Judeo-Christian ethic. Hard work is done away with because people feel they have a right, instead of responsibility. Common sense is no longer relative because people think someone else is going to pay the bills; they don't have to balance their income and spending. Ingenuity is destroyed because people are cared for, instead of having to care for themselves by creatively finding solutions. It may sound tough to be responsible for oneself, but it's much better being responsible than being trapped by big government. Once one generation, one family, is entrapped, its children are entrapped also.

So, rather than letting big government take over, each of us must be responsible for welfare. We should be caregivers to the needy, by giving to those who are in need around us. Unlike government agencies, we should not give blindly and indiscreetly, but in a way that will encourage individual responsibility.

We have too many projects that don't lead to desired results or promote individual responsibility. We even have many Christian schools throughout this country that fail to be good stewards of money. Even though they teach the doctrine and lead people to Christ, they fail to be good stewards of God's money. We need to be balanced both in stewardship and theology. Individuals need to be the providers and not look to the government to be the provider.

Harming African-Americans

The harm done by welfare programs has been especially hard on poor African-Americans. One event that helped to focus the nation's attention on the crisis of the black family was Bill Moyers' CBS documentary The Vanishing Family, which aired Jan. 25, 1986. Even in 1986, 60 percent of all black births were illegitimate. In the inner cities, the percentage of illegitimate births was much higher. Fifty percent of all black teenage females got pregnant. In 1986, close to 50 percent of all black children were supported to some extent by some level of government.

All of these numbers have increased significantly in the last decade. As the black family continues to disintegrate, the surrounding society falls into moral chaos. More black males are murdered in America each year than the total number of blacks who died during the entire Vietnam War.

What has the crisis of the black family got to do with America's poverty programs? Glenn C. Loury, a black professor of political economy at Boston University, gives the answer. He writes:

I am persuaded by the argument of George Gilder and Charles Murray that the easy availability of financial support for women with children without fathers present has helped create a climate in which the breakdown in the family could be accelerated. [20]

Black author Joseph Perkins declares: "I lay the blame for the disintegration of inner-city families wholly on the welfare state. What we have is a welfare system which creates incentives to dissolve existing family unions...I think it is difficult for anyone to argue that the burgeoning welfare state did not bring about the dissolution of black families. Essentially, the state has supplanted the family among disadvantaged blacks. Young black mothers turn to the paternalistic federal government for support instead of looking to the fathers of their children. And young black males eschew their social and moral responsibilities because they too know that the state will act as their surrogate. Because of the multiplier effect, we have increasing numbers of black children born into single-parent households. And with so many children growing up in female-headed households, the importance of a husband-wife household is inevitably devalued. Thus, marriage doesn't hold the lustre among black youth in today's inner city that it did for their pre-welfare state counterparts." [21]

In the words of Warren T. Brookes, nothing "can begin to match the systematic degradation, dehumanization, and cultural genocide that has been wreaked on black Americans" The American government, he continues, has in the past 30 years, with the best of intentions, "seduced blacks out of the rigors of the marketplace and into the stifling womb of the welfare state." [22]

Liberal politicians and their supporters in the media and many churches have sought to assure us that the programs of the liberal welfare state flowed from noble objectives; they wanted to help the poor. But we now know that if those same politicians had set out to harm the poor, they could hardly have adopted a set of policies that would have been any more efficient that the poverty programs of the past 30 years.

While the politics and economics of the Left are justified in the name of compassion, they are speeding us down the tracks to the destruction of the black family and the disintegration of society. But for decades, representatives of the religious Left assured us that what the Bible demands is more of this "humanitarian" Statism. Large government and the welfare state have destroyed the black family.

Is Welfare Good for Children?

In a recent report from The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., Robert Rector reports on the mountain of evidence that undermines many liberal assumptions about welfare. [23] The first liberal assumption Rector's evidence challenges is the belief that the well-being and success of children increases as their family's incomes rise. This idea is crucial to the liberal theory that such social ills as crime, school dropout, weak cognitive skills, illegitimacy, drug use and bad work ethic are caused by poverty.

Rector responds to this assumption: "History refutes this belief. In 1950, nearly a third of the American population was poor (twice the current rate). In the 1920s, roughly half of the population was poor by today's standard. If the theory that 'poverty' causes social problems were true, we should have had far more social problems in those earlier periods than we do today. But crimes and most other social problems have increased rather than fallen since these earlier periods." [24]

Rector argues that the values and abilities of families are the major contributors to children's success, not the size of the family's paycheck. Efforts to increase family income through welfare not only do little to benefit children, but they tend to undermine the very values that are basic to the success of children.

Rector then challenges the liberal belief that welfare is a sound way to raise family income. "Because welfare reduces work effort and promotes illegitimacy and poverty-prone single parent families, it actually may cause an overall decrease in family incomes. Welfare is extremely efficient at replacing self-sufficiency with dependence, but relatively ineffective in raising incomes and eliminating poverty." [25]

The third liberal premise that Rector disputes is the claim that welfare is good for children. In his words, "The conventional liberal assumption is that children on welfare in states with lower benefit levels will be markedly worse off than children in states with higher benefits. Children on AFDC [Aid to Families with Dependent Children] in high benefit states...should have improved cognitive abilities when compared to children without access to more generous welfare." [26]

Rector cites recently published research that refutes this theory. Higher welfare benefits, he reports, "did not improve children's cognitive performance." [27] The research also shows "that a 50 percent increase in monthly AFDC and food-stamp benefit levels will lead to a 75 percent increase in the number of mothers with children enrolling in AFDC and a 75 percent increase in the number of years spent on welfare." [28]

Other data from the research reveal that the longer a child stays on welfare, the lower that child's IQ is likely to be. What is damaging poor children, the evidence shows, is not poverty but welfare.

Liberal Statists love to portray themselves as the friends of the poor and paint conservatives as the enemies of the poor. When we turn away from liberal propaganda and examine the evidence, however, we discover that with friends like America's liberals , the poor do not need any enemies. They need to escape welfare.

Statism, Socialism and the Economy

One of the most important features of a market economy is pricing information. Rising and falling prices give astute entrepreneurs vital information about changes in supply and demand. When government intervenes in the economy, for example, by restraining price increases, it shuts off important signals that entrepreneurs might otherwise use in making economic decisions.

Pricing information is simply not available in a socialist system. Without free markets to set prices, socialists can never attune production to human wants. The impossibility of precise measures of cost accounting under socialism explains the failure of socialist systems. As an example, look at the director of a Socialist factory that produces 10,000 widgets a day. Even though he is a good socialist, he still wants to sell every widget made. But he has a problem, what price should he ask?'

However, the manager of a widget factory in a market system, like America, has a distinctive advantage in determining price. Because this person knows the cost of the machines, raw material, rent, utilities and labor, he can calculate what it cost to make each widget.

In the socialist state, the government owns everything: the land, raw material, utility costs, the factory and the machine. In a socialist economy, it is impossible to know the cost of the manufactured widgets. Since the first requirement of a rational price is to exceed one's costs, it is impossible under socialism to know what price to charge.

Socialism turns out to be an artificial system of planning that makes rational economic planning impossible. Without free markets and the vital information they supply, economic activity becomes chaotic and results in drastic inefficiencies and distortions. The great paradox of socialism is that socialists need capitalism to help set prices and survive.

The miserable performance of socialist economies is no accident. They don't work because they can't work. [29]

Unless socialists make allowance for some free markets that would provide the pricing information, socialist economies would have even more problems than those for which they are notorious. In practice, socialism is a gigantic fraud that attacks the market at the same time it is forced to utilize the market process.

America's Watered-down Socialism

Many Americans mistakenly think the American economy is capitalist. Too often, Statism overshadows, dilutes and interferes with capitalism. The name some economists have given to this watered-down version of socialism in interventionism. Politicians and bureaucrats interfere with the operation of the market whenever they think it will suit their political objectives.

Voluntary and spontaneous cooperation can accomplish much more than the coercive manipulation of society by idealistic zealots. For example, each participant in the market receives signs of what other people need whenever people decide or refuse to buy something at a given price.

Without the impersonal mechanism of the market, there would be no way to know what other people really want. The success of some in the market tells others that they too can have success if they offer a worthy product in a helpful way in a particular price range. Of course, when too many sellers seek too few buyers, as in the home video business or hamburger business, the signals will change and wise people will switch their activity very quickly and easily to a new service or product.

Government intervention destroys the ability of the market to reflect price information. Factors such as prices and interest rates, which might tell people something in an unhampered market, become distorted and misleading. Government intervention that nullified the signals from the market process contributed to every economic crisis in America's history.

The Failure of Socialism

Market systems work because they provide key incentives that are missing from socialism. This is critical to a healthy economy. As British economist Brian Griffiths explains, under socialism, "Rewards are not related to effort and commercial risk-taking, but to party membership, bureaucratic status, political dictate and corruption. As a consequence, the legitimate commercial entrepreneurial spirit is killed; for perfectly understandable reasons, people devote their resources to hacking through the political and bureaucratic jungle of their economies." [30]

Sociologist Peter Berger points out that "Even in the early 1970s it should not have been news that socialism is not good for economic growth and also that it shows a disturbing propensity toward totalitarianism (with is customary accompaniment of terror)." [31] Claims by the rulers of the Soviet Union, China and Cuba that socialism reflected their commitment to justice and equality were not simply empty rhetoric; they were hypocritical deceit.

"Put simply," Berger declares, "Socialist equality is shared poverty by serfs, coupled with the monopolization of both privilege and power by a small (increasingly hereditary) aristocracy." This phenomenon of hereditary aristocracy showed up in every socialist state in our century. "It seems to be the intrinsic genius of socialism to produce these modern facsimiles of feudalism," Berger writes.

Gradually people are noticing the absence of one single example of socialist state that has succeeded economically and has not become totalitarian. "We know, or should know," Berger says, "that socialism is a mirage that leads nowhere except to economic stagnation, collective poverty, and various degrees of tyranny." [32]

Capitalism and Moral Concerns

Claims of socialism's moral superiority to capitalism are false. Capitalism is not economic anarchy. When properly defined, it recognizes several necessary conditions for the kinds of voluntary relationships it supports. One of these is the existence of inherent human rights, such as the right to make decisions, the right to be free, the right to hold property, and the right to exchange peacefully what one owns for something else.

Capitalism also presupposes a system of morality. Under capitalism, there are definite limits, moral and otherwise, to the ways in which people can exchange. Capitalism should be viewed as a system of voluntary relationships within a framework of laws that protect people's rights against force, fraud theft and violations of contracts. "Thou shalt not steal" and "Thou shalt not lie" are part of the underlying moral constraints of the system. [33] After all, economic exchanges can hardly be voluntary if one participant is coerced, deceived, defrauded or robbed.

Deviations from the market ideal usually occur because of defects in human nature. Human beings naturally crave security and guaranteed success- values not found readily in a free market. Genuine competition always carries the possibility of failure and loss. Consequently, the human preference for security leads humans to avoid competition whenever possible. It encourages them to operate outside the market and induces them to subvert the market process, through behavior that is often questionable and dishonest. This quest for guaranteed success often leads people to seek special favors from powerful people in government through such means as regulations and restrictions on free exchange.

One of the more effective ways of mitigating the effects of human desires in society is dispersing and decentralizing power. The combination of a free market economy and limited constitutional government is the most effective means yet devised to impede the concentration of economic and political power in the hands of a small number of people. Members of the Religious Left should reflect upon the fact that their stated opposition to concentrations of wealth and power are far more possible under a conservative understanding of economics and government than the big government approach of political liberalism.

Every person's ultimate protection against coercion requires control over some private spheres of life in which he or she can be free. Without a degree of self-expression, a person becomes merely a pawn of big government. Private ownership of property is an important buffer against any consolidation of power by government.

Liberal critics also contend that capitalism encourages monopolies. The real source of monopolies, however, is not the free market but governmental intervention with the market. [34] The only monopolies that have ever lasted did so in partnership with government support through decree and regulation.

Governments create monopolies by granting one organization the exclusive privilege of doing business. Government also establishes de facto monopolies through regulatory agencies, whose alleged purpose is enforcing competition but whose real effect is limiting competition. [35] Economic interventionism and socialism are the real sources of monopolies. For example, without government aid such as subsidies, the Robber Barons of the 19th century would never have succeeded. [36]

Government intervention with socialistic enterprise becomes a classic case of waste and inefficiency. One example is the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).

The TVA is a power corporation created in 1933 and owned by the federal government. It has taken jobs from southwest Virginia and moved them to Tennessee. Furthermore, because the utility doesn't have to pay taxes or interest on its capital, it can sell electricity for half the price of private-enterprise companies. Yet the most alarming aspect is that it produces electricity at almost twice the cost through inefficiency and big spending with government ownership.

Because it is subsidized by tax dollars, the TVA undercuts the private sector and shows how wasteful government intervention can be. When government steps in, it acts as though it's Robin Hood helping others. However, as the TVA shows, government isn't Robin Hood. It just steals from the people it's supposed to serve.

Greed and Exploitation

Liberals blame capitalism for every evil in contemporary society including greed, materialism, selfishness, fraudulent behavior, [37] debased tastes of society, environmental pollution, [38] the alienation and despair within society [39] and vast disparities of wealth. [40] Even racism and sexism are treated as effects of capitalism.

Liberal critics of capitalism often attack it for encouraging greed. The truth, however, is that the mechanism of the market actually neutralizes greed. It forces people to find ways of serving the needs of those with whom they wish to exchange. As long as our rights are protected (a basic precondition of market exchanges), the greed of others cannot harm us. As long as greedy people are prohibited from using force, fraud and theft, and as long as they cannot secure special privileges from the state, their greed must be channeled into discovering products or services for which people are willing to trade. Every person in a market economy has to be other-directed. The market is one area of life where concern for the other person is required. The market therefore does not pander to greed. It allows natural human desires to be satisfied in non-violent ways.

Capitalism is also attacked on the grounds that it leads to situations where some people (the "exploiters") win at the expense of other people who lose. These market exchanges are examples of what is called a zero-sum game, an exchange where only one participant can win. Baseball and basketball are examples of zero-sum games. If "A" wins, the "B" must lose. Only one can win.

But market exchanges are not a zero-sum game. They illustrate a positive-sum game, in which both players may win. We must reject the myth that economic exchanges necessarily benefit only one party or the other. In voluntary economic exchange, both parties may leave the exchange in better economic shape. "If you do something good for me, then I will do something good for you." If both parties did not believe they gained through the trade, if each did not see the exchange as beneficial, they would not take part in it.

Capitalism is Morally Superior

Most critics of capitalism focus their attacks on what they take to be its moral shortcomings. In truth, the moral objections to capitalism turns out to be a sorry collection of claims that reflect, more than anything else, serious confusion about the real nature of a market system. In reality this system then promotes a greater degree of ethical behavior.

Among all of our economic options, Arthur Shenfield writes, only capitalism "operates on the basis of respect for free, independent, responsible persons. All other systems in varying degrees treat men as less than this. Socialist systems above all treat men as pawns to be moved about by the authorities, or as children to be given what the rulers decide is good for them, or as serfs or slaves. The rulers begin by boasting about their compassion, which in any case is fraudulent, but after a time they drop this pretense, which they find unnecessary for the maintenance of power. In all things they act on the presumption that they know best. Therefore they and their systems are morally stunted. Only the free system, the much assailed capitalism, is morally mature." [41]

The alternative to free exchange is coercion and violence. Capitalism allows natural human desires to be satisfied in a non-violent way. Little can be done to prevent human beings from wanting to be rich, Shenfield says. That's the way things often are in a fallen world. But capitalism, through the natural desire of man to succeed, channels that drive into peaceful means that benefit many, not just those who wish to improve their own situation or status in life.

"The alternative to serving other men's wants," Shenfield concludes, "is seizing power of them, as it always has been. Hence it is not surprising that wherever the enemies of capitalism have prevailed, the result has been not only the debasement of consumption standards for the masses but also their reduction to serfdom by the new privileged class of Socialist rulers." [42]

When capitalism is described fairly, there can be no question that it comes closest to matching the demands of the biblical ethic and the human need for an economic system that works.

It's Time to Reduce Government

It is hard to think of any problem in our culture to which the liberal answer is not a demand for greater government involvement. As M. Stanton Evans writes, "If there be inflation, the liberal calls for wage and price controls. If we confront an energy crisis, the obvious answer is to regulate the relevant industries...If urban problems plague us, we need bigger and better federal subsidies. Whatever the trouble, real or imagined, the reflexive liberal answer is to put more power in the hands of government." [43]

Statism attracts people for many reasons. Some men simply lusts for power, and Statism provides the quickest and most convenient route to uncontrolled power. Many have turned to Statism on supposed humanitarian grounds. Look at their interference in education and welfare programs. But the evidence shows that the attempt to justify big government on humanitarian grounds is an exercise in deceit. The only choice is capitalism. Capitalism is better morally.

"Statism is when the government is responsible, not the individual. And when the government becomes responsible, the individual frequently loses his initiative and becomes an irresponsible person," Francis Schaeffer said.

This is unfortunately true. The government takes the position of the father, or the all-providing God. The individual then gives up the feeling that he has to be responsible or the family has to be responsible. As the family goes, the society doesn't feel responsible. And each person loses the responsibility necessary for the individual.

With this we lose everything--ethical standards, the drive for academic excellence, the ability to produce, the desire for men to stand on their two feet and be known by what they do, what they believe and who they are. When the government becomes the provider, no longer is there a great challenge for minorities and those in low economic brackets to rise above where they are to provide for their families, to become a force. It is indeed the rare person who does this.

Obviously in a socialist country, as well as in a capitalist country there are very successful people who rise above their parent's economic position in life. However, as Schaeffer points out, Statism is the biggest problem within the world today because it destroys the individual responsibility, intellectual challenge and the economic necessity for advancement.

A Call to Action

Our country is in crisis. Big government is parasitic and pathological. Its restrictive rules and inefficiency cost Americans their money, their morals and their motivation.

We need to see big government as the problem, not the solution. Government takes responsibility for college loans and produces swollen universities with bloated curricula and budget crises. Government takes responsibility for welfare programs and other social issues, then the number of government employees swell and we have an overwhelming national debt that we can't pay off. Government wants to take responsibility for health care and would destroy the greatest opportunity in health care of any nation in the world. With government taking responsibility for all these things, it's no wonder people think the government should be their provider. Personal responsibility is vanishing from this great country of ours.

Clearly we must stop looking to this growing government as our provider. Our Founding Fathers established a government with limited powers. We should either embrace that concept or change it. But we have no right to simply ignore it.

Our Founding Fathers pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to a government in which officeholders would honor the "Laws of Nature"--the Law of God. In writing the Declaration of Independence, they established the principles upon which our government was to operate. This "charter" for our nation says that government should protect the individual rights that God has given us.

The Constitution, our nation's "by-laws," enshrines the principles of the Declaration. Those in government do not have the power to enact statutes or render official opinions that violate the Laws of God.

Yet these concepts are being ignored by our officeholders, and the power of a Statist government grows. Our individual rights, including our religious freedoms, are increasingly in jeopardy.

It's time we joined together to help our country combat the disease of Statism. First, we must have a mindset against Statism. We must be willing to change it from the top down and from the bottom up.

Vote for candidates who are committed to honoring the Laws of God as referenced in the Declaration of Independence. Otherwise our individual freedoms will be lost and the government will operate with virtually unlimited powers--the ultimate in Statism! We must demand that each officeholder honor the structure of government given to us by our Founding Fathers and in the Constitution.

We also need to elect good managers, not good politicians. Out of every hundred politicians in Washington, there's probably only one good manager. While a few politicians have good ideas, occasionally, bad management skills seem to be the rule rather than the exception. It's time to elect good managers who will cut government down to size and make it efficient again.

Equally important is helping uninformed and uninterested voters to become aware of what is happening to America and getting them committed to effect change in the voting booth.

Each individual must share with neighbors, friends and relatives the facts about government waste and inefficiency. It is only through drawing public attention to such acts that Americans can eliminate the cause. We must act to reduce government and waste. We must provide a freer America for our children.

And then we must take responsibility in our own communities. We can be caregivers by giving both money and material goods to many ministries, and we must help individuals in need. We should provide for each other, not let the government be the provider.

Politics as usual has not changed. So now it's time for each of us to play a role in putting a stop to big government. When we're involved in our communities, we can change our nation.

This "new vision" of government isn't new at all. It goes back 200 years to the founding of this country. It's a vision of a free America, in which we can use our abilities, our initiative, our gifts, without government interference, to enjoy all the rights and responsibilities our Founding Fathers wanted us to have. Only then can we expect to restore our society based on God's truth rather than the numbing, morally adrift Statism that encroaches around us.

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Notes

1. Milton, Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), p. 34.
2. Robert Higgs, "Wrecking Ball: FDA Regulation of Medical Devices," Policy Analysis, August 7, 1995, No. 235, (Cato Institute).
3. One book that provides detailed arguments for this claim is Ronald Nash, The Closing of the American Heart: What's Really Wrong With American Schools (Dallas: Probe, 1990).
4. Samuel Blumenfeld, NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education (Boise, Idaho: The Paradigm Co., 1984), xiv.
5. See TIME, August 14, 1989.
6. Chester E. Finn, Jr., "A Nation Still at Risk," Commentary 87 (May 1989), p. 18.
7. Charles J. Sykes, Profscam: Professors and the Demise of Higher Education (Washington, D.C.: Regnery-Gateway, 1988), p. 4.
8. Ralph Kinney Bennett, Review of The Closing of the American Mind, Reader's Digest, October 1987, p. 81.
9. See Ronald Nash, Poverty and Wealth: Why Socialism Doesn't Work (Dallas: Probe Books, 1992), pp. 176-177.
10. Thomas Sowell, "The Uses of Government for Racial Equality," National Review, September 4, 1981, p. 1013.
11. James Gwartney and Thomas S. McCaleb, "Have Anti-poverty Programs Increased Poverty?" Cato Journal, 4 (Spring/Summer 1985), p. 15.
12. For more information regarding these numbers, see the Gwartney-McCaleb article, pp. 1-16.
13. We should not be confused by the fact that the percentage of American poor declined until it reached a 1973 low of 11.1 percent. This additional decline from the 15 percent figure cited earlier had little or nothing to do with War on Poverty programs that were just getting into high gear by 1973.
14. See Charles Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980 (New York: Basic Books, 1984).
15. Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1995. Published by the U.S. Bureau of the Census. 115th Edition, Sect. 12.
16. The World Almanac and Book of Facts, 1996, (Mahwah, NJ: Funk and Wagnalls, 1995), p. 139.
17. Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1995, Sect. 12.
18. For Murray's careful replies to his critics, see Charles Murray, "Have the Poor Been 'Losing Ground'?", Political Science Quarterly 100 (1985), pp. 427-445; and Charles Murray, "How to Lie With Statistics," National Review, February 28, 1986, pp.39-41.
19. James Gwartney, "Social Progress, the Tax-Transfer Society and the Limits of Public Policy," unpublished paper Department of Economics, Florida State University, p. 3.
20. Loury's statements and those from other leading blacks that follow appear in a symposium, "Black America Under the Reagan Administration," Policy Review, No. 35 (Fall 1985), pp. 27-41. Loury's quote appears on page 39. Loury's mention of George Gilder is a reference to Gilder's book, Wealth and Poverty (New York: Basic Books, 1981).
21. Ibid., pp. 39-41.
22. Warren T. Brookes, "High Technology and Judeo-Christian Values," Imprimis, April 1984, no pagination.
23. Rector is a senior policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation. Taken from his report "Is Welfare Good for Kids?" January 6, 1996, World magazine, pp. 24-25.
24. Ibid., p. 24.
25. Ibid. Rector cites experimental evidence to support his claim.
26. Ibid., pp. 24-25.
27. Ibid., p. 25.
28. Ibid.
29. It is simply not possible in this short booklet to produce the arguments that support this claim. They can be found in Ronald Nash, Poverty and Wealth: Why Socialism Doesn't Work (Dallas: Probe Books, 1992).
30. Brian Griffiths, The Creation of Wealth (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985), p. 33. Griffiths is a British evangelical whose economic expertise made him a valuable member of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's Cabinet.
31. Peter Berger, "Underdevelopment Revisited," Commentary (July 1984), p. 41. Subsequent quotes are from page 43 of Berger's article.
32. Ibid., p. 45
33. Compare this, for example, with the Biblical concern for just weights and measures (Deut. 25:15-16).
34. Neither the objection nor my answer has what are sometimes called "local monopolies" in view, such as the person who happen to own the only so8urce of water in the middle of a desert. For more on monopoly, see Ronald Nash, Social Justice and the Christian Church (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1992), pp. 142-146; and Yale Brozen, Is Government the Source of Monopoly? And Other Essays (San Francisco: Cato Institute, 1980).
35. See Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).
36. For documentation of this claim, see Burton W. Folsom, Jr., The Myth of the Robber Barons (Herndon, VA: Young America's Foundation, 1991). Folsom also provides examples of business ventures, such as Western railroads, that failed in spite of massive government subsidies while non-subsidized private ventures succeeded.
37. Liberals evidence little or no interest in the fraudulent behavior of America's legislative and executive branches of government, unless the culprits belong to the other party.
38. Economist P.J. Hill of Wheaton College argues successfully that private ownership of resources is a necessary condition for effective protection of the environment. See Joseph L. Bast, Peter J. Hill, Richard C. Rue, Eco-Sanity: A Common Sense Guide to Environmentalism (Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1994).
39. Readers with good memories will remember this as part of Marcuse's peculiar type of Marxism.
40. For more detailed answers to these charges, see Ronald Nash, Freedom, Justice and the State (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1980).
41. Arthur Shenfield, "Capitalism Under the Tests of Ethics," Imprimis, December, 1981, no pagination.
42. Ibid.
43. M. Stanton Evans, Clear and Present Dangers (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1975), p. 34.

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