Beggars in Spain Read Online Free PDF Page B

has slowly been forced to follow.”
    “Your father held that belief all along,” Susan said. “Eat your peas, Leisha.” Leisha ate her peas. Susan and Daddy had only been married less than a year; it still felt a little strange to have her there. But nice. Daddy said Susan was a valuable addition to their household: intelligent, motivated, and cheerful. Like Leisha herself.
    “Remember, Leisha,” Camden said, “a man’s worth to society and to himself doesn’t rest on what he thinks other people should do or be or feel, but on himself. On what he can actually do, and do well. People trade what they do well, and everyone benefits. The basic tool of civilization is the contract. Contracts are voluntary and mutually beneficial. As opposed to coercion, which is wrong.”
    “The strong have no right to take anything from the weak by force,” Susan said. “Alice, eat your peas, too, honey.”
    “Nor the weak to take anything by force from the strong,” Camden said. “That’s the basis of what you’ll hear Kenzo Yagai discuss tonight, Leisha.”
    Alice said, “I don’t like peas.”
    Camden said, “Your body does. They’re good for you.”
    Alice smiled. Leisha felt her heart lift; Alice didn’t smile much at dinner any more. “My body doesn’t have a contract with the peas.”
    Camden said, a little impatiently, “Yes, it does. Your body benefits from them. Now eat.”
    Alice’s smile vanished. Leisha looked down at her plate. Suddenly she saw a way out. “No, Daddy, look—Alice’s body benefits, but the peas don’t! It’s not a mutually beneficial consideration, so there’s no contract! Alice is right!”
    Camden let out a shout of laughter. To Susan he said, “Eleven years old… eleven .” Even Alice smiled, and Leisha waved her spoon triumphantly, light glinting off the bowl and dancing silver on the opposite wall.
    But even so, Alice did not want to go hear Kenzo Yagai. She was goingto sleep over at her friend Julie’s house; they were going to curl their hair together. More surprisingly, Susan wasn’t coming either. She and Daddy looked at each other a little funny at the front door, Leisha thought, but Leisha was too excited to think about this. She was going to hear Kenzo Yagai .
    Yagai was a small man, dark and slim. Leisha liked his accent. She liked, too, something about him that took her a while to name. “Daddy,” she whispered in the half-darkness of the auditorium, “he’s a joyful man.”
    Daddy hugged her in the darkness.
    Yagai spoke about spirituality and economics. “A man’s spirituality, which is only his dignity as a man, rests on his own efforts. Dignity and worth are not automatically conferred by aristocratic birth; we have only to look at history to see that. Dignity and worth are not automatically conferred by inherited wealth. A great heir may be a thief, a wastrel, cruel, an exploiter, a person who leaves the world much poorer than he found it. Nor are dignity and worth automatically conferred by existence itself. A mass murderer exists, but is of negative worth to his society and possesses no dignity in his lust to kill.
    “No, the only dignity, the only spirituality, rests on what a man can achieve with his own efforts. To rob a man of the chance to achieve, and to trade what he achieves with others, is to rob him of his spiritual dignity as a man. This is why communism has failed in our time. All coercion—all force to take from a man his own efforts to achieve—causes spiritual damage and weakens a society. Conscription, theft, fraud, violence, welfare, lack of legislative representation— all rob a man of his chance to choose, to achieve on his own, to trade the results of his achievement with others. Coercion is a cheat. It produces nothing new. Only freedom—the freedom to achieve, the freedom to trade freely the results of achievement—creates the environment proper to the dignity and spirituality of man.”
    Leisha applauded so hard her hands