How NOT to Win Friends

Realizing for the first time that communism to attain social performance is bad because it is force, and that the same principle is equally bad by any other name, our “100 per cent American” developed a passion for the propagation of his newly found understanding. Ideas he had never before comprehended now seemed simple to him. And he became exasperated with those who remained as he had always been. Incessantly he pestered his friends, trying to shove his new-found ideas down their throats even before they understood them. Polite ones would give the appearance of listening, but he sensed that they were not conscious of what he was saying; that intellectually they were turning their backs on him. People began to think of him as a bore and a crank. His wife wondered why her invitations to dinner found more and more people with “other engagements.”

Something wasn’t quite right and, as after the banquet speech, he had the good sense to ponder, to take stock of himself. Where was he falling down? Surely, the truths he had discovered about freedom—the rejection of force in all creative areas—must be accepted by others, or his discoveries were useless. Force and slavery would triumph if he were the only one who understood the principles of liberty! The man in the street, the masses, had to know what he now knew! He was a crusader all right, but admittedly he wasn’t influencing anyone. Perhaps he was even making enemies for freedom’s cause.