The attempt by Socialism to substitute a governmental standard of happiness for individual desire and ambition is merely another attempt to legislate human mind and character. A government cannot make a man happy by law any more than it can make him moral or religious by the same means. All that law can do is to endeavor to place a man in such an environment that his moral or religious nature may be aroused and that his desire or ambition be encouraged. It was the inability to understand and realize this fact that caused the religious persecutions of past centuries when Catholics persecuted Protestants and Protestants persecuted Catholics, and both persecuted the Jews, and everybody thought that it was possible to legislate a man's belief and enforce it by the sanction of the law. Happiness, like religion, must have its impulse from within.
Furthermore, it is along this identical line of reasoning that Socialism is essentially un-American. The primary object of the government of the United States, the whole theory upon which our nation was formed, is not to give happiness to the individual. The Fathers of our country were too wise to attempt any such ridiculous undertaking. The ideal or object of the United States is to give equality of opportunity for each individual to work out his or her own salvation in a political, a moral or an economic sense. In other words, to give equality of opportunity for each individual to work out or achieve his or her own happiness. That is the only possible way in which happiness can be gained. For this reason the American people believe in public schools and child labor laws and other forms of social, not Socialistic, legislation, in order to help less fortunate individuals to help themselves, and not to help them in spite of themselves. The former plan is in accordance with the needs of human nature and with American ideas and ideals; the latter is the essential basis of Socialism and inevitably pauperizes and atrophies human character.
There is as much difference between social legislation and Socialism as there is between the common-sense advancement of the ideas of peace and the selfish or cowardly brand of treason that is known as pacifism. In both Socialism and pacifism the essential idea is that the individual should mentally "lie down" and "let George do it." In contrast with this, the common sense way to gain peace is actively to restrain wrong in order that right may triumph. The United States recently has been engaged in just this kind of an undertaking. Also, man is a social animal as well as an individual being, so social consciousness or social responsibility consists in the common responsibility of society to see that each individual gets a "square deal" in the form of equal opportunity for advancement by self effort.
In fact, the American ideal is to restrain human initiative only to the extent that is necessary to give equality of opportunity to all, and that the government should act only on the principle of the greatest good of the greatest number. Hence Americans believe that Rousseau was right when he said that the individual gives up a small part of his personal liberty, or license, in order to receive back full civil liberty, which is much greater because it has a wider outlook and possibilities and is guaranteed through the support of society. Furthermore, they believe that real liberty is freedom of individual action within the law as the expressed will of the people.
But everything depends upon the fact that the impulse to use this liberty must come from within, and not be commanded by a government from without. In the words of the Declaration of Independence, Americans believe "that all men are ... endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit [not the gift] of happiness." On this basis alone was this nation founded and has it prospered.
FOOTNOTES:
The Rebuilding of Europe, p. 63.