No.201232[Reply]
that business and the enterprise system are in deep trouble, and the hour is late. Footnotes 1 . Variously called: the "free enterprise system," "capitalism," and the "profit system." The American political system of democracy under the rule of law is also under attack, often by the same individuals and organizations who seek to undermine the enterprise system. 2 . Richmond News Leader, June 8, 1970. Column of William F. Buckley, Jr. 3 . N.Y. Times Service article, reprinted Richmond Times-Dispatch, May 17, 1971. 4 . Stewart Alsop, Yale and the Deadly Danger, Newsweek, May 18. 1970. 5 . Editorial, Richmond Times-Dispatch, July 7, 1971. 6 . Dr. Milton Friedman, Prof. of Economics, U. of Chicago, writing a foreword to Dr. Arthur A. Shenfield's Rockford College lectures entitled "The Ideological War Against Western Society," copyrighted 1970 by Rockford College. 7 . Fortune. May, 1971, p. 145. This Fortune analysis of the Nader influence includes a reference to Nader's visit to a college where he was paid a lecture fee of $2,500 for "denouncing America's big corporations in venomous language . . . bringing (rousing and spontaneous) bursts of applause" when he was asked when he planned to run for President. 8 . The Washington Post, Column of William Raspberry, June 28, 1971. 9 . Jeffrey St. John, The Wall Street Journal, May 21, 1971. * . Italic emphasis added by Mr. Powell. 10 . Barron's National Business and Financial Weekly, "The Total Break with America, The Fifth Annual Conference of Socialist Scholars," Sept. 15, 1969. 11 . On many campuses freedom of speech has been denied to all who express moderate or conservative viewpoints. 12 . It has been estimated that the evening half-hour news programs of the networks reach daily some 50,000,000 Americans. 13 . One illustration of the type of article which should not go unanswered appeared in the popular "The New York" of July 19, 1971. This was entitled "A Populist Manifesto" by ultra liberal Jack Newfield – who argued that "the root need in our country is 'to redistribute wealth'." 14 . The recent "freeze" of prices and wages may well be justified by the current inflationary crisis. But if imposed as a permanent measure the enterprise system will have sustained a near fatal blow.
No.201233
already have seriously impaired the freedom of both business and labor, and indeed of the public generally. But most of the essential freedoms remain: private ownership, private profit, labor unions, collective bargaining, consumer choice, and a market economy in which competition largely determines price, quality and variety of the goods and services provided the consumer. In addition to the ideological attack on the system itself (discussed in this memorandum), its essentials also are threatened by inequitable taxation, and more recently by an inflation which has seemed uncontrollable.14 But whatever the causes of diminishing economic freedom may be, the truth is that freedom as a concept is indivisible. As the experience of the socialist and totalitarian states demonstrates, the contraction and denial of economic freedom is followed inevitably by governmental restrictions on other cherished rights. It is this message, above all others, that must be carried home to the American people. Conclusion It hardly need
No.201234
trvtth..
No.201251
Bvmo
