Harvard Hogs the Headlines

Human Events, Mar 3, 2008 by Buckley, William F Jr

Note: Bill Buckley, who founded National Review in 7955, began writing for human events with this article in the May 16, 1951, issue that presaged his book God and Man at Yale.

As a Yale man, I think I have a legitimate gripe. Harvard saw the light of day 75 years before my alma mater and has capitalized on this ever since. Yale has never lost the inferiority complex she got from Harvard's abortive arrival on the educational scene. This must be the explanation of why Harvard gets most of the credit for nourishing the new, irresistible, mid-century liberalism-collectivism.

Yale deserves just as much credit for it.

It's true that Harvard does things more flamboyantly. Most of this country's collectivists, admittedly, have been comforted and inspired, at one time or another, by the highly publicized speeches and writings of Alvin Hansen, Seymour Harris, Felix Frankfurter and the rest. Yale hasn't counterparts of such notoriety.

Precocious Statists

It is also true that Washington has been inundated over the past 15 years by precocious statists who received their enlightenment in Cambridge and that these men have signally influenced national policy. Yale lags behind in the infiltration of the bureaucracy.

But Yale goes about her task differently. She doesn't make so many headlines, she doesn't contribute so much grist for Westbrook Pegler's columns, so many clerks for Supreme Court justices, or so many articles for the New Republic. But in a very real sense, Yale is more systematic. She goes about her task of collectivizing less ostentatiously. But let no one say that Yale is not pulling her oar, that she is shirking her responsibility to persuade her young men as to the merits of the Leviathan State.

Yale recognizes that the most important single springboard from which to launch collectivism is the basic economics course. Approximately half of her undergraduates enroll in "Elementary Economics" before leaving New Haven. And so it is here that much of the work can be done.

To that end, in the past five years, books by Samuelson (Economics: An Introductory Analysis), Bowman and Bach (Economic Analysis and Public Policy), Morgan (Income and Employment) and Tarshis (The Elements of Economics) have been used as basic texts.

Now all of these books profess respect for the institution and achievements of free enterprise, a tactic indispensable, at the present, to successful collectivizing. Socialism still has to be subtle. So it is only after calculated enthusiasm for our economic system that these text writers proceed to undermine the free-market place. This approach is far more effective, in my opinion, than a hundred lectures at Harvard by Harold Laski. For he bore the label "Socialist," and his straightforwardness put many of his students on their guard.

Not so with the text writers of Yale eco-, nomics (whose approach is adopted by most" of the instructors). For it is under the banner of "the preservation of capitalism" that they teach the unwary student to forsake every tenet of free enterprise.

Liberal Economics

For example: economic equilibrium cannot result from an unmolested free market, and capitalism, accordingly, must be modified. "To set the responsibility for attaining and maintaining full employment on the shoulders of individual consumers or individual businessmen is absurd" (Morgan). Individualism "is giving way to changing concepts of what is meant by true equality of opportunity in economic affairs" (Bowman and Bach).

Since we've seen that the American economy has got to change, some of its traditional superstitions have got to go. There is no "right" of private property, and the freedom to engage in business for one's self "is not a basic freedom" (Morgan). And since there is no right of private property, the State must remedy the appalling inequality of income which "most Americans regard as inequitable" (Bowman and Bach).

Such income inequality, which seriously vitiates "maximum social well-being" (Tarshis), must and will be abolished by State intervention through taxation. This is a "generally accepted objective" of modern economics (Morgan).

Nor shall inheritance escape the egalitarian ax-everyone, after all, is "curious about the workings of an economic society that enables a few individuals to amass such large accumulations of wealth and power and to perpetuate them by inheritance" (Samuelson). So, by plugging loopholes and raising the rates, "there is no reason why we should not achieve at least the level of success of the British in increasing the productivity of death taxes" (Morgan).

Once the government has seen to equalization, it is only fair that it should also assume the burden of guaranteeing security to all its citizens. This is democracy at work, for "cradle-to-grave security has great popularity. If the private economy cannot supply it [which it cannot, the students are repeatedly told], naturally people will insist upon getting it artificially from governments" (Samuelson).

Thus we must have more and more Social security, force separation wages and a government guarantee of full employment (Morgan).