The Puzzle Of The Fourth
by Tibor R. Machan
Why is it that the ideas and ideals of the Fourth of July, those contained in the Declaration of Independence penned by Thomas Jefferson, are waning? Why is it that few mainstream public figures, institutions, or media outlets hail, as they certainly ought to, the notion that we human beings all have unalienable rights to, among other things, our lives, liberty, and pursuit of happiness? Why has the celebration on the Fourth of July become so banal, consisting mainly of hoopla and hardly any substance?
To do these questions full justice would take volumes but there can be some suggestions that at least promise an answer. For one, despite the fact that the United States of America was supposed to become a free country, with government instituted so as secure our rights and the rest of society free to carry on unregimented, one of the central social institutions of the country remained under the rule of the state. And this pretty much means that the very ideas that made the country unique and appealing to the world - mainly to its ordinary folks, not its elite and leadership - would get disdainful treatment at its academic, scholarly
institutions.
Aside from some notably rare cases - for example, the works of many economists and a few historians, such as Harvard's Bernard Bailyn - most academics simply do not respect the American political tradition. That is to say, they do not find merit in the view that government in society is to serve strictly limited purposes and that our problems, tasks, hopes, concerns, and such are to be dealt with by voluntary institutions, not by the state. This classical liberal, libertarian view, that certainly made its political debut in the world via the American Founders, has had a reasonably good but incomplete run for its money via our laws and economic policies ... but those who teach our young from kindergarten all the way to graduate school have very, very little respect for it.
No wonder. Education at all levels is one of the few institutions in America that completely defies the principles of the Founders. You can take children and force them into school, confiscate the resources of citizens and spend them on so-called education, tenure professors all around the country because you can force people to pay them - in short, the profession of education at all levels is nearly completely socialized and belies the principles of liberty and free enterprise on which the country was supposed to be established and maintained.
As someone who has kicked around the academic community from 1956 to the present - I started in high school in Cleveland, Ohio, just after arriving on these shores from Europe - I have learned first hand that few of those in the educational establishment, from administrators to professors and researchers, really believe in the fully free society. Oh, sometimes they make noises about freedom, if curtailing it impinges on their "academic" endeavors or on some select areas of life they happen to care about. But as a rule they tend to demean unfettered freedom. Nearly every discipline is supposed to get special support from the government by way of confiscation from Peter and "transferring" the loot over to Paul whose work is always so important as never to leave it to voluntary exchange to provide it with support. Scientists, historians, philosophers, artists, literary critics, sociologists - you name the field and it is replete with such voices routinely lobbying for more government redistribution of wealth, and with the message that when something is vital enough, stealing from the public, conscripting their labor to support it, is perfectly fine.
At one university where I taught, a prominent historian went about the state urging politicians to vote for more tax-money to be devoted to "education." When I pointed out in a letter to the student paper that this amounted to a conflict of interest - he was being paid by the state and also lobbying for this pay - my dean called me "difficult" and I was denied a chair of "excellence in teaching" because one professor on the committee said she "would never select such a right wing maniac for an honor at the school." But this is just a tiny example of how dead set against the ideas of a fully free system most academics tend to be.
So, when a society, supposedly founded on the idea that our basic individual rights are unalienable - incapable of being lost and obligatory for all to respect - is being "educated" mostly by people at all levels who reject those very same ideas, is it any wonder that all that the Fourth of July has become is an occasion for empty gesture and meaningless fanfare?
Not really. The only place where the ideas and ideals of the Fourth can still be located is in the deep, mostly subconscious, psyche of most of the American people and, of course, in the hopes and aspirations of all those abroad who know full well that only a country with such ideas and ideals can offer them a chance at a decent life.
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