I have argued frequently that the key to understanding the political challenge facing conservatives is that all of the various "issues" that dominate our politics are at root challenges to our moral self-confidence. The very heart of socialism -- and the heart of liberalism, for it is the same thing -- is the arrogant view that ordinary people are not morally competent to govern themselves or their community. This slander against the character of the American people is sugarcoated in a spurious compassion by liberals, but it is still poisonous to our national resolve to stay free. We won't find the courage to win the agenda of liberty until we stand once again on the solid ground of confidence that we are a people good enough to be trusted with our liberty and to wield it rightly.

The moral nature of the battle between socialism and American principle can be seen quite clearly in the case of Social Security, particularly in its origins. Conservative reform proposals are correct to condemn the economic foolishness of the current system, which systematically refuses to acknowledge that our long-term economic destiny is determined not by government planning, but by the creative genius of a free economy. Investment of retirement monies in the equity markets is not imprudent gambling; in due measure, it is the right use of the talents of today to lay the foundation for the prosperity of tomorrow. But arguments about the relative return of stock market investment and other, less dynamic forms of savings miss the essence of the Social Security issue. The question is not merely how to arrange our long term economic preparations today so that the future will be secure in terms of dollars. We must also be sure that we do so in a way that helps us remain a people capable of using those dollars as the material foundation of a national life of dignified liberty. Social Security reform is a moral question, yet another version of the only question we really face today -- do we still have the moral confidence to retain our freedom?

During the Great Depression, the material challenges were not the real threat to American liberty; the cause for concern was that they could be the occasion of a moral collapse capable of destroying us as a free people. It is ironic, then, that the fear of material poverty during the 1930s did in fact lead America to embrace a much greater threat to our liberty -- the socialist premise of the Social Security system. The advent of Social Security illustrates the danger that moments of low moral self-confidence present, which then can be exploited by liberals to our permanent national harm.

The 1934 report of the Committee on Economic Security became the basis for the FDR Social Security proposal. The argument of that report was simple. It may be paraphrased thus:

We are suffering because we have gone from an agrarian to a modern economy, from an economy of family-based production to a money-based economy in which dignity is calculated on income. So the family has failed, and can no longer take care of the elderly and children. But don't worry, because the government will ride to the rescue and provide American citizens with a guarantee of income and security that families and the economy can no longer provide.

They called this promise "compassionate," of course. But really it wasn't about compassion at all. As a people, we had gone through an awfully traumatic experience, and we were afraid. Many Americans were afraid of the future, and afraid that we could no longer walk a path of freedom with confidence. In opportunistic exploitation of that fear, the socialists of the 1930s cloaked us from harm in the "protective" armor of socialism, in the form of a Social Security system that is founded on the premise of our inability to take care of ourselves.

We have been clanking around in that armor for the last 60 years, ludicrously bound to hand over a large percentage of our wages in return for the psychological comfort of a meager but guaranteed subsistence. Government has grown enormously over this period, and most of its activities have taken a similar form of institutionalized skepticism about the ability of this people to manage its affairs. This systemic premise of fear of the future has justified the forced transfer of great quantities of what would have been our discretionary income into the hands of the government, and it has justified a system of tax and regulation targeted directly against our freedom.

Meanwhile, a wondrous thing was happening. Far from justifying the premises of the socialism of the 1930s, the enterprise of the free American people in the latter half of this century has produced results that founders of the Social Security system couldn't have dreamt of. They thought our economy would still be measured in billions, and it is now measured in the trillions. They couldn't even conceive of the success we have enjoyed.

But the prosperity of the past 60 years will ultimately be in vain if we do not take from it the obvious lessons. We have been treated like children whose parents keep them indoors with tales of the evils lurking outside. We can look back, now, over most of a century in which we were told that our safety lay in the government, and we can see that it was not true. We have sustained our own prosperity, and the government has simply made it harder, materially and psychologically, for us to do so. It is time that we once again resumed openly the responsibility for the job we have actually been doing all along.

Socialist economic planners, and politicians who profit from the current system in votes and influence, like to make us think that the issue of Social Security reform is very complicated. But it is not. If we intend to choose the dignity of freedom over the apparent comfort of socialism, we must simply apply the principle that those who earn the money ought to supervise how to invest it for their retirement. A free and responsible people -- a morally self-governing people -- should not subject itself to the indignity of handing over its earnings into a collective pool, controlled by government bureaucrats and politicians who will supposedly handle the money more responsibly than the citizens who earned it by the sweat of their brow. The Social Security scheme epitomizes our national temptation -- promoted by liberals at every turn -- to decide that we cannot be trusted to make good decisions ourselves.

Our national approach to the challenge of long term financial preparations must be to put it back on the basis of liberty, on the presumption of good and mature judgment in the citizenry, and supported by a doctrine of property that does not imply that our money is on loan from the government, but is truly ours to use as we judge best. Promises made must be kept, and those who have "contributed" to the current system must receive what is due them. But looking forward we must put in place a proprietary social security system, in which the people who earn the money invest it as they think best, and keep it in their name and under their control. We must replace "social security" with the true security of real liberty.

This is not hard to understand, and we should be losing our patience by now with politicians who tell us that it is. One wonderful thing about Ronald Reagan was that, because he thought in terms of principle, he knew that many issues that the opponents of liberty present as complicated matters for experts are really simple. With Social Security, as with most of the policy questions our nation faces, the question isn't what we should do, because we know what we should do. The question is whether we will find the moral and political will, the confidence, to do it.

We stand on the threshold of the new millennium facing a very simple decision. Will we continue to clank around in the armor of socialism, put on us in exploitation of our fears? Or are we going to throw off the constraining armor of that socialism and face the new millennium with the confidence of our freedom?