Murray Rothbard/Quotes/Isabel Paterson
This page lists various quotes by Murray N. Rothbard's about Isabel Paterson.
Quotes
| Date | Source | Citation | Quote | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1961-06 | Memoranda to the Volker Fund | "On Polanyi's The Great Transformation" To: Robby, William Volker Fund (June 1961).
Reprinted as "On Polanyi's The Great Transformation," §10 of "Reviews and Comments of Murray Newton Rothbard" in Murray N. Rothbard vs. The Philosophers: Unpublished Writings on Hayek, Mises, Strauss, and Polanya, ed. Roberta A. Modugno (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2009), p. 133. |
I mentioned that the free society would permit Polanyi or any who agree with him to abandon the market and find whatever other forms suit them. But one thing and one thing alone the free society would not permit Polanyi to do: to use coercion over the rest of us. It will let him join a commune, but it will not let him force you or me into his commune. This is the sole difference, and I therefore must conclude that this is Polanyi’s sole basic complaint against the free society and the free market: they do not permit him, or any of his friends, or anyone else, to use force to coerce someone else into doing what Polanyi or anyone else wants; they do not permit force and violence; they do not permit dictation; they do not permit theft; they do not permit exploitation. I must conclude that the type of world that Polanyi would force us back into, is precisely the world of coercion, dictation, and exploitation.83 And all this in the name of “humanity”? Truly, Polanyi, like his fellow thinkers, is the “humanitarian with the guillotine.”84
84 See Isabel Paterson’s profound work of political theory, The God of the Machine (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1943). |
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| 1961-07 | "From the Depths: World War II and After," §3 of "What Is to Be Done?" To: F. A. Harper, George Resch, Confidential Memorandum to the Volker Fund (July 1961).
Reprinted as "Setting the Stage," §I of Strictly Confidential: The Private Volker Fund Memos of Murray N. Rothbard, ed. David Gordon (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2010), p. 13. |
So the dominant fact of this era was isolation for the libertarian. Here and there, in the catacombs, unbeknownst to us struggling neophytes, were little, separated groups of people: In Los Angeles, Leonard Read, Orval Watts, and R.C. Hoiles began to move toward a libertarian (or quasi-libertarian) position in the L.A. Chamber of Commerce, reprinting Bastiat, establishing Pamphleteers, Inc. At Cornell Agriculture School, F.A. Harper and several students of his were developing a libertarian view. Albert Jay Nock and a few right-wing Georgist disciples advanced their theory, Nock publishing Memoirs of a Superfluous Man, Frank Chodorov, having been fired as director of the Henry George School, establishing his superb “little magazine,” analysis. Nock gained a post as book reviewer for the National Economic Council, and was succeeded by another independent and isolated libertarian thinker, Rose Wilder Lane. Garet Garrett, having been ousted in the left-wing palace revolution at the Saturday Evening Post, established a quarterly American Affairs at the National Industrial Conference Board, under the benign eye of Dr. Virgil Jordan. Isabel Paterson, brilliant and cantankerous, resigned from her column at the Herald-Tribune to publish her great work, God of the Machine. | 3,018 KB | |
| 1961-09 | "Report on George B. DeHuszar and Thomas Hulbert Stevenson, A History of the American Republic, 2 vols." (September 1961).
Reprinted as "Report on George B. DeHuszar and Thomas Hulbert Stevenson, A History of the American Republic, 2 vols.," §5 of "History," §3 of Strictly Confidential: The Private Volker Fund Memos of Murray N. Rothbard, ed. David Gordon (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2010), p. 150. |
Why doesn’t DeHuszar point out the crucial fact that the United States Army, in its bloody suppression of the Philippine Rebellion (of Aguinaldo, et al.) used precisely the same methods as those of “Butcher” Weyler in Cuba that had stirred American jingoes into attack on Spain? This includes the infamous “concentration camp” policy and execution of prisoners. (How often am I reminded of Isabel Paterson’s phrase, “The Humanitarian with the Guillotine”?) | ||
| 1970 | Power and Market: Government and the Economy | "Antitrust Laws," §K of "Product Control: Grant of Monopolistic Privilege," §3 of "Triangular Intervention," ch. 3 of Power and Market: Government and the Economy, 4th ed. (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2006 [originally Menlo Park, CA: Institute for Humane Studies, 1970]), pp. 73–74. | One of the few cogent discussions of the antitrust principle in recent years has been that of Isabel Paterson. As Mrs. Paterson states:Standard Oil did not restrain trade; it went out to the ends of the earth to make a market. Can the corporations be said to have “restrained trade” when the trade they cater to had no existence until they produced and sold the goods? Were the motor car manufacturers restraining trade during the period in which they made and sold fifty million cars, where there had been no cars before? … Surely…nothing more preposterous could have been imagined than to fix upon the American corporations, which have created and carried on, in ever-increasing magnitude, a volume and variety of trade so vast that it makes all previous production and exchange look like a rural roadside stand, and call this performance “restraint of trade,” further stigmatizing it as a crime!And Mrs. Paterson concludes: Government cannot “restore competition” or “ensure” it. Government is monopoly; and all it can do is to impose restrictions which may issue in monopoly, when they go so far as to require permission for the individual to engage in production. This is the essence of the Society-of-Status. The reversion to status law in the antitrust legislation went unnoticed…the politicians…had secured a law under which it was impossible for the citizen to know beforehand what constituted a crime, and which therefore made all productive effort liable to prosecution if not to certain conviction. |
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| "The Myth of 'Public' Ownership," §4 of "Binary Intervention: Government Expenditures," ch. 5 of Power and Market: Government and the Economy, 4th ed. (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2006 [originally Menlo Park, CA: Institute for Humane Studies, 1970]), p. 232, fn. 18. | Paterson has a stimulating discussion of the “two-dimensionality”—neglect of real conditions—in the theory of collective ownership. | |||
| "Alleged Joys of the Society of Status," §7 of "Antimarket Ethics: A Praxeological Critique," ch. 6 of Power and Market: Government and the Economy, 4th ed. (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2006 [originally Menlo Park, CA: Institute for Humane Studies, 1970]), p. 271 | The proponents of the theory of modern “alienation” do not offer any reasoning to back up their assertions, which are therefore simply dogmatic myths. Certainly, it is not self-evident that the craftsman, or better still, the primitive man who made everything that he consumed, was in some sense happier or “more whole” as a result of this experience. Although this is not a treatise on psychology, it might be noted that perhaps what gives the worker his sense of importance is his participation in what Isabel Paterson has called the “circuit of production.” In free-market capitalism he can, of course, participate in that circuit in many more and varied ways than he could in the more primitive status society. | |||
| "Charity and Poverty," §8 of "Antimarket Ethics: A Praxeological Critique," ch. 6 of Power and Market: Government and the Economy, 4th ed. (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2006 [originally Menlo Park, CA: Institute for Humane Studies, 1970]), pp. 274–275. | Statists, in fact, are really opposed to charity. They often argue that charity is demeaning and degrading to the recipient, and that he should therefore be taught that the money is rightly his, to be given to him by the government as his due. But this oft-felt degradation stems, as Isabel Paterson pointed out, from the fact that the recipient of charity is not self-supporting on the market and that he is out of the production circuit and no longer providing a service in exchange for one received. However, granting him the moral and legal right to mulct his fellows increases his moral degradation instead of ending it, for the beneficiary is now further removed from the production line than ever. An act of charity, when given voluntarily, is generally considered temporary and offered with the object of helping a man to help himself. But when the dole is ladled out by the State, it becomes permanent and perpetually degrading, keeping the recipients in a state of subservience. We are not attempting to argue at this point that to be subservient in this way is degrading; we simply say that anyone who considers private charity degrading must logically conclude that State charity is far more so.16 Mises, furthermore, points out that free-market exchange—always condemned by statists for being impersonal and “unfeeling”—is precisely the relation that avoids all degradation and subservience.
16 The devotion of government to charity may be gauged by its universal repression of mendicancy. A direct gift to a beggar helps the recipient directly and leaves no opportunity for large bureaucratic organizations to live full-time off the transaction. Harassment of direct aid, then, functions as a grant of monopolistic privilege to the “official” charity organizations. Isabel Paterson points out that the American government imposed a requirement of minimum cash assets for immigrants as an alleged way of helping the poorer immigrants! The actual effect, of course, was to keep the poorest immigrants, who could not meet the requirement, from American shores and economic opportunity. | |||
| 1971-04 | The Individualist | “Education: Free and Compulsory” (Pt. I), The Individualist (April 1971).
“Education: Free and Compulsory” (Pt. II), The Individualist (July–August 1971). Reprinted as Education, Free and Compulsory: The Individual’s Education (Wichita, KS: Center for Independent Education, 1972). Reprinted as Education: Free & Compulsory (Auburn, AL: The Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1999), pp. 16–17. |
Mrs. Isabel Paterson brilliantly sums up the tyranny of compulsory state education, and the superiority of free choice of private education:political control is…by its nature, bound to legislate against statements of both facts and opinion, in prescribing a school curriculum, in the long run. The most exact and demonstrable scientific knowledge will certainly be objectionable to political authority at some point, because it will expose the folly of such authority, and its vicious effects. Nobody would be permitted to show the nonsensical absurdity of “dialectical materialism” in Russia, by logical examination…and if the political authority is deemed competent to control education, that must be the outcome in any country. Here we must add that, in the current system, the State has found a way in the United States, to induce the private schools to teach State supremacy without outlawing private schools, as in some other countries. By enforcing certification for minimum standards, the State effectively, though subtly, dominates the private schools and makes them, in effect, extensions of the public school system. Only removal of compulsory schooling and enforced standards will free the private schools and permit them to function in independence. Mrs. Paterson deals succinctly with the problem of compulsory education and literacy:But would not some children remain illiterate? They might, as some do now, and as they did in the past. The United States has had one president who did not learn to read and write until after he was not only a grown man, but married and earning his own living. The truth is that in a free country anyone who remains illiterate might as well be left so; although simple literacy is not a sufficient education in itself, but the elementary key to an indispensable part of education in civilization. But that further education in civilization cannot be obtained at all under full political control of the schools. It is possible only to a certain frame of mind in which knowledge is pursued voluntarily.And Mrs. Paterson answers teachers and educators who would tend to reply in epithets to her criticism: Do you think nobody would willingly entrust his children to you to pay you for teaching them? Why do you have to…collect your pupils by compulsion? |
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| 1971-10 | The Libertarian Forum | "Reprint Bonanza," The Libertarian Forum 3, no. 10, ed. Murray N. Rothbard (New York, NY: Joseph R. Peden, October 1971; mislabelled no. 9), pp. 2–3. | Isabel Paterson, The God of the Machine (1943). 302pp. $13.00. Another indispensable work for libertarians, a great and challenging work on political philosophy. Particularly important are Mrs. Paterson |
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| 1972-12 | Outlook: The Libertarian Monthly | "Kid Lib," Outlook: The Libertarian Monthly 3, no. 8, ed. Walter Block (New York: Abolitionist Association, December 1972).
Reprinted as "Kid Lib," ch. 7 of Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays, 2nd ed., ed. R. A. Childs, Jr. (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2000 [originally Washington, D. C.: Libertarian Review Press, 1974]), pp. 151–152. |
One of the wisest and most brilliant critiques of progressive education was written by the great libertarian–theorist Isabel Paterson. Paterson quotes the writer Lafcadio Hearn on the contrast between old-fashioned Western education, which first trained the child by parental authority until the child was fit for independence, after which he became a self-starting, self-owning individual; and the Japanese (read progressive) system, which gives children unlimited freedom, only to subject these undisciplined children to greater and greater control as they become adults. Mrs. Paterson quotes Hearn that, in the West, education began in early childhood:with the repressive part of moral training. … It is important to inculcate the duties of behavior, the “must” and “must not” of individual obligation as soon as possible. Later on, more liberty is allowed. The well-grown boy is made to understand that his future will depend upon his personal effort and capacity; and he is therefore left, in great measure, to take care of himself, being occasionally admonished and warned, as seems needful. … Throughout the whole course of mental and moral training, competition is not only expected but required. … The aim is the cultivation of individual ability and personal character the creation of an independent and forceful being.In contrast: Japanese education has always been conducted on the reverse plan. Its object has never been to train the individual for independent action, but to train him for cooperative action. … Constraint among us begins with childhood, and gradually relaxes; constraint in Far Eastern training begins later, and thereafter gradually tightens…by the common opinion of his class; and a skillful teacher is able to direct that opinion. … The ruling power is always class sentiment. … It is always the rule of the many over the one; and the power is formidable.The result in Japan is that “the individual was completely sacrificed to the community.” Mrs. Paterson then points out that progressive education is an application of this Japanese system. Class activities, group interests, social influences have become predominant. And the prevailing philosophy with which pupils are indoctrinated is that of “instrumentalism,” which denies that there can be any universal or permanent moral values or standards. Mrs. Paterson adds that the most striking result of all this is what Hearn found in Japan: a “sinister absence of moral freedom”—the absence of the right to act according to one’s own convictions of justice. “When called upon to think,” the children cannot, “because they have been trained to accept the class, the group or the ‘social trend,’ as the sole authority.” |
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| 1973 | For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto | "Uniformity or Diversity?" §2 of "Education," ch. 7 of "Libertarian Applications to Current Problems," Pt. II of For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, 2nd ed. (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2006 [originally New York: The Macmillan Company, 1973; New York: Collier Books, 1978 (2nd ed.)]), p. 160. | And the twentieth-century American individualist writer Isabel Paterson declared:Educational texts are necessarily selective, in subject matter, language, and point of view. Where teaching is conducted by private schools, there will be a considerable variation in different schools; the parents must judge what they want their children taught, by the curriculum offered. … Nowhere will there be any inducement to teach the “supremacy of the state as a compulsory philosophy.” But every politically controlled educational system will inculcate the doctrine of state supremacy sooner or later, whether as the divine right of kings, or the “will of the people” in “democracy.” Once that doctrine has been accepted, it becomes an almost superhuman task to break the stranglehold of the political power over the life of the citizen. It has had his body, property, and mind in its clutches from infancy. An octopus would sooner release its prey. A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state. |
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| "What Can Government Do?" §3 of "Welfare and the Welfare State," ch. 8 of "Libertarian Applications to Current Problems," Pt. II of For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, 2nd ed. (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2006 [originally New York: The Macmillan Company, 1973; New York: Collier Books, 1978 (2nd ed.)]), pp. 204–205. | The libertarian writer Isabel Paterson put the case eloquently:As between the private philanthropist and the private capitalist acting as such, take the case of the truly needy man, who is not incapacitated, and suppose that the philanthropist gives him food and clothes and shelter—when he has used them, he is just where he was before, except that he may have acquired the habit of dependence. But suppose someone with no benevolent motive whatever, simply wanting work done for his own reasons, should hire the needy man for a wage. The employer has not done a good deed. Yet the condition of the employed man has actually been changed. What is the vital difference between the two actions? | |||
| 1975 | Conceived in Liberty | "Georgia: The 'Humanitarian' Colony," ch. 25 of "Developments in the Separate Colonies," Pt. I of "Salutary Neglect": The American Colonies in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century, vol. II of Conceived in Liberty (Arlington House, 1975). | Even on its face it is a wonder that no one called the humanitarianism of this scheme into question. If one is so eager to help the English poor, is it so humanitarian to ship them to a new and unsettled land bordered by potential enemies? But apart from this, the workings of the new experiment revealed the logical consequences of outright altruism. For if A is to act as "his brother's keeper," if he is to be in a position to do good to his fellow man, then he must be his brother's keeper in more than one sense. For how can A be truly responsible for (that is, keep) B unless he be given power to tell B what to do and what not to do, that is, be his keeper in the unpleasant sense of jailer? On the simplest level, for example, how can A be responsible for B's health unless he is in a position to dictate B's food consumption and to force him to wear rubbers in the rain? To do good to another, the recipient must be made to sit still and accept the largesse. And to be responsible for another, the humanitarian must have power over him. This is why, in the stark but telling phrase of the brilliant but neglected twentieth-century political thinker Isabel Paterson, "the humanitarian sets up the guillotine." | 17,204 KB |
| 1983-11 | The Libertarian Forum | "Conquering Little Grenada," §III of "Reagan War Watch," The Libertarian Forum 15, no. 11–12, ed. Murray N. Rothbard (New York, NY: Joseph R. Peden, November–December 1983; mislabelled vol. 17), p. 10. | A particularly repellent aspect of the Reagan announcement of his aggression was his trundling out M. Eugenia Charles, Prime Minister of Dominica, the most "pro-American" of the Caribbean puppet regimes, to supply a native fig leaf for the invasion. Miss Charles provided a unique justification by interdependence and kinship: "I don't think it's an invasion," she said. "We are one region. We belong to each other. We are kith and kin." Well, that clears that up: alibiing mass murder by invoking a "sense of belonging." Truly, in Isabel Paterson |
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| 1985 | The Gold Standard: An Austrian Perspective | "The Case for a Genuine Gold Dollar," ch. 1 of The Gold Standard: An Austrian Perspective (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1985), note 11.
Republised as "The Case for a Genuine Gold Dollar," ch. 1 of The Gold Standard: Perspectives in the Austrian School (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1992), pp. 15–16, note 11. |
For an outstanding philosophical critique of Fisher's commodity dollar, see the totally neglected work of the libertarian political theorist Isabel Paterson. Thus, Paterson writes:As all units of measure are determined arbitrarily in the first place, though not fixed by law, obviously they can be altered by law. The same length of cotton would be designated an inch one day, a foot the next, and a yard the next; the same quantity of precious metal could be denominated ten cents today and a dollar tomorrow. But the net result would be that figures used on different days would not mean the same thing; and somebody must take a heavy loss. The alleged argument for a "commodity dollar" was that a real dollar, of fixed quantity, will not always buy the same quantity of goods. Of course it will not. If there is no medium of value, no money, neither would a yard of cotton or a pound of cheese always exchange for an unvarying fixed quantity of any other goods. It was argued that a dollar ought always to buy the same quantity of and description of goods. It will not and cannot. That could occur only if the same number of dollars and the same quantities of goods of all kinds and in every kind were always in existence and in exchange and always in exactly proportionate demand; while if production and consumption were admitted, both must proceed constantly at an equal rate to offset one another. |
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| 1991-07 | Rothbard–Rockwell Report | "The Right To Kill, With Dignity?" Rothbard–Rockwell Report 2, no. 7 (Burlingame, CA: Center for Libertarian Studies, February 1993), p. 4.
Reprinted as "The Right To Kill, With Dignity?" §3 of "Kulturizampf!" pt. 6 of The Irrepressible Rothbard: The Rothbard–Rockwell Report Essays of Murray N. Rothbard, ed. Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. (Burlingame, CA: Center for Libertarian Studies, 2000), p. 303. |
The excuses of these killers is that far more important than prolonging life is the “quality of life.” But what if a key part of preserving and enhancing that quality is getting rid of this crew of murdering liberals, people whom Isabel Paterson, with wonderful perception and prophetic insight; termed “The humanitarian with the guillotine”? What then? So where do we sign up to assist their death? | 395 KB |
| 1993-02 | "The December Surprise," Rothbard–Rockwell Report 4, no. 2 (Burlingame, CA: Center for Libertarian Studies, February 1993), pp. 17–18.
Reprinted as "The December Surprise," §8 of "War," pt. 3 of The Irrepressible Rothbard: The Rothbard–Rockwell Report Essays of Murray N. Rothbard, ed. Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. (Burlingame, CA: Center for Libertarian Studies, 2000), pp. 194–195. |
This odious theme of the humanitarian-with-the-gun is strongly reminiscent of one of the great essays in political philosophy, the chapter “The Humanitarian with the Guillotine” from The God of the Machine (1943), by the marvelous Old Right novelist and literary critic Isabel Paterson. The “humanitarian,” writes Paterson, makes it the primary purpose of his life to help others, even though of course he himself hasn’t the funds to do so. But “if the primary objective of the philanthropist, his justification for living, is to help others, his ultimate good requires that others shall be in want. His happiness is the obverse of their misery. … The humanitarian wishes to be a prime mover in the lives of others. He cannot admit either the divine or the natural order, by which men have the power to help themselves.”
“But,” Isabel Paterson goes on, “he is confronted by two awkward facts: first, that the competent do not need his assistance; and second, that the majority of people, if unperverted, positively do not want to be ‘done good’ by the humanitarian. … Of course, what the humanitarian actually proposes is that he shall do what he thinks is good for everybody. It is at this point that the humanitarian sets up the guillotine.” “What kind of a world,” Paterson concludes, ”does the humanitarian contemplate as affording him full scope? It could only be a world filled with breadlines and hospitals, in which nobody retained the natural power of a human being to help himself or to resist having things done to him. And that is precisely the world that the humanitarian arranges when he gets his way. … Hence the humanitarian feels the utmost gratification when he visits or hears of a country in which everyone is restricted to ration cards. Where subsistence is doled out, the desideratum has been achieved, of general want and a superior power to ’relieve’ it. The humanitarian in theory is the terrorist in action.” (Paterson, God of the Machine, pp. 241–42.) |
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| 1993-03 | "'Doing God's Work' in Somalia," Rothbard–Rockwell Report 4, no. 3 (Burlingame, CA: Center for Libertarian Studies, March 1993), pp. 9, 12.
Reprinted as "'Doing God's Work' in Somalia," §9 of "War," pt. 3 of The Irrepressible Rothbard: The Rothbard–Rockwell Report Essays of Murray N. Rothbard, ed. Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. (Burlingame, CA: Center for Libertarian Studies, 2000), pp. 199, 204. |
In the February RRR, we blasted the Somalian invasion and cited Isabel Paterson |
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| In short, the food ”crisis” has been deliberately created by the Somalian government—by Barre and his successors—in order to exert control over the Somali population, to tell them when and who shall or shall not eat. The humanitarian, said Paterson, is only happy when a country is filled with breadlines and hospitals. The humanitarian with the guillotine! | ||||
| 1993-09 | "Somalia," §2 of "Where Intervene Next?" Rothbard–Rockwell Report 4, no. 9 (Burlingame, CA: Center for Libertarian Studies, September 1993), p. 6.
Reprinted as "Somalia," §2 of "Where Intervene Next?," §11 of "War," pt. 3 of The Irrepressible Rothbard: The Rothbard–Rockwell Report Essays of Murray N. Rothbard, ed. Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. (Burlingame, CA: Center for Libertarian Studies, 2000), p. 212. |
All these events escalated and unified Somali hatred against the UN and against the U.S. in particular, as usual the main agitator and arm-twister inside the UN for massive intervention. Finally, Aididians ambushed American troops, killing four U.S. servicemen. U.S. blood is now drawn, and the Clinton regime is, of course and as we predicted, dropping the humanitarian/food mask, and taking up more and more of the gun, vowing retaliation, war crimes trials, and the usual apparatus of armed vengeance. Isabel Paterson’s Humanitarian has indeed trotted out the Guillotine. | 387 KB | |
| 2007 (posthumous) | The Betrayal of the American Right | "World War II: The Nadir," ch. 6 of The Betrayal of the American Right (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2007), pp. 59–60. | The third important wartime libertarian book by a woman was written by Isabel Paterson, who had made her mark as an author of several flapper-type novels in the 1920s and who had been a long-time regular columnist for the New York Herald-Tribune Review of Books. Her nonfiction The God of the Machine was an eccentric but important event in libertarian thought. The book was a series of essays, some turgid and marked by the intrusive use of electrical engineering analogies in social affairs; but these essays were marked by flashes of brilliant insight and analysis. Particularly important were her chapters on the State promotion of monopoly after the Civil War, her demonstration of the impossibility of “public” ownership, and her defense of the gold standard. The two chapters with the greatest impact among libertarians were “The Humanitarian with the Guillotine,” a brilliant critique of do-gooding and its consequence, the welfarist ethic; and “Our Japanized Educational System,” in which Mrs. Paterson delivered a blistering philosophical critique of progressive education, a critique that was to help ignite the reaction against progressivism in the post-war era. Thus, Mrs. Paterson eloquently explained the interconnection of welfarism, parasitism, and coercion as follows:What can one human being actually do for another? He can give from his own funds and his own time whatever he can spare. But he cannot bestow faculties which nature has denied nor give away his own subsistence without becoming dependent himself. If he earns what he gives away, he must earn it first. … But supposing he has no means of his own, and still imagines that he can make “helping others” at once his primary purpose and the normal way of life, which is the central doctrine of the humanitarian creed, how is he to go about it? … |
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