and large balance of advantages before we do. By relying pri-
marily on voluntary co-operation and private enterprise, in both
economic and other activities, we can insure that the private sec-
tor is a check on the powers of the governmental sector and an
effective protection of freedom of speech, of religion, and of
thought.

The second broad principle is that government power must
be dispersed. If government is to exercise power, better in the
county than in the state, better in the state than in Washington.
If I do not like what my local community does, be it in sewage
disposal, or zoning, or schools, I can move to another local com-
munity, and though few may take this step, the mere possibility
acts as a check. If I do not like what my state does, I can move
to another. If I do not like what Washington imposes, I have few
alternatives in this world of jealous nations.

The very difficulty of avoiding the enactments of the federal
government is of course the great attraction of centralization to
many of its proponents. It will enable them more effectively,
they believe, to legislate programs that -- as they see it -- are in
the interest of the public, whether it be the transfer of income
from the rich to the poor or from private to governmental pur-
poses. They are in a sense right. But this coin has two sides. The
power to do good is also the power to do harm; those who con-
trol the power today may not tomorrow; and, more important,
what one man regards as good, another may regard as harm.
The great tragedy of the drive to centralization, as of the drive
to extend the scope of government in general, is that it is mostly
led by men of good will who will be the first to rue its
consequences.

The preservation of freedom is the protective reason for limit-
ing and decentralizing governmental power. But there is also a
constructive reason. The great advances of civilization, whether
in architecture or painting, in science or literature, in industry or
agriculture, have never come from centralized government. Co-
lumbus did not set out to seek a new route to China in response
to a majority directive of a parliament, though he was partly
financed by an absolute monarch. Newton and Leibnitz; Ein-
stein and Bohr; Shakespeare, Milton, and Pasternak; Whitney,
McCormick, Edison, and Ford; Jane Addams, Florence Night-

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