The Essence of Americanism

The Essence of Americanism SOMEONE ONCE SAID: It isn't that Christianity has been tried and found wanting; it has been tried and found difficult-and abandoned. Perhaps the same thing might be said about freedom. The American people are becoming more and more afraid of, and are running away from, their own revolution. I think that state ment takes a bit of documentation. I would like to go back, a little over three centuries in our history, to the year 1620, which was the oc casion of the landing of our Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth Rock. That lit tle colony began its career in a con dition of pure and unadulterated communism. For it made no differ ence how much or how little any This article was delivered as a speech in December 1961. Government spending and inflation, of course, have increased sharply beyond the figures applicable then. member of that colony produced; all the produce went into a common warehouse under authority, and the proceeds of the warehouse were doled out in accordance with the authori ty's idea of need. In short, the Pil grims began the practice of a prin ciple held up by Karl Marx two centuries later as the ideal of the Communist Party: From each ac cording to ability, to each according to need-and by force!

Now, there was a good reason why these communalistic or communis tic practices were discontinued. It was because the members of the Pil grim colony were starving and dying. As a rule, that type of experience causes people to stop and think about it! Anyway, they did stop and think about it. During the third winter Governor Bradford got together with 645 646 THE FREEMAN November the remaining members of the col ony and said to them, in effect: "This coming spring we are going to try a new idea. We are going to drop the practice of 'from each according to ability, to each according to need.' We are going to try the idea of 'to each according to merit.' " And when Governor Bradford said that, he enunciated the private property principle as clearly and succinctly as any economist ever had. That prin ciple is nothing more nor less than each individual having a right to the fruits of his own labor. Next spring came, and it was observed that not only was father in the field but mother and the children were there, also. Governor Bradford records that "Any generall wante or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day."

It was by reason of the practice of this private property principle that there began in this country an era of growth and development which sooner or later had to lead to revo lutionary political ideas. And it did lead to what I refer to as the real American revolution. Now, I do not think of the real American revolution as the armed conflict we had with King George III. That was a reasonably minor fracas as such fracases go! The real Amer ican revolution was a novel concept or idea which broke with the whole political history of the world. Up until 1776 men had been contesting with each other, killing each other by the millions, over the age old question of which of the numer ous forms of authoritarianism-that is, man-made authority-should preside as sovereign over man. And then, in 1776, in the fraction of one sentence written into the Declara tion of Independence was stated the real American Revolution, the new idea, and it was this: "that all men are created equal; that they are en dowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." That was it. This is the essence of Americanism. This is the rock upon which the whole "Ameri can miracle" was founded.

This revolutionary concept was at once a spiritual, a political, and an economic concept. It was spiritual in that the writers of the Declaration recognized and publicly proclaimed that the Creator was the endower of man's rights, and thus the Creator is sovereign. It was political in implicitly de nying that the state is the endower of man's rights, thus declaring that the state is not sovereign. It was economic in the sense that if an individual has a right to his life, it follows that he has a right to sustain his life-the sustenance of life being nothing more nor less than the fruits of one's own labor. It is one thing to state such a rev olutionary concept as this; it's quite 1983 THE ESSENCE OF AMERICANISM 647 another thing to implement it-to put it into practice. To accomplish this, our Founding Fathers added two political instruments-the Consti tution and the Bill of Rights. These two instruments were essentially a set of prohibitions; prohibitions not against the people but against the thing the people, from their Old World experience, had learned to fear, namely, overextended govern ment.

Benefitsof LimitedGovernment The Constitution and the Bill of Rights more severely limited gov ernment than government had ever before been limited in the history of the world. And there were· benefits that flowed from this severe limita tion of the state. Number One, there wasn't a sin gle person who turned to the gov ernment for security, welfare, or prosperity because government was so limited that it had nothing on hand to dispense, nor did it then have the power to take from some that it might give to others. To what or to whom do people turn if they cannot turn to government for security, welfare, or prosperity? They turn where they should turn-to them selves. As a result of this discipline founded on the concept that the Cre ator, not the state, is the endower of man's rights, we developed in this country on an unprecedented scale a quality of character that Emerson referred to as "self-reliance." All over the world the American people gained the reputation of being self reliant.

There was another benefit that flowed from this severe limitation of government. When government is limited to the inhibition of the de structive actions of men-that is, when it is limited to inhibiting fraud and depredation, violence and mis representation, when it is limited to invoking a common justice-then there is no organized force standing against the productive or creative actions of citizens. As a consequence of this limitation on government, there occurred a freeing, a releas ing, of creative human energy, on an unprecedented scale. This was the combination mainly responsible for the "American mir acle," founded on the belief that the Creator, not the state, is the en dower of man's rights. This manifested itself among the people as individual freedom of choice. People had freedom of choice as to how they employed them selves. They had freedom of choice as to what they did with the fruits of their own labor.

But something happened to this remarkable idea of ours, this revo lutionary concept. It seems that the people we placed in government of fice as our agents made a discovery. Having acquisitive instincts for af648 THE FREEMAN November ftuence and power over others-as indeed some of us do-they discov ered that the force which inheres in government, which the people had delegated to them in order to inhibit the destructive actions of man, this monopoly of force could be used to invade the productive and creative areas in society-one of which is the business sector. And they also found that if they incurred any deficits by their interventions, the same gov ernment force could be used to col lect the wherewithal to pay the bills. I would like to suggest to you that the extent to which government in America has departed from the orig inal design of inhibiting the de structive actions of man and invok ing a common justice; the extent to which government has invaded the productive and creative areas; the extent to which the government in this country has assumed the re sponsibility for the security, wel fare, and prosperity of our people is a measure of the extent to which so cialism and communism have devel oped here in this land of ours.

The Lengthening Shadow Now then, can we measure this development? Not precisely, but we can get a fair idea of it by referring to something I said a moment ago about one of our early characteris tics as a nation-individual freedom of choice as to the use of the fruits of one's own labor. If you will measure the loss in freedom of choice in this matter, you will get an idea of what is going on. There was a time, about 120 years ago, when the average citizen had somewhere between 95 and 98 per cent freedom of choice with each of his income dollars. That was be cause the tax take of the govern ment-federal, state, and local-was between 2 and 5 per cent of the earned income of the people. But, as the emphasis shifted from this ear lier design, as government began to move in to invade the productive and creative areas and to assume the re sponsibility for the security, wel fare, and prosperity of the people, the percentage of the take of the peo ple's earned income increased. The percentage of the take kept going up and up and up until today it's not 2 to 5 per cent. It is now over 35 per cent.

Many of my friends say to me, "Oh, Read, why get so excited about that? We still have, on the average, 65 per cent freedom of choice with our in come dollars." I would like to interpolate here a moment and say that we ought to be careful how we use that term, "on the average." Take a person who works 40 hours a week, who goes to work at 8:00 o'clock in the morning, takes an hour off for lunch, works Monday through Friday. That's 40 hours. The average person in this country has to work all Monday and 1983 THE ESSENCE OF AMERICANISM 649 until 2:15 on Tuesday for the gov ernment before he can start working for himself. But, if the individual has been ex traordinarily successful, he finds that he has to work all day Monday, Tuesday, VVednesday,Thursday, and until noon on Friday for the govern ment before he can start earning for himself! Nonetheless, on the average, we do have 65 per cent freedom of choice with our earned income. But, please take no solace from this fact for it has been discovered, as research work has been done on the fiscal be havior of nations covering a period of many centuries-this is a very important point-that whenever the take of the people's earned income by government reaches a certain level-20 or 25 per cent-it is no longer politically expedient to pay for the costs of government by direct tax levies. Governments then resort to inflation as a means of financing their ventures. This is happening to us now! By "inflation" I mean in creasing the volume of money by the national government's fiscal policy.

Governments resort to inflation with popular support because the people apparently are naive enough to be lieve that they can have their cake and eat it, too. Many people do not realize that they cannot continue to enjoy so-called "benefits" from gov ernment without having to pay for them. They do not appreciate the fact that inflation is probably the most unjust and cruelest tax of all. Methods of Inflation There are numerous ways govern ments have inflated. You may recall reading in your history books about coin clipping. That was where the sovereign called in the coin of the realm and clipped off the edges. He kept the edges and returned the smaller pieces to the owners. That was a good stunt until the pieces got too small to be returned. During the French revolutionary period, the government got itself into dire financial straits and began to issue an irredeemable paper money, known as "assignats," secured, not by gold but by confiscated church properties. Well, of course, France went bankrupt under that.

In Argentina, a situation with which I am reasonably familiar, the policy ofthe national government has been to spend about 100 billion pe sos a year. But all they can collect by direct tax levies are 50 billion pe sos a year. How do they handle that? Very simple. They just print 50 bil lion pesos a year. You don't have to be a great economist to realize that when you increase the volume of money, everything else being equal, the value of money goes down. And when the value of money goes down, all things being equal, prices tend to rise. You can imagine what has hap650 THE FREEMAN November pened to bank accounts, insurance, social security, and to all forms of fixed income in Argentina. They are practically worthless. Now in this country, we have a method of inflation which has one distinguishing merit. It is so compli cated that hardly anyone can under stand it. What we do here is monetize debt.

The more we go in debt the more money we have. Since we started our program of monetizing debt and def icit financing, we have enormously increased the quantity of our money. You have observed that our dollar isn't worth quite as much as it used to be. Perhaps you have also ob served that prices are tending to in crease. The Russians, in my judgment, have the most honest system of dis honesty. There the government compels the people to buy govern ment bonds. And then, after the peo ple have bought the government bonds, the government cancels them. There are quite a number of Rus sians who are aware that some sort of chicanery is going on. Frankly, I wish we were using this system, because then more people would understand the significance of inflation. If we were inflating this crudely, our people wouldn't be fooled as they are now. What I am trying to say is this: Inflation is the fiscal concomitant of socialism or the welfare state or state interventionism-call it what you will. Inflation is a political weapon.

There are no other means of financ ing the welfare state except by infla tion. So, if you don't like inflation, there is only one thing you can do: assist in returning our government to its original principles. One of my hobbies is cooking and, therefore, I am familiar with the gadgets around the kitchen. One of the things with which I am familiar is a sponge. A sponge in some re spects resembles a good economy. A sponge will sop up an awful lot of mess; but when the sponge is satu rated, the sponge itself is a mess, and the only way you can make it useful again is to wring the mess out of it. I hope my analogy is clear. I want to say a few more things about inflation because it is partic ularly relevant to this country. To do this I want to take a look at some body else because it's always diffi cult to look at ourselves. Let's take a look at France, which in numerous respects has resembled the United States economically.

French Experience France began this thing I am talking about-that is, government invasion of productive and creative areas, government assuming the re sponsibility for the 'security, wel fare, and prosperity of the French people-just 47 years ago, in 1914.

1983 THE ESSENCE OF AMERICANISM 651 If my previous contentions are correct, the French franc should have lost some of its purchasing power in these 47 years for, I have argued, state intervention can be financed only by increasing the volume of the money and such increases result in a decline of the circulating medi um's value. Thus, the franc should have declined in value. How much? The French franc has less than one half of one per cent of the purchas ing value it had 47 years ago, or to put it another way, the franc has lost more than 991/2 per cent of its value in these few years, and by reason of inflation brought about by govern ment intervention. In Paris, during World War I, I bought a dinner for 5 francs, then the equivalent of the 1918 dollar. I didn't get to Paris again until 1947. I took a friend to lunch, admittedly at a better restaurant than the one I went to as a soldier boy. But I didn't pay 20 or 30 or 50 francs for the two luncheons. I paid 3,400 francs! I was there two years later with Mrs. Read, same restaurant, same food, because I wished to compare prices. It wasn't 3,400 but 4,100!Recently, when I was in Paris, the price for the same two luncheons was about 6,000 francs.

Visualize with me, if you can, a Frenchman back in the year 1914. Let's say he was in his late teens. A forethoughtful lad, he was looking forward to the year of 1961 when he would reach the age of retirement. So, at that time he bought a paid-up annuity, one which would return him 1,000 francs a month beginning January 1961. Well, back then he could have eaten as well on 1,000 francs as Grace Kelly's husband. But my doctor friends are of the opinion that no one can exist on only one meal every 30 days. That is a111,000 francs will buy today, and that would be a meal about one-third the qual ity that any of us would buy were we in France at this time. "Creeping" or "Galloping"? Inflation, in popular terms, is di vided into two types. There is what is called "creeping inflation," and what is called "galloping inflation." "Creeping inflation" is supposed to be the type that we are now experi encing.

I don't think the term is quite lusty enough to describe a dollar that has lost somewhere between 53 and 62 per cent of its value since 1939. "Galloping inflation" is the type that went on in Germany during the years after World War I, in France after the revolutionary period, in China recently, and in the Latin American countries today. Here is an example of what I mean. I hold in my hand the currency of Bolivia. This little piece is 10,000 Bolivianos. In 1935 this piece of pa per was worth 4,600 present-day dollars. Do you know what it's worth now? Eighty cents! That's what you 652 THE FREEMAN November call "galloping inflation." It was all brought about-they didn't have any wars-by government intervention ism. Now then, what I want to suggest is that inflation in this country has ever so many more catastrophic po tentials than has ever been the case in any other country in history. We here are the most advanced divi sion-of-Iabor society that has ever existed. That is, we are more spe cialized than any other people has ever been; we are further removed from self-subsistence.

Indeed, we are so specialized to day that everyone of us-everybody in this room, in the nation, even the farmer-is absolutely dependent upon a free, uninhibited exchange of our numerous specialties. That is a self-evident fact. Destroying the Circulatory System In any highly specialized economy you do not effect specialized ex changes by barter. You never ob serve a man going into a gasoline station saying, "Here is a goose; give me a gallon of gas." That's not the way to do it in a specialized econ omy. You use an economic circula tory system, which is money, the medium of exchange. This economic circulatory system, in some respects, can be likened to the circulatory system of the body, which is the blood stream. The circulatory system of the body picks up oxygen in the lungs and in gested food in the mid-section and distributes these specialties to the 30 trillion cells of the body. At those points it picks up carbon dioxide and waste matter and carries them off. I could put a hypodermic needle into one of your veins and thin your blood stream to the point where it would no longer make these exchanges, and when I reached that point, we could refer to you quite accurately in the past tense.

By the same token, you can thin your economic circulatory system, your medium of exchange, to the point where it will no longer circu larize the products and services of economic specialization. When this happens, the economy of our nation will be "discombobulated." Let me show you how it works. Right after the Armistice my squad ron was sent to Coblenz with the Army of Occupation. The German inflation was underway. I didn't know any more then about infla tion than most Americans do now. I liked what I experienced-as do most Americans now-because I got more marks every payday than the previ 0us payday-and not because of a raise in pay. I had security. The gov ernment was giving me food, shel ter, clothing, and so forth. I used the marks to shoot craps and play poker, and the more marks, the more fun. German inflation continued with mounting intensity and by 1923 it 1983 THE ESSENCE OF AMERICANISM 653 got to the point where 30 million marks would not buy a single loaf of bread.

About the time I arrived, an old man died and left his fortune to his two sons, 500,000 marks each. One boy was a frugal lad who never spent a pfennig of it. The other one was a playboy and spent it all on cham pagne parties. When the day came in 1923 that 30 million marks wouldn't buy a loaf of bread, the boy who had saved everything had noth ing, but the one who spent his inher itance on champagne parties was able to exchange the empty bottles for a dinner. The economy had re verted to barter. Those of you who are interested in doing something about this, have a right to ask yourselves a perfectly logical question: Has there ever been an instance, historically, when a country has been on this toboggan and succeeded in reversing itself? There have been some minor in stances. I will not attempt to enu merate them. The only significant one took place in England after the Napoleonic Wars.

How EnglandDid It England's debt, in relation to her resources, was larger than ours is now; her taxation was confiscatory; restrictions on the exchanges of goods and services were numerous, and there were strong controls on pro duction and prices. Had it not been for the smugglers, many people would have starved! Now, something happened in that situation, and we ought to take cog nizance of it. What happened there might be emulated here even though our problem is on a much larger scale. There were in England such men as John Bright and Richard Cobden, men. who understood the principle of freedom of exchange. Over in France, there was a politi cian by the name of Chevalier, and an economist named Frederic Bas tiat. Incidentally, if any of you have not read the little book by Bastiat enti tled, The Law, I commend it as the finest thing that I have ever read on the principles one ought to keep in mind when trying to judge for one self what the scope of government should be.

Bastiat was feeding his brilliant ideas to Cobden and Bright, and these men were preaching the mer its of freedom of exchange. Members of Parliament listened and, as a con sequence, there began the greatest reform movement in British history. Parliament repealed the Corn Laws, which here would be like re pealing subsidies to farmers. They repealed the Poor Laws, which here would be like repealing Social Se curity. And fortunately for them they had a monarch-her name was Vic toria-who relaxed the authority that the English people themselves 654 THE FREEMAN November believed to be implicit in her office. She gave them freedom in the sense that a prisoner on parole has free dom, a permissive kind of freedom but with lots of latitude. English men, as a result, roamed all over the world achieving unparalleled pros perity and building an enlightened empire. This development continued until just before World War I. Then the same old political disease set in again. What precisely is this disease that causes inflation and all these other troubles? It has many popular names, some of which I have men tioned, such as socialism, commu nism, state interventionism, and welfare statism. It has other names such as fascism and Nazism. It has some local names like New Deal, Fair Deal, New Republicanism, New Frontier, and the like.

A Dwindling Faith in Freedom But, if you will take a careful look at these so-called "progressive ideo logies," you will discover that each of them has a characteristic common to all the rest. This common charac teristic is a cell in the body politic which has a cancer-like capacity for inordinate growth. This character istic takes the form of a belief. It is a rapidly growing belief in the use oforganized force-govemment-not to carry out its original function of inhibiting the destructive actions of men and invoking a common justice, but to control the productive and creative activity of citizens in soci ety. That is all it is. Check anyone of these ideologies and see if this is not its essential characteristic. Here is an example of what I mean: I can remember the time when, if we wanted a house or housing, we re lied on private enterprise. First, we relied on the person who wanted a house. Second, we relied on the per sons who wanted to compete in the building. And third, we relied on those who thought they saw some advantage to themselves in loaning the money for the tools, material, and labor. Under that system of free en terprise, Americans built more square feet of housing per person than any other country on the face of the earth. Despite that remark able accomplishment, more and more people are coming to believe that the only way we can have adequate housing is to use government to take the earnings from some and give these earnings, in the form of hous ing, to others. In other words, we are right back where the Pilgrim Fa thers were in 1620-23 and Karl Marx was in 1847-from each according to ability, to each according to need, and by the use of force.

As this belief in the use of force as a means of creative accomplishment increases, the belief in free men that is, man acting freely, competi tively, cooperatively, voluntarily correspondingly diminishes. In1983 THE ESSENCE OF AMERICANISM 655 crease compulsion and freedom de clines. Therefore, the solution to this problem, if there be one, must take a positive form, namely, the resto ration of a faith in what free men can accomplish. Let me give you an example of how faith in free men is lost. IfI were to go out today and ask the people I meet, "Should government deliver mail?" almost everybody would say, "Yes." Why would they say yes? One reason is that the government has pre-empted that activity, has had a monopoly for so many decades that entrepreneurs today would not know how to go about delivering mail if it were a private enterprise opportu nity. You know, you businessmen have a very odd characteristic. You don't spend any time working on something you will never get a chance to try out!

Anyway, I did a little research job a while ago and found that we de liver more pounds of milk in this country than we do pounds of mail. I next made a more startling discov ery. Milk is more perishable than a love-letter, a catalogue, or things of that sort. And third, I found out that we deliver milk more efficiently and more cheaply. I asked myself what appeared to be a logical question: Why should not private enterprise deliver mail? We deliver freight, and that's heavier. But many people have lost faith in themselves to deliver as simple a thing as a letter! Who are these people who have lost faith in themselves to deliver a let ter? I am going to stick just to the subject of delivery and to recent times. Less than a hundred years ago the human voice could be delivered the distance that one champion hog caller could effectively communicate with another champion hog-caller, which I have estimated at about 44 yards. Since that time man, acting freely, privately, competitively, vol untarily, has discovered how to de liver the human voice around the earth in 1/7 of a second-one million times as far in about the same time that the voice of one hog-caller reached the ear of the other. When men were free to try, they found out how to deliver an event like the Rose Bowl game in motion and in color into your living room while it is going on. When men were free to try, they found out how to deliver 115 indi viduals from Los Angeles to Balti more in three hours and nineteen minutes. When men are free to try, they deliver gas from a hole in the ground in Texas to my range at Ir vington, New York, without subsidy and at low prices. Men who are free to try have discovered how to deliver 64 ounces of oil from the Persian Gulf to our eastern seaboard, more than half the way around the world for less money than government will deli ver a one-ounce letter across the street in your home town. And the 656 THE FREEMAN November people who accomplish these mira cles have lost faith in their capacity to deliver a letter, which is a Boy Scout job. You may get the idea that when it comes to productive and cre ative work, I have more faith in free men than in government.

Now then, why is this happening to us? I don't know all the reasons. I am not sure that anyone does. If pressed, however, for the best rea son I could give, the most profound one, it would be this: the American people, by and large, have lost track of the spiritual antecedent of the American miracle. You are given a choice: either you accept the idea of the Creator as the endower of man's rights, or you submit to the idea that the state is the endower of man's rights. I double-dare any of you to offer a third alternative. We have forgotten the real source of our rights and are suffering the consequences. Millions of people, aware that something is wrong, look around for someone to blame. They dislike so cialism and communism and give lip service to their dislike. They sputter about the New Frontier and Modern Republicanism. But, among the mil lions who say they don't like these ideologies, you cannot find one in ten thousand whom you yourself will designate as a skilled, accomplished expositor of socialism's opposite-the free market, private property, lim ited government philosophy with its moral and spiritual antecedents. How many people do you know who are knowledgeable in this matter? Very few, I dare say.

Developing Leadership No wonder we are losing the bat tle! The problem thenthe real problem-is developing a leader ship for this philosophy, persons from different walks of life who under stand and can explain this philoso phy. This leadership functions at three levels. The first level requires that an individual achieve that degree of understanding which makes it ut terly impossible for him to have any hand in supporting or giving any encouragement to any socialistic ac tivities. Leadership at this level doesn't demand any creative writ ing, thinking, and talking, but it does require an understanding of what things are really socialistic, how ever disguised. People reject social ism in name, but once any socialistic activity has been Americanized, nearly everybody thinks it's all right. So you have to take the definition of socialism-state ownership and control of the means of production and check our current practices against this definition.

As a matter of fact, you should read the ten points of the Communist Manifesto and see how close we have come to achieving them right here in America. It's amazing. The second level of leadership is 1983 THE ESSENCE OF AMERICANISM 657 reached when you achieve that de gree of understanding and exposi tion which makes it possible to ex pose the fallacies of socialism and set forth some of the principles of freedom to those who come within your own personal orbit. Now, this takes a lot more doing. One of the things you have to do to achieve this second level of lead ership is some studying. Most people have to, at any rate, and one of the reasons the Foundation for Eco nomic Education exists is to help such people. At the Foundation we are trying to understand the free dom philosophy better ourselves, and we seek ways of explaining it with greater clarity. The results appear in single page releases, in a monthly journal, in books and pamphlets, in lectures, seminars, and the like. Our journal, The Freeman, for instance, is available to anyone on request. We impose no other condition.

The third level of leadership is to achieve that excellence in under standing and exposition which will cause other persons to seek you out as a tutor. That is the highest you can go, but there is no limit as to how far you can go in becoming a good tutor. When you operate at this highest level of leadership, you must rely only on the power of attraction. Let me explain what I mean by this. On April 22 we had St. Andrew's Day at my golf club. About 150 of us were present, including yours truly. When I arrived at the club, the other 149 did not say, "Leonard, won't you please play with me? Won't you please show me the proper stance, the proper grip, the proper swing?" They didn't do it. You know why? Because by now those fellows are aware of my incompetence as a golfer. But if you were to wave a magic wand and make of me, all of a sudden, a Sam Snead, a Ben Hogan, an Arnold Palmer, or the like, watch the pic ture change! Every member of that club would sit at my feet hoping to learn from me how to improve his own game. This is the power of at traction. You cannot do well at any subject without an audience auto matically forming around you. Trust me on that.

If you want to be helpful to the cause of freedom in this country, seek to become a skilled expositor. If you have worked at the philosophy of freedom and an audience isn't form ing, don't write and ask what the matter is. Just go back and do more of your homework. ! Actually, when you get into this third level of leadership, you have to use methods that are consonant with your objective. Suppose, for in stance, that my objective were your demise. I could use some fairly low grade methods, couldn't I? But now, suppose my objective to be the mak ing of a great poet out of you. What could I do about that? Not a thing658 THE FREEMAN unless by some miracle I first learned to distinguish good poetry from bad, and then learned to impart this knowledge to you. The philosophy of freedom is at the very pinnacle of the hierarchy of values; and if you wish to further the cause of freedom, you must use methods that are consonant with your objective. This means relying on the power of attraction.

Let me conclude with a final thought. This business of freedom is an ore that lies much deeper than most of us realize. Too many of us are prospecting wastefully on the surface. Freedom isn't something to be bought cheaply. A great effort is required to dig up this ore that will save America. And where are we to find the miners? Well, I think maybe we will find them among those who are reason ably intelligent. I think we will find these miners of the freedom-ore among those who love this country. I think we will probably find them in this room. And if you were to ask me who, in my opinion, has the greatest responsibility as a miner, I would suggest that it is the attrac tive individual occupying the seat you are sitting in. ® ~~ »"Thou shalt not steal" presupposes private ownership. Sharing ideas suggests hav ing ideas to share. Charity is possible only if one has something to give. Plainly, the excellence of our performance as social beings stems from private ownership of our labor and its fruits, whether material, moral, intellectual, or spiritual.

~~ > >Legislatures, laws, courts, constabularies, bureaucracies can do little more than exert a mild influence along lines consistent with the current consensus. The consen sus moves this way or that in accord with its content; it rises when filled with truths and virtues and sinks when bogged down with nonsense. So, what I can do about the government depends upon the quality of the ideas I feed into the consensus. This defines both my limitation and my potentiality. ~~ »"More powerful than armies," thought Victor Hugo, "is an idea whose time has come." And more powerful, I would add, than political action or any other form of pseudo-suasion! Only ideas can reverse the present trend toward all-out statism.