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Show 'jjt Subversion o Q. By GEORGE S.BENSON President of Harding College ) 1 (V T Searcy.Arkansas E3 1 1 HOWEVER successful America's system of free enterprise has been, faith in planned economy has spread rapidly over this nation's na-tion's political thinking in the last 25 years. It is strange that the world's most prosperous and influential people should forget how its power was built, and think about imitating a plan that fails every time it is tried, but that's the picture. ' How did planned economy get into the picture in the United States ? this is the country with no peasant class! It is here that laborers drive' their own motor cars. This is the land where farmers live like lords in the older countries. It must have been a strange set of circumstances circum-stances that turned the eyes of a favored people to look with envy at under-fed' and over-worked races beyond the seas. Happened AFTER Liberty Bell This Way had been silent 150 years, the Statue of Liberty grew green with tarnish and people began taking freedom for granted. Carefree descendants descen-dants of men who endured Valley Forge ceased to appreciate their costly birthright; simply had no idea how it would seem to be without freedom. Sly digs at America and her people were swallowed down by an open minded generation. '" Protected by the free-speech clause in bur Constitution, soapbox soap-box orators started braying against invested capital. Crafty minds coined such slurs as "entrenched "en-trenched greed" and "economic royalists" to stir up envy and make success in business seem dishonorable. Wordy wars against "coupon clippers" frightened investors, in-vestors, large and small, and choked the fiow of capital into business. Taught IT IS NOT possible in Inertia any country to provide abundant lives for the masses by raiding the rich, but the idea was hatched and spread around in America. Armies of idle people. were trained to rely on government instead of on themselves. Even in schools supported sup-ported by the state, boys and girls learned to question the value of individual opportunity, a cardinal car-dinal liberty. :' War came, and it was two years old before victory was even reasonably certain. Government rightly seized the nation's resources re-sources and manufacturing plants, and soon America's breadwinners bread-winners were in war work, drawing draw-ing the highest pay they ever heard of; Uncle Sam going in debt 150 million dollars a day. Things to buy became scarce, and loose money rattled in every pocket. ' Quite naturally people gave government the credit when, after four years of government management, man-agement, they had more money than they could spend. Actually the facts were not related. When a public debt, that .approximates the country's worth, keeps growing, grow-ing, people are not prosperous even if their wallets do bulge with "lettuce" because there are not enough things to buy. ' |