Free To Choose: a personal Statement

The Tide ls Turning
287
disparate factions and interests. They had to avoid "extremism,"
keep to the middle ground. They were not exactly Tweedledum
and Tweedledee—but close to it. Nonetheless, in the course of
time both major parties adopted the position of the Socialist party.
The Socialist party never received more than 6 percent of the
popular vote for President (in
1912
for Eugene Debs). It got less
than 1 percent in
1928
and only 2 percent in 1932 (for Norman
Thomas). Yet almost every economic plank in its 1928 presiden-
tial platform has by now been enacted into law. The relevant
planks are reproduced in Appendix A.
Once the change in the climate of opinion had spread to a wider
public, as it did after the Great Depression, the Constitution
shaped by a very different climate of opinion proved at most a
source of delay to the growth of government power, not an ob-
stacle.
In Mr. Dooley's words, "No matter whether th' constitution
follows th' flag or not, th' supreme court follows th' iliction re-
turns." The words of the Constitution were reinterpreted and
given new meaning. What had been intended to be barriers to
the extension of government power were rendered ineffective. As
Raoul Berger writes in his authoritative examination of the Court's
interpretation of one amendment,
The Fourteenth Amendment is the case study par excellence of what
Justice Harlan described as the Supreme Court's "exercise of the
amending power," its continuing revision of the Constitution under
the guise of interpretation. . . .
The Court, it is safe to say, has flouted the will of the framers and
substituted an interpretation in flat contradiction of the original de-
sign. . . .
Such conduct impels one to conclude that the Justices are become
a law unto themselves.
i
OPINION AND POPULAR BEHAVIOR
Evidence that the tide toward Fabian socialism and New Deal
liberalism has crested comes not only from the writing of intel-
lectuals, not only from the sentiments that politicians express on
the hustings, but also from the way people behave. Their behavior
is no doubt influenced by opinion. In its turn, popular behavior

---

288
FREE TO CHOOSE: A Personal Statement
both reinforces that opinion and plays a major role in translating
it into policy.
As A. V. Dicey, with remarkable prescience, wrote more than
sixty years ago, "If the progress of socialistic legislation be ar-
rested, the check will be due, not so much to the influence of any
thinker as to some patent fact which shall command public atten-
tion; such, for instance, as that increase in the weight of taxation
which is apparently the usual, if not the invariable, concomitant
of a socialist policy."
2
Inflation, high taxes, and the patent ineffi-
ciency, bureaucracy, and excessive regulation stemming from big
government are having the effects Dicey predicted. They are lead-
ing people to take matters into their own hands, to try to find ways
around government obstacles.
Pat Brennan became something of a celebrity in 1978 because
she and her husband went into competition with the U.S. Post
Office. They set up business in a basement in Rochester, New
York, guaranteeing delivery the same day of parcels and letters
in downtown Rochester at a lower cost than the Post Office
charged. Soon their business was thriving.
There is no doubt that they were breaking the law. The Post
Office took them to court, and they lost after a legal battle that
went all the way to the Supreme Court. Local businessmen pro-
vided financial backing.
Said Pat Brennan,
I think there's going to be a quiet revolt and perhaps we're the be-
ginning of it. . . . You see people bucking the bureaucrats, when
years ago you wouldn't dream of doing that because you'd he
squashed. . . . People are deciding that their fates are their own and
not up to somebody in Washington who has no interest in them
whatsoever. So it's not a question of anarchy, but it's a question of
people rethinking the power of the bureaucrats and rejecting it. . . .
The question of freedom comes up in any kind of a business—
whether you have the right to pursue it and the right to decide what
you're going to do. There is also the question of the freedom of the
consumers to utilize a service that they find is inexpensive and far
superior, and according to the federal government and the body of
laws called the Private Express Statutes, I don't have the freedom to
start a business and the consumer does not have the freedom to use
it—which seems very strange in a country like this that the entire
context of the country is based on freedom and free enterprise.

---