(The version in the Fairfield County Weekly was unfortunately heavily edited for space considerations. Here is the full version.)

Do you suffer from drapetomania? Samuel Cartwright, an antebellum Louisiana doctor, coined the term just a decade before the Emancipation Proclamation to describe “a disease of the mind” that causes a slave to run away.

On the one hand, it is merely one example of a popular activity of the day, namely, finding pseudoscientific explanations to maintain the status quo of slavery. Another one, also coined by Cartwright, was dysaethesia aethiopica, the mental illness causing laziness among slaves. This racism wasn’t merely theoretical but had extended empirical work too: an 1840 census seemed to show more mental disorders among northern blacks than southern ones, biological and physiological case studies routinely concluded exactly what you expect, and anthropologists collected evidence that blacks and whites were actually different species. On the one hand, then, it is merely absurd and disturbing.

On the other hand, it is a chilling analogy. In a century and a half, will we look back with the same disgust at today’s politics and wonder how people could have believed the pseudoscientific explanations that kept the government in power over the people?

Theoretical work in redistributive politics builds models to determine from whom the government should take money and to whom it should give. Empirical work highlights two resonant images: the cases where people were helped by government programs and the cases where people are suffering because of the lack, or the low funding, of government programs.

Today’s commonly held ideas of an all-powerful government have no real basis in any science or history. They exist solely in the ether of public discourse. These are facts we all “know” and do not question. Millions of Americans are poor; therefore, government must provide welfare. Millions of Americans are uninsured; therefore, government must provide health care. Millions of Americans are unemployed; therefore government must provide jobs.

Just like the pseudoscientific racism of the nineteenth century, these arguments rarely appear in mainstream, scientific, peer-reviewed journals with comments. When they do, they are couched in the language of economics, just as drapetomania and others were couched in the language of real sciences.

In most cases, economic conclusions do not agree with the common political understanding: virtually all economists agree that minimum wage laws destroy jobs, that capital gains taxes distort investment, and that the “first-best” route to prosperity and peace is a small, limited government that only defends clearly defined property rights. Zero redistributions, zero pre-emptive wars, zero inflated currencies.

When economics does agree with the required political conclusions, they are usually prefaced with an understanding that we are in the world of the “second-best,” where, if removing prior intrusive government actions is not an option, we suggest tweaking the laws thisly and thusly. In other words, presuming we can’t eliminate the extensive government regulation on housing and mortgages, perhaps we should put restrictions on which interest is tax deductible, or perhaps we should offer subprime loans. If we can’t eliminate federal education, perhaps we should reward and punish based on some kind of tests.

Fairfield County was the entry point for tens of thousands of freed slaves as part of the underground railroad. We knew we were breaking the law and violating the accepted wisdom of the time. But we suffered from drapetomania. We were just crazy enough to help people escape tyranny.

We understood that from a moral perspective it was simply wrong to treat people as property. But if a majority can at any moment arbitrarily decide what to do with your stuff, then whose property is it really? And whose property are you?

If we are all each other’s masters, then we are also each other’s slaves.

Last week, our President-elect’s transitional website outlined his proposal of community service: “Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year.”

Did you think you were out of the woods because you’ve already graduated? Just don’t get too old: “Obama will encourage retiring Americans to serve by improving programs available for individuals over age 55.”

Within a few days, a quick but underreported contagion by those with freedom sickness caused him to change those words. Now the Obama administration will not “require” but merely “set a goal” and “encourage.” How will he encourage? For one thing, we will all be taxed to pay college students $40 per hour to do community service. “Encouragement” means taxing everybody to pay a few.

We have elected a President who promises change. But will the change be simply in how much more of the same we get? Bigger government, more regulations, more redistributions? Or will we have real change, and start thinking about ways to eventually bring all our troops home, abolish the Federal Reserve, shut down the Departments of Education, Labor, Homeland Security, and Energy, repeal the Patriot Act, and eliminate burdensome taxes and regulations?

Cartwright not only proposed the disease 150 years ago, he also proposed a “cure.” As you read it, think of welfare, and food stamps, and low gas prices, and affordable housing, and cheap mortgages to allow home ownership. Think of tasers and drugs laws and immigration restrictions and national IDs and curfews. Think of labor laws restricting too much work and FEMA to combat the weather.

“If treated kindly,” wrote Cartwright, “well fed and clothed, with fuel enough to keep a small fire burning at night, separated into families, each family having its own house – not permitted to run about at night, or to visit their neighbors, or to receive visits, or to use intoxicating liquors, and not overworked or exposed too much to the weather, they are very easily governed – more so than any other people in the world.”