Wild Cards

The experiment with human freedom that has been carried out in America during the past two hundred years has amplified those ages, because free people are more innovative and productive. Freedom also produces a fertile atmosphere in which unusual people can take effective action as single individuals on behalf of their ideas. This fertilizes our civilization with a great diversity of ideas and provides a way in which those ideas can be implemented. The fundamental reason to support freedom is that it is that it is morally right. It is good, however, that it increases productivity and innovation, too.

There are now those who speak of a "post-industrial society.'' They claim that we have passed beyond the industrial age. They suggest that, to the extent we need farm and industrial products, these needs will be supplied by people in other countries that are anxious to provide us with living standards much higher than their own in return for our giving the world an unlimited supply of paper-shufflers, "decision-makers,'' and information gatherers.

Previous generations of Americans built dams, bridges, steel mills, chemical plants, aircraft factories, and a remarkable infrastructure of human productivity. This tradition has been extended by, for example, our computer industry. To an alarming extent, however, the most recent generation has primarily built large office buildings which house people who produce very little.

The new generation that is just now coming to power has taken this one step further. Deliberate destruction of productivity is being emphasized and promoted as a virtue. Pseudoenvironmentalism and the pseudoscience with which it is promoted advocates the destruction of human accomplishments and a return to "nature.'' Since this movement must co-exist with the past accomplishments of science and industry which have widespread respect, it simply claims that it, too, is a product of science. Truth and honesty have been discarded, but the word "science'' has been kept for political reasons . Our nuclear industry has been an early victim of this new anti-productivity movement.

With the new paradigm must also come the means for its perpetuation. With freedom, a bad idea does not last long. In free competition with better ideas, it is soon obsolete. Without freedom, a bad idea can become entrenched. Socialism provides the totalitarian context for that entrenchment. In America we now have socialism in education, socialism in basic research, socialism in retirement care and charity, and growing socialism in medicine. Can this drift away from freedom be stopped before it halts and reverses the progress of our civilization? I believe that the answer to this question is "yes!''

Fourth, and most importantly, American freedom produces and will be protected by her "wild cards.'' These are free, self-reliant individuals who have stepped forth upon our national stage each time that their country has needed them. America now, once again, needs her wild cards. She needed them in the 1770s, and in the 1860s, and in the 1940s. Each time she needed them - they were there. Dixy Lee Ray has shown us that they are still here today.

Our safety does not lie in our technology or in the weaknesses of our enemies. It lies primarily in the mobilization of the best qualities of the American people through the intelligence, work, and sacrifices of her wildcards. Each of us owes a debt to Dixy Lee Ray. The best way for us to pay that debt is for each of us, in our own way, to be a Wild Card for America.