• CHAPTER 5 • EMERGENCE OF A LEADERSHIP

Every man, however obscure, however removed from the general recognition, is one of a group of men impressible for good, and impressible for evil, and it is in the nature of things that he cannot really improve himself without in some degree improving other men.

CHARLES DICKENS

A STUDY of significant political movements or vast social shifts will reveal that every one of them—good or bad—has been led by an infinitesimal minority. Never has one of these changes been accompanied by mass understanding, nor should such ever be expected. All movements have had their leaders. Always there has been someone “at the head of the class,” always someone who knows more about it than others.

Using hindsight, we discover that the individuals who have been leaders came from strange and odd beginnings. No one of them could have been predicted ahead of time. The leader of one movement, nearly two thousand years ago, was born in a manger. Recently, the leader of a bad movement was an obscure Austrian paper hanger.

From where will come the leader or leaders of our own required renaissance? I do not know; you do not know; the individual himself or herself does not know, for all of us are possessed of aptitudes and potentialities about which we are unaware. One point is clear: The leaders will be born of the renaissance itself. They will come from strange and odd places; from the poor as well as the rich, from the distaff side as well as the male, from those who have had little in the way of formal education as well as from Ph.D.’s, from laborers as well as captains of industry, from laymen as well as clergy, from only God knows where! We merely know that there will be a new crop of leaders.

Look Not to Politicians

In the kind of an open society here envisioned, we must not look for the type of leadership I have in mind from seekers after political office, that is, from those who vie for power. For, as Lord Acton warned, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Only now and then in history can we find a person who had power and who did not become drunk with it. Lorenzo the Magnificent inherited the headship of Florence. But he was not a ruler in the authoritarian sense. Like the chief executive officer of a well-managed company, he accorded everyone a wide latitude of choice; he gave them their heads, so to speak. It appears that he limited himself to the inhibition of destructive actions. Not being corrupted by the power of his office, there was an outburst of creative energy and the Florentines led the Renaissance.

Another example can be noted in the person of Queen Victoria. She, also, inherited power, but used it sparingly. She gave Englishmen freedom in the sense that a prisoner on parole has freedom. She had the power to control them but this she relaxed and they roamed all over the earth building empire and, until then, an unheard of prosperity.

Leadership Must Come from the People

These examples, however, are historical accidents. They are exceptions to the rule. Certainly, in a society where public officials are democratically chosen, we find few instances of those elected deploring excessive powers, of any sincere attempts to limit themselves. The record shows the reverse to be true.

The ideal society, therefore, must severely limit its political officialdom, denying it any degree of rulership in the overriding sense. With this done, the leadership must spring from among the people. Unless there emerges in a society an aristocracy of high principle, that society can never be free.

With the above as a background, let us now examine libertarian leadership as it relates to the present political situation in the U.S.A.

From Left to Right

To grasp the freedom problem as we see it, visualize what a statistician would call a Normal Curve—fat at the middle and thin at the ends. Now, represent the population of the U.S.A. by vertical bands of this curve. Let the short band at the extreme left symbolize the few articulate, effective antagonists of freedom. Let the equally short band at the extreme right symbolize the few articulate, effective protagonists of individual liberty and its related legal, ethical, and spiritual institutions. Between these two bands exist the many millions, more or less indifferent, as uninterested in understanding the nature of society and its political institutions as are most people in understanding the composition of a symphony; who, at best, can only become “listeners” or followers of one camp or the other. A disproportionately large number of these are following the leftist camp today because those in the rightist camp are failing to do their homework. The ones symbolized by the band at the right are not manifesting the qualities of attraction and leadership of which they are capable. Thus, we conclude that the solution of problems relating to a free society depends upon the emergence of an informed leadership devoted to freedom.

In short, this is a leadership problem, not a mass reformation problem. If we had no way of remedying our situation except as the millions come to master the complexities of economic, social, political, and moral philosophy, we would not be warranted in spending a moment of our lives in this undertaking—it would be like expecting a majority of adult Americans to compose symphonies.

Libertarian Leaders Are Rare

If the problem is as we visualize it, then it is important to search for potential leaders with a devotion to those moral principles upon which the philosophy of freedom and, therefore, a free economy must rest. It is our conviction that, although these potential leaders are to be found in every walk of life, they may be as rare as composers of symphonies.

Assuredly, there was no large percentage of the American colonists capable of writing the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, or the Federalist Papers. Only a remarkable leadership from varying walks of life, small in number, understood the fundamental principles of a free society. And even a smaller number were able to write and speak about these principles. Fortunately, for the cause of freedom, there were such men as Jefferson, Madison, Jay, Samuel and John Adams, James Otis (“A law against Natural Law is void”), Tom Paine, and such business and professional stalwarts as Franklin (printer), Robert Morris (banker), John Marshall (lawyer), Benjamin Rush (physician), Charles Carroll (lawyer and businessman), George Mason (lawyer and farmer), James Bowdoin and John Hancock (merchants). Then, too, there were such “ordinary” citizens as Isaac Sears, John Lamb, Gershom Mott, William Wiley, Thomas Robinson. And reflect upon the leadership devoted to freedom among the clergy:

JOHN WISE—The first colonist to justify village participation in local affairs by an appeal to political philosophy.

CHARLES TURNER—“The Scriptures cannot be rightfully expounded without explaining in a manner friendly to freedom.”
“Religious liberty is so blended with civil, that if one falls, it is not to be expected that the other will continue.”

DANIEL SHUTE—“Life, liberty, and property are
gifts of the Creator.”

RICHARD SALTER—“God never gives men up to be slaves until they lose their natural virtue and abandon themselves to slavery.”

JONATHAN MAYHEW—“Their felicity is to be governed by such men and laws as themselves approve.”

EZRA STILES—“Liberty, civil and religious, has sweet and attractive charms.”

What our country requires is a reincarnation of the distinguished thinking and leadership that went into the making of America, able to frame the age-old dream of liberty in contemporary idiom. Nothing less will suffice.

Now, we must ask this question: How is this leadership to be developed? The answer is as simple to state as it is difficult to achieve. Let each one of us try to attain such heights in understanding and clarity of exposition that others—the few whoever they may be—will be attracted to do likewise by reason of the inspiration, however modest, we may be able to provide.

The solution of our problem rests on the emergence of several thousand (Who can know the number?) creative thinkers, writers, speakers—exemplars of a devotion to freedom. A realistic criterion for self-appraisal? Find an answer to the question, “Am I improving?”

The improving person will offer his findings—facts, evidence, ideas, arguments—to any and all segments of the population. If we show improvement, all those with an affinity for freedom who are within our range will be attracted to the improved offerings. This Law of Attraction is the only power anyone needs who would aid in showing others the way to higher levels of understanding. Upgrading of others is a response to the magnetism of superiority, the hallmark of an improving person.