Freedom Philosophy and Education

Today I was thinking about our school’s freedom philosophy and the “liberal arts education” we claim to provide. Many people today, who consider themselves conservative, are put off by the phrase “liberal education” or even “liberal arts education.” They confuse current popular political usage of the word “liberal” with its historic meaning in the phrase “liberal education.” In actuality, the phrases “liberal education” and “liberal arts education” mean “those studies that equip a free person.”

Liber was the Latin adjective used to describe a person who is free, unrestricted, and/or independent. In contrast servus meant slavish and dependent. In both the ancient Greek and the ancient Roman systems of education, certain abilities were considered appropriate only for the free man. No slave would be taught these specifically mental skills. The Romans called these skills artes liberales, the abilities befitting a free man.

The phrase “liberal arts” passed into the English language through the French phrase arts liberaux. In Medieval England the expression soon, in such phrases as “liberal education,” took on the sense of “befitting a person of free social status” as opposed to serfs or slaves. So, in these phrases, it is obvious that the word “liberal” has no particular political meaning or context except freedom.

In fact “liberalism,” in this sense, was the dominant political philosophy of our founding fathers. They believed people should be responsible for their own choices, without the interference or protection of government. James Madison, properly nicknamed the Father of the Constitution, believed that federal government’s role was limited by this emphasis on freedom. The committees that put together the Declaration of Independence believed that each person had a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. People have the right to pursue happiness. They do not have a right to happiness. Happiness is a result of choices and freedom consists in making choices.

It is troubling that some have injected a socialist political agenda into the “liberal arts” at some institutions of higher learning. What makes it so upsetting is that socialism has always measured equality in terms of the lowest common denominator. It has discouraged excellence by punishing achievement in order to achieve sameness. To enforce equality requires exactly that, force. Coercion is the opposite of choice and, therefore, the opposite of freedom.

To raise the lower to the level of the higher in ability, talent, accomplishment, etc. has always been harder than to lower the more able, talented, or accomplished through the use of coercive limitation. Let us say we want to make Cato, your humble writer, who is over fifty, overweight and out of shape, equal in base running to the best on your typical college baseball team. If our goal is equality in base running then the easiest solution is to make the other runners carry extra weights, to limit their freedom of movement and speed. We will never be able to make Cato as good as they are because of his age and some old injuries, among other things. The only way to make it “fair” in a socialist sort of fairness is with the weights on the other runners.

This is exactly the problem. Socialism has always gone for this type of quick fix with only the issue of equality as a goal. Almost never has the goal been improving everyone’s lot in life, even if that means there may remain some inequalities. Our new President-Elect, during his campaign showed his goal was not lifting all the boats, so that all of us benefit (best done by getting government out of the way). No, he said his goal is to make things fair. To do this he must strap the heavy weight of taxes on our most financially successful. Will this really better the country? No. In fact if the government takes it upon itself to redistribute the money people earn to those who did not earn it, it destroys the incentive of the productive (the players who are normally able to steal bases and help our team win) because now they know their efforts will reap them no benefit. But you say, surely it will encourage the currently non-productive to do better. No. They will have no incentive to do better. You have after all made them equal to the best. Why should Cato go to the gym, watch his diet, etc so that he can get better if he is already as good as every one else (those players carrying all the weights) at base running?

Worse than that; the cost of trying to equalize the runners on our baseball team has led to added costs for the program. Not only do we have to pay for all those weights but now more players are getting injured because of them and leaving the team. What happens when “the rich” have been equalized so that they don’t have the money to invest in new ventures? What happens to the team in my illustration when it faces competition from teams that aren’t worried about equality but are concerned about base running? 

Besides all that, our government does not seem to know how to fix problems without following the procedure I will now proceed to outline. There is some new social problem that everyone says government should do something about. To address the problem Congress passes legislation raising money for a new agency that the President says we need. Of course, ultimately this money comes from taxes. Because the new agency needs housing for its offices in Washington, a new and costly government building uses part of that money. Because government says it wants effective leaders for the new agencies and effective administrators expect big salaries, more money is set aside for this purpose. Then, of course, we need money for the support staff, building maintenance, etc. Next government needs regional offices or state offices to coordinate the agency’s efforts at the regional or state level. And, of course, these offices need their own buildings, managers, support staff etc. Now, to get the help down to local level, where we need to address this new social concern, local offices, administrators, support staff, etc are needed. Now, finally, several years later we are finally ready to begin using government to help “solve” the social problem but the appropriated money has all disappeared in creating the delivery system for it. This is why private charity is so much more productive in actually getting help to people who need it.

Freedom philosophy and private charity, the way our founders handled it by the way, are much more productive both for producing wealth and for helping those in need than any government run charity. Besides, there is no virtue in me if I only help the poor because government sticks a gun to my head and says I have to. Then to add insult to injury, government takes out most of the money for itself and gives the person it is claiming to help mere pocket change (If you would like to know more about how our founders handled charity I recommend Marvin Olasky’s book on that issue).

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A freedom philosophy means our focus is not on equaling everyone’s lot in life. It means we want to enable those who will make the effort to improve their own lot in life. Our “liberal arts education” should focus on liberty and not silly socialist twaddle that only leads to equal misery.