Who can say that the two trends would not converge? Why, if we allow doctors to kill their patients at their patients' request, could not the national health care system, whose funds would pay for treatment, decide that some people were a burden on the system and mandate that they be euthanized?

Such a scenario is far-fetched. It gives a little insight, however, into the interconnection of the value of the individual person, the freedom of the economy and the moral values which govern our society. A government, even a democratic government, which controls our economic decisions for us also controls what moral decisions we can make. It controls, ultimately, the values which we hold dear. It controls us as individual persons.

HARVARD STUDENTS do not, I believe, wish to see poverty increase. They do not wish for a government which devalues the individual person. But without a morality which holds the individual person dear, and with ideology which believes economic freedom may be separated from personal freedom, most Harvard students end up devaluing the worth of the individual person.

Freedom means more than writing whatever one wants in a newspaper. It requires more than believing "freedom from want" can come from a massive welfare state. It requires a freedom to live, a freedom to screw up and know you are the one that erred, and a freedom to do good for others, through investment or through charitable giving.

Only individual persons can do good for one another. If we ask the government to do all for us, we will lose our prosperity, lose our ability to do good for others and, finally, lose our dignity as individual persons. We will have become mere instruments in the hands of others. Books, automobiles, printing presses, factories and plows are instruments for the fulfillment of human happiness. But beyond these tools, human beings are the only ones who can freely help each other and value each other. If we let them.

It's time Harvard thought about letting them.

Liam Thomas Aquinas Ford '91-'92 will turn in his thesis in two days, and thinks, therefore, that he will graduate. The Editors hope he finds a job that suits him. Like running the Libertarian Party.

Democracy provides political freedom, but that freedom is fraught with the danger that citizens will delegate too much power to their government. That's happening now in this country.