The Daily Express

Says Individual Liberty Depends on Self Action

By JOHN R. HENRY

MEMPHIS, Tenn., Feb. 18. (INS)—Better look to yourself, not to the government, to determine the fate of your individual liberty.

That sums up the views of Ed Lipscomb, new president of the Public Relations Society of America.

The Memphian, chief spokesman for the National Cotton Council, said he joins most American business and professional people in wondering how far the nation can afford to follow the "welfare state" philosophy.

Lipscomb frames the question this way:

"Shall we modern Americans accept the pagan principle of the all-powerful state and insignificant citizen in place of the concept that the single purpose of government is to secure the God-given rights and sovereignty of each individual?"

The public relations official said the answer is "slowly being worked out—not by Congress, or state legislatures, or labor leaders or heads of industry."

He explained:

"It is being worked out by you and me, and there are two things each of us can do."

Lipscomb explained:

"First, we can practice what we profess, and, second, we can preach each from his own personal pulpit, the principles we practice."

To illustrate briefly what he meant by practicing what we preach, Lipscomb said he recently "saw a classroom of young bankers criticize a farm speaker about government crop loans, and then act hurt when he asked about the tremendous contribution they were making to inflation by filling their vaults with government pegged bonds."

He declared that a major difficulty in halting any trend toward Socialism by way of the "welfare state" is in finding "a definite place at which to stand and fight."

Lipscomb, whose views are contained in a pamphlet distributed by The Foundation for Economic Freedom, continued:

"Sometimes it is easy to find that line where the majority is ready to say, this is it,' for example, on such issues as the proposal to socialized medicine.

"But, for instance, where does government protection of the individual from exploitation by low wages stop and cross the line, into socialistic use of police power to equalize or re-distribute income—at what minimum wage . . . 40c an hour . . . 75 or a dollar?"

Lipscomb, a champion of the free enterprise system, thinks that too many defenders of the "American way of life" approach their task in "a spirit of frustration and cynicism,"

He warned:

"There is no such thing as doing nothing on a problem of this kind. Inactivity simply is the result of a personal decision not to take action. Edmund Burke was right when he said that all that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in this world is for enough good men to do nothing."