Four Practical Steps to Undermine the Welfare State

Gary North - November 12, 2015

Jeff Deist of the Mises Institute wrote an article with this title: "Four ways to Build a Free Society."

I like the idea of building. It is positive. His four ways: the political option (minimal involvement), strategic withdrawal (non-participation/separation), hearts and minds (education/social media), and resistance (gumming up the government). So, it's a mixture of separation and rebuilding.

I offer a similar approach, but mine is based on covenant theology. I have written a mini-book on this. Download it here. I begin with five covenants: dominion, individuals, family, church, and state.

The dominion covenant is the idea of exercising authority in every area of life. This means worldview. It means that you must systematically and self-consciously approach your areas of responsibility in life as a challenge: good vs. evil. Promote good. Avoid evil. Life is a battleground of ideas, and these ideas are fundamentally and inescapably ethical.

Do not imitate Lord Ronald in Stephen Leacock's humorous story, "Gertrude the Governess" (1911). "Lord Ronald said nothing; he flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions."

The individual covenant means that you are responsible for your thoughts and actions. You are responsible in terms of all five covenants. This responsibility is comprehensive.

The other three covenants are institutional. Begin here to exercise influence.

With this as background, I offer these four steps, paralleling Deist's. I offer them in terms of the degree of your personal responsibility.

1. RE-THINK YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES

In ever area of life, you must re-think your responsibility. What are you responsible for? What are others responsible for? You need to take responsibility. You must also delegate responsibility. This is basic to the division of labor. You cannot do everything. You cannot do much of anything. You must specialize. You must also find sympathetic and reliable people to cooperate with. You cannot do it alone.

2. REPLACEMENT STRATEGY

I begin with this slogan: "You can't beat something with nothing." If you see that something is inherently corrupt, try to avoid it. But do not try to reform it. Replace it. This is a two-fold strategy: withdrawal and replacement. It is negative and positive. You must develop a critique of what is wrong. You must develop a blueprint of what is right. Then you must work to implement your small share of the blueprint.

Here is an example. Waste no time trying to reform the public schools. Pull your children out. Find an alternative curriculum. I, of course, recommend the Ron Paul Curriculum. But find something.

This does not mean you should not run for the school board, but don't do this to make the schools better academically. Do it to make them cheaper. Hold the line on expenses. Don't replace teachers who quit. Push for higher student/teacher ratios. Recommend the free online Khan Academy as a way to increase the student/teacher ratio. Vote against all school bond proposals. Fire 10% of the administrators this year. Do it again next year. This is not school reform. This is tax reform. The downside of all this is that the schools really will improve: less money to waste. With less government money, student performance will increase marginally. But this should not be your goal.

3. EVANGELISM

This corresponds to Deist's third point: hearts and minds. Learn how to write. Learn how to speak in public. Learn at least some of the social media. Participate. Be positive when you are negative (point 2). Show people that there are more productive alternatives than what the government now offers. Example: when you criticize the public schools, offer viable homeschool alternatives. Do not appear to be a kamikaze.

Join a local service club. Become an exceptional member. Show up before the meetings begin. Help out. Gain people's trust. This is the strategy that the Communists used before World War II. The British ex-Communist leader Douglas Hyde described this in his book, Dedication and Leadership (1966).

4. LOCATE YOUR CORE GROUP

C. S. Lewis recommended this. These are the people you work with as your peers. There will not be many of them. He wrote about this in his classic essay, "The Inner Ring."

The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it. This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public: nor will it lead to those periodic scandals and crises which the Inner Ring produces. But it will do those things which that profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain.

And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside: that you are indeed snug and safe at the centre of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. But the difference is that the secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric: for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it.

This is your base of operations. It may be part of a church. It may be part of a service ministry. Sometimes these are called accountability groups. Lewis's was the Inklings. J. R. R. Tolkien was a member. So was his brother Warnie, a self-taught expert in the court of Louis XIV. Some group!

Do not do this as a lone wolf. Lone wolves leave no legacies.

You must leave a legacy. Someone must extend your work. It is part of a long-term compounding process. Don't be a shooting star. Shooting stars burn out.