Erica Carle -- Libertarians and the Constitution

What a change has come about since the United Nations was born in 1945! Our Constitution is ignored or ridiculed. The people are apathetic about usurpations of national, state, and local authority. The school districts have engaged in buying and selling children--shipping them from one neighborhood to another. Parents are confused, children abused. The Bible is becoming a banned book. Immorality is condoned while criticism of immorality is condemned. Property rights are trampled, personal choices eliminated, and businesses harassed. Deception, fraud, mass murders, wars, and terrorism abound.

Why don't more people work with their state and local elected officials to protect and restore the Constitution when this may be the only way to maintain and regain their individual, political, and Christian freedom? Perhaps it is because proponents of the world management system (WORMS) have learned some lessons. First, they know that personal morality and good relationships between individuals are not necessary in a managed society. Stable families are not necessary in a managed society. WORMS promoters also know the Harvard psychological tricks to gain cooperation in bringing about change--the participatory technique being one of the most effective:

Resistance to change can be overcome by getting the people involved in the change to participate in making it.

To manage people form an organization. To manage many organizations form a blanket organization.

The perfect example of a combination of these techniques is the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). The UN grants consultative status to non governmental organizations (NGOs). More than 2000 international and national organizations have this status with ECOSOC. In order to maintain their Category I and Category II status organizations must be willing to submit reports every four years on their operations and activities in support of the UN. Therefore organizations associated with the United Nations through the ECOSOC have surrendered their own sovereignty to the UN World dictatorship. They belong to its regional government world management system. They cannot be counted on to support the U.S. Constitution or Christian freedom. They and their members--whether they know it or not--belong to the WORMS.

It seems not. I first learned about libertarianism in 1961 when I was invited to attend one of the sessions of the Freedom School situated on 320 acres in the foothills of the Rampart Range between Denver and Colorado Springs. I and a dozen adult classmates spent eleven interesting days of instruction by Freedom School president, Robert LeFevre. With the exception of a few sessions under guest instructors we listened to him morning, afternoon, and evening as he lectured on economics, philosophy, ethics, history, and libertarian political theory. Bob was never tiresome or boring. The material was especially interesting to me because most of the subjects were in areas where I had little previous instruction. On the final night there was a brief ceremony and we received certificates stating that we had demonstrated comprehension of the libertarian philosophy.

For most of us it was more than comprehension. It was conversion. We accepted the idea that government was an instrument of coercion and if we voted it would be an ethical wrong. In this way those of us who had been conservatives made ourselves politically impotent.

Later I researched, wrote, and submitted articles for LeFevre's libertarian publications. Several articles appeared in the Freedom School's tabloid, PINE TREE and in its RAMPART JOURNAL

In 1965 I returned to the Freedom School for a week-long graduate workshop on the U.S. Constitution. There was less lecturing and more discussion. We each read a paper explaining our thoughts on freedom and the Constitution, an award being given for the one judged best. Butler D. Shaffer of Lincoln, Nebraska won with "A Declaration of Principles for a Free Society." In the 1965 Freedom School Annual the conclusion of the workshop was said to be:

1. The Constitution of the United States has resulted in a growth and consolidation of political power to the detriment of individual rights.

3. Such concepts must be founded upon the principle that each man has the absolute right to determine what shall or shall not be done with his person or property.

In 1968, due to financial difficulties, the Freedom School property in Colorado was sold and operations moved to Santa Ana, California under the name, "Rampart College."

The RAMPART JOURNAL was discontinued, and in 1970 the PINE TREE became a quarterly magazine, rather than a bi-monthly news tabloid. After two issues it was renamed, RAP. It was then that I began to see trends that bothered me. For example, in the question and answer feature of the spring issue Riqui Leon stated:

"If conception is definitely not desired, there are birth control methods widely available--to both single and married women, as well as to men--and, if these fail, abortion is also possible and not immoral."

To me Riqui was saying the weak can be disposed of if they get in the way of the strong. At the very beginning of life her libertarian philosophy faltered.

Another article was titled, "Toward a REVOLUTIONARY STUDENT MOVEMENT" It ended with this thought:

The challenge to create a revolution and to build a revolutionary student movement is a challenge to free our minds of all the old mind-destroying prejudices, to commit ourselves to human liberation, and to build upon that commitment. The old prejudices, the old taboos, and the old conveniences of thought which obscured the vision of liberation must be swept aside, for if we do not make the revolution, all of our prejudices and all of our taboos will not alter our fates: we must remake the social order, or the social order will unmake us."

The summer 1970 issue revealed more disturbing information when it announced that from February 28th to March 1st a meeting, attended by more than 500, was held at the University of Southern California. Its purpose was to bring together libertarians from "left" and "right" to explore areas of common interest and discover whether differences could be bridged. The meeting was sponsored by the California Libertarian Alliance, Rampart College, and the USC Action Coalition for Freedom.

Think about it. The only things libertarians of the left and right can agree on, and did agree on, are that old taboos--meaning personal moral behavior--must be swept aside, and that pornography should never be censored. Because of the wide dissemination of these ideas among conservatives and corporate executives there was little protection for the children when the ultra liberal left, funded by foundations and the federal government, trained teachers to teach youngsters in school and youths in college that each must form his own moral code. Right to each became what was right in his own eyes. This was the moral reasoning of Lawrence Kohlberg of Harvard, and also of Charles Manson, the planner of the Sharon Tate and Bianca murders.

Then the Fall, 1970 issue of RAP went further afield when it included its explanation of the "Age of Aquarius":

"It is a struggle involving the emergence of a new morality--the dawning of a new universal concept of right and wrong . . . Those in revolt want a better world. . .They reject censorship for any reason. They protest laws that attempt to implement some particular life style."

I was beginning to realize that many of those who called themselves "libertarians" had a great deal more in mind than what I had originally understood. They differed little from the Theosophists with their "Age of Aquarius." The libertarians of the right and the libertarians of the left agreed that morality is a personal choice, and no choice is to be criticized.

The economist Ludwig von Mises, who called himself a liberal, is admired by conservatives and libertarians of the right. They claim him as one of their own because they believe he favored free trade and free enterprise. It is claimed that many of the arguments of liberal economists for a controlled economy have been demolished by Mises. However, there are disturbing aspects to his work. Among them from his book, Human Action are:

(1) He confused us with his definition of human action by limiting it to purposeful behavior P.11; and then stated, "Wherever the conditions for human interference are present, man acts no matter whether he interferes or refrains from interfering." (P. 13)

(2) He claimed that beings of human descent, including the newborn child, who are unfit for any action (according to his definition, purposeful behavior) are not human. (P. 14.)

(3) He stated as fact that "Man acquired. . . the logical structure of his mind in the course of his evolution from an amoebae to his present state." Yet he did not explain how molecules of dead matter can rearrange themselves into intelligent living bodies, or even so simple a body as an amoebae. (P. 35)

(4) He claimed that economics encompasses all human action and for economics to be scientific it must reject the concept of right and wrong. The only yardstick is whether or not the means are suitable to support the values and attain the ends at which the acting individuals aim. (P. 95) (This belief gave sanction to the creation of values clarification in the schools, which makes Ludwig von Misses--the economist of conservatives--one of the fathers of the destructive values clarification techniques).

(5) Misses gave his definition of morality: "Everything that serves to preserve the social order is moral; everything that is detrimental to it is immoral. Accordingly, when we reach the conclusion that an institution is beneficial to society, one can no longer object that it is immoral." (P. 34). It appears to me that this is another way of agreeing with Auguste Comte's idea that separation from the world management system is the only sin.

(6) The fact that Ludwig von Mises supported a world order helps to explain why the Chamber of Commerce and other business organizations, corporations, and also many libertarians and Harvard "intellectuals" promote and support the United Nations regional government world management system rather than the U.S. Constitution.

Von Mises wrote: "The ultimate ideal envisioned by liberalism is the perfect cooperation of all mankind, taking place peacefully and without friction. Liberal thinking has the whole of humanity in view and not just parts. It does not stop at limited groups; it does not end at the border of the village, of the province, of the nation or of the continent. Its thinking is cosmopolitan and ecumenical: it takes in all men and the whole world. Liberalism is, in this sense humanism, and the liberal, a citizen of the world, a cosmopolite." (P. 105), and "A world order must be established in which nations and national groups are so satisfied with living conditions that they will not feel impelled to resort to the desperate expedient of war." (P. 111.)

So much for von Mises and so-called conservative economists. A system of world control is OK so long as they think it is their system or they have "input" in the management of the system.

Will economist-planned "satisfactory living conditions" for nations and national groups eliminate war? Will greed, lust for power, and violence then disappear? Will nobody want more power, more material satisfactions? If economic principles replace the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule will people be kinder to each other? Should United Nations, Harvard economists, and Russian communists be allowed to plan our lives while ignoring the U. S. Constitution and despising the Bible? Would government by the WORMS make life on earth a paradise? When goals and visions replace morals will freedom reign?

Just because we want peace, let's not be taken in by promises that require us to sacrifice our Constitution, our national independence, and our Christian freedom for the sake of a world management system.

Erica Carle is an independent researcher and writer. She has a B.S. degree from the University of Wisconsin. She has been involved in radio and television writing and production, and has also taught math and composition at the private school her children attended in Brookfield, Wisconsin. For ten years she wrote a weekly column, "Truth In Education" for WISCONSIN REPORT, and served as Education Editor for that publication. Her books are available through Education Service Council, P. O. Box 271, Elm Grove, Wisconsin 53122.

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