I just listened to Ward Connerly's speech to the Young America's Foundation from August the first, and I disagree with a major point of his. He maintains that liberals believe ill of man kind and that the government is the solution to protect man from himself, but that conservatives believe well of man and that he doesn't need government to choose good. I believe that is exactly backwards.

Liberals believe badly of everyone else, but they know they have good intentions and that makes them righteous. They never seem to understand that everyone else believes they are righteous, as well. Liberals believe that Stalin did so much evil because he was a Bad Man, but they know they are good and, if only they had his power, they could do better.

But governments, like businesses and churches, are just arrangements of people. There is no reason that a government should be more righteous than any of these, distrusted, organizations. A conservative knows that, because all human beings, from FDR to Reagan, are flawed people, sinful and capable of causing great suffering. Whether this is caused by malevolence or ignorance makes little difference to the sufferer.

The differences between governments and social organizations, like businesses, is then how the different processes and institutions make people behave. The basic units of construction, people, are the same; what matters is the arrangement. And here's the difference: as Mr. Connerly said, you can't choose your government, but you can choose your employer. Accepting a lower wage to work in a place that makes you happier is a choice and it's a choice that many people make every day. There are many well-paying, stressful jobs that go unfilled because no amount of mere money is worth the aggravation, and that's perfectly compatible with capitalism. When people have choices, you must be kind or they will trade with others. This may be a machiavellian goodness, but when the choice is compulsory kindness or government tyranny, the choice seems obvious to me. If you are waiting for spontaneous goodness, I understand heaven will be quite pleasant.

Which brings us to the topic of Mr. Connerly's speech: race and minorities. There is one great flaw in a democracy: it must always serve the majority. It has no choice but to be Majoritarianism. Thomas Sowell documents in his book Applied Economics that government hiring practices changed radically in the '60's, from blatant discrimination to quota-based hiring and he points out that it is unlikely that the entire bureaucracy became enlightened at the same time. The mood had merely changed from the majority desiring supremacy to the majority desiring self-righteousness. But, what the minority wants can't be given, a democracy can only give to a minority what the majority wants to give it.

But the market does otherwise. The market can provide whatever there is enough demand to make the trade profitable. It doesn't require the majority the decide that the minority in question is worth serving. In the south, we've tried the majority desiring to subjugate the minorities; in the northern ghettos like Cabrini Green, we've tried the majority desiring to help the minorities against their will. Perhaps more effort should be directed towards allowing any individual whatever to establish their own destiny, which can never be through the government, as the government is full of people, I'm not sure I trust them folk.