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The Tide ls Turning
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further the power and scope of government, urge repeal and re-
form of existing measures, and try to elect legislators and execu-
tives who share that view. But that is not an effective way to
reverse the growth of government. It is doomed to failure. Each
of us would defend our own special privileges and try to limit
government at someone else's expense. We would be fighting a
many-headed hydra that would grow new heads faster than we
could cut old ones off.
Our founding fathers have shown us a more promising way to
proceed: by package deals, as it were. We should adopt self-
denying ordinances that limit the objectives we try to pursue
through political channels. We should not consider each case on
its merits, but lay down broad rules limiting what government
may do.
The merit of this approach is well illustrated by the First
Amendment to the Constitution. Many specific restrictions on
freedom of speech would be approved by a substantial majority
of both legislators and voters. A majority would very likely favor
preventing Nazis, Seventh-Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses,
the Ku Klux Klan, vegetarians, or almost any other little group
you might name from speaking on a street corner.
The wisdom of the First Amendment is that it treats these cases
as a bundle. It adopts the general principle that "Congress shall
make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech"; no con-
sideration of each case on its merits. A majority supported it then
and, we are persuaded, a majority would support it today. Each
of us feels more deeply about not having our freedom interfered
with when we are in the minority than we do about interfering
with the freedom of others when we are in a majority—and a
majority of us will at one time or another be in some minority.
We need, in our opinion, the equivalent of the First Amend-
ment to limit government power in the economic and social area
—an economic Bill of Rights to complement and reinforce the
original Bill of Rights.
The incorporation of such a Bill of Rights into our Constitu-
tion would not in and of itself reverse the trend toward bigger
government or prevent it from being resumed—any more than
the original Constitution has prevented both a growth and a cen-
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FREE TO CHOOSE: A Personal Statement
tralization of government power far beyond anything the framers
intended or envisioned. A written constitution is neither necessary
nor sufficient to develop or preserve a free society. Although
Great Britain has always had only an "unwritten" constitution,
it developed a free society. Many Latin American countries that
adopted written constitutions copied from the United States Con-
stitution practically word for word have not succeeded in estab-
lishing a free society. In order for a written—or for that matter,
unwritten—constitution to be effective it must be supported by
the general climate of opinion, among both the public at large
and its leaders. It must incorporate principles that they have come
to believe in deeply, so that it is taken for granted that the execu-
tive, the legislature, and the courts will behave in conformity to
these principles. As we have seen, when that climate of opinion
changes, so will policy.
Nonetheless, we believe that the formulation and adoption of
an economic Bill of Rights would be the most effective step that
could be taken to reverse the trend toward ever bigger govern-
ment for two reasons: first, because the process of formulating
the amendments would have great value in shaping the climate
of opinion; second, because the enactment of amendments is a
more direct and effective way of converting that climate of
opinion into actual policy than our present legislative process.
Given that the tide of opinion in favor of New Deal liberalism
has crested, the national debate that would be generated in for-
mulating such a Bill of Rights would help to assure that opinion
turned definitely toward freedom rather than toward totalitarian-
ism. It would disseminate a better understanding of the problem
of big government and of possible cures.
The political process involved in the adoption of such amend-
ments would be more democratic, in the sense of enabling the
values of the public at large to determine the outcome, than our
present legislative and administrative structure. On issue after
issue the government of the people acts in ways that the bulk of
the people oppose. Every public opinion poll shows that a large
majority of the public opposes compulsory busing for integrating
schools—yet busing not only continues but is continuously ex-
panded. Very much the same thing is true of affirmative action
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