Discussion on Individual Rights and Government Power

Your question.

I see society as

more and more tending toward the us-usurping of my

individual rights and freedoms as time goes by.

Um, what do you see as the ultimate end of

this,

i.e., either in democracy or socialism, and

why do you think the individuals within the society are letting this happen

to them?

Well, the last part of your question is the hardest one to answer.

If we continue along the road we've been going on, of usurping more

and more power to governmental officials to control our lives, I see

only one end, and that's a loss of anything

that has any meaning as

democracy, a loss of human freedom, and a prison state.

That's the end. Now, why are people letting them--

this happen to them?

That's a much more difficult, that's a much more difficult question to

answer.

And I think it is m- largely

because of ignorance about where they are going,

a lack of

recognition.

I don't believe they wanna go this route,

but I believe they are unwittingly letting themselves go down

this

road because on each issue that comes up, people look at their separate

special interest instead of the broader interest in the, in governmental

activity. Everybody wants to cut down government,

provided that those things he has an interest in are maintained.

I remember very well the summit conference in Washington on inflation

that President Ford had about two or three years ago, in which one

representative after another got up and said,

"In order to stop inflation, we have to cut the government budget.

The way to cut the government budget is to spend more on my interest."

That's how each separate group does it.

So I think we are being driven down this road fundamentally

by a defect in our political structure,

a defect which allows each of these separate elements of

government to be voted on separately and never gets the citizen to look at

the totality of it and see what the whole thing adds up.

The solution is for people like you and me

to talk to ourselves and to our fellows and to try to persuade

our fellow p- men to be of like mind, to change the climate of opinion in

these respects, to try to correct the political structure

to impose a...

I've been recently working on one particular proposal along those lines,

which is to have constitutional amendments setting a maximum limit to the amount

the government may spend.

I won't go into the details of that, but I think fundamentally,

we are getting what the public at large is asking for, and the public

is asking for it, I believe, because they do not understand where it's

going to

lead them, because they are misinformed, and they are being led that way

by the intellectual community,

which has gone down a wrong road, in my opinion.

Now, I don't believe the case is hopeless.

I believe there are many signs of change.

There are many more people who recognize the problems with this road now than did

twenty or thirty years ago. Experience is a wonderful teacher.

So that I think we, you and I just have to keep on doing our

little

things, trying to persuade our fellows, men to be of like mind. Thank you.

Let's take the next question.