Book Reviews

The title Do the Right Thing reflects Dr. Williams's political philosophy in two im portant respects: it is not enough to think the right thing-though all right action must start with right thinking-it is necessary to do, to act. Faith without works is mere lip service. Second, when one does act, one must do the right thing, the moral thing, not the expedient thing or the politic thing. Dr. Williams sees the source of American de cline in the twentieth century as moral rot, in both our private lives and our public institutions. In an age of philosophical and moral relativism and BOMFOG (the ubiquitous and false platitudes about unity in the brotherhood of man and fatherhood of God), Dr. Williams's honesty and analysis may be painful for some delicate souls. "Regardless of whose sensibilities are offended," he writes, "I do not hesitate to call things as I see them. Why? Because I care about our country and fear for its future as a free and prosperous nation. " More importantly, Dr.

Williams cares about truth. Williams is controversial, but then any one worth listening to is controversial. Long before William Safire thought of character izing Hillary Clinton as a congenital liar, Williams recognized the political class, es pecially Congress, as "charlatans, either ignorant or contemptuous of the Constitu tion." Williamsdoes not exaggerate. As one who worked on Capitol Hill for several years, I can attest to the accuracy of his observation. About the only thing sure to call forth more ridicule on the floor of Congress than a serious reference to the Constitution is a serious reference to the Bible as the Word of God. That means, of course, that many Congressmen cannot do the right thing, since they do not know or do not want to know what the right thing is. Dr. Williams groups his essays topically: "Race and Sex," "Government," "Educa tion," "The Environment and Health,"

"The International Scene," and "The Law and Society." A final collection, "Potpour ri," contains those columns not ea.-silyclas sifiable. On race, Dr. Williamswrites: "I consider myself fortunate to have had virtually all my education before it became fashionable for white people to like black people. That meant that my educators were free to chal lenge whatever nonsense I uttered without fear of accusations of racism." Now, he writes, "The grossly fraudulent education received by a majority of black students in government-owned schools is a major prob lem.... " Dr. Williams makes it clear, however, that the problem is not one of racism, but of socialism: White students are also getting a "grossly fraudulent educa tion" in the government schools. One of Dr. Williams's most important essays is one in which he defends the founders of America at the time of the Constitution against the charge that they were defenders of slavery. Williams quotes several, including Thomas Jefferson, James Otis, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton. Typical was the state ment of Madison that slavery was "a bar barous policy."

Dr. Williams brings to his analysis of contemporary issues the keen insights of a sound economist. He explains why busi nesses are in favor of regulations (it's to keep down competition), why the self esteem movement is so pernicious (it stifles effort and achievement), why a balanced budget is not enough (taxes and spending at today's levels are legalized theft). There is hardly a significant and contemporary topic that Williamsdoesn't discuss in this book. It is well worth reading, and Dr. Williams is well worth listening to. 0 Dr. Robbins is professor ofpolitical philosophy and Director of The Freedom School at the College ofthe Southwest in Hobbs, New Mexico. War on the West: Government Tyranny on America's Great Frontier by William Perry Pendley Regnery Publishing, Inc .•1995 • 301 pages. $24.95 Reviewed by Jane S. Shaw I f the federal government has declared war on the West, as William Perry Pendley contends, we had better pay attention, since the federal government owns so much of it.

As Pendley points out, Washington, D.C., manages more than 80 percent of Nevada, almost two-thirds of Utah and Idaho, and half of Oregon, Wyoming, Arizona, and California. Pendley, a lawyer and political appointee in the Reagan Administration who now heads the Mountain States Legal Founda tion, makes a convincing case that the government is on the attack. Planning the strategy are environmentalists, from blue suited lobbyists in Washington, D.C., to 465 urban dwellers in the West's growing cities like Seattle and Portland. These environ mentalists (whom Pendley routinely calls "environmental extremists' ') hold sway over the federal agencies that manage the West. They are imbued with a romantic view of what the West should be-a vast "buffalo commons" interspersed with parks and wilderness areas that have reverted to "presettlement" conditions. To make their notion a reality, they are using every tool at their disposal, from the Endangered Species Act to the activism of their political ally, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. Their specific goal is to halt tradi tional western activities such as ranching, logging, and energy production. And they are succeeding.

Anyone who has been following the con flict between environmentalists· and com modity users will agree that Pendley's con tention is largely correct. He supports his arguments with examples, especially legal cases, sometimes in lengthy detail. The chief problem with the book is that for Pendley bringing peace to the West means returning to the status quo ante. He doesn't champion freedom for the West. Instead, he defends the West as it has been-a federal fiefdom. Until recently, the government nominally controlled vast stretches of land but managed it in close association with ranchers, loggers, and mining companies. Not only was this inefficient(compared with private property); it was often costly to taxpayers. But that doesn't bother Pendley. What bothers him is the failure to continue this arrangement. He is outraged at Secretary Babbitt's opposition to water projects such as the Animas-La Plata water project in the Four Comers area where Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico meet. The project, he says, will "inject more than $20 million" into the area and total annual benefits will "exceed $31 million."

But dams in the West are heavily subsi dized by taxpayers. The "injections" of funds from taxpayers are a major portion of the benefits that Pendley tallies. As happens so often in politics, the cost of a program 466 THE FREEMAN • JUNE 1996 looks like a benefit to those on the receiving end. But the costs are real. Similarly, Pendley defends the current system of grazing when he should at least question it. The federal government owns millions of acres of land leased to ranchers, and controversy has swirled around whether the leasing fee is too low. Pendley says the fee is fair, but he ignores the more funda mental issue. That is the question of who should own this land. In the late nineteenth century, the federal government reversed its past policy of turn ing territory over to private owners. It did so largely under the influence of the Pro gressives, an ideological movement com mitted to the idea that a government bureau cracy could manage natural resources better than private owners. As a result of this reversal, large parts of the West stayed in federal hands. So we have 80 percent of Nevada in federal hands, and only 2 percent of Maine. For a long time, many Westerners liked it that way because, in spite of federal ownership, local ranchers and logging and miningcompanies were effectivelyin charge.

Now that has changed, as Pendleypoints out. It is possible that the growing property rights movement will mount a successful challenge to the environmentalists. But as long as the federal government owns the West, special interest groups will control it. So, the fundamental problem is not "en vironmental extremists," as Pendley con tends. It is government ownership. 0 Ms. Shaw is senior associate of PERC, a re search center in Bozeman, Montana. The New Color Line: How Quotas and Privilege Destroy Democracy by Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton Regnery Publishing. 1995 • 254 pages. $24.95 Reviewed by William H. Peterson I tem: The O. J. Simpson criminal trial verdict brings gasps and cheers. Polls show whites believe' '0. J." to be guilty by about 75 percent while blacks concur with the verdict of "not guilty" by about 75 percent. Item: The Million Man March on Wash ington puts the spotlight on its promoter, Louis Farrakhan, head of the Nation of Islam, who declares President Clinton, House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole to be part of an overall "white supremacist mindset," add ing: "We must be prepared to punish them if they are against us."

Add race riots from Detroit in 1968to Los Angeles in 1992, and the 1964 Civil Rights Act's affirmative action program seems to confirm what I call Peterson's Law government intervention boomerangs and makes things worse. All of which makes the Roberts-Stratton book a timely tool to un lock the riddle of the upsurge of racism and polarization in America. Paul Craig Roberts, the John M. Olin fellow of the Washington-based Institute for Political Economy, and Lawrence M. Strat ton, an Institute research fellow and mem ber of the Virginia and D.C. bars, see that the 1964 civil rights law soon deteriorated into statistical race and gender quotas (which its sponsor Senator Hubert Hum phrey promised would never happen), that merit loses out to preferment, that many white males have experienced "reverse dis crimination," that the law breaks with Tho mas Jefferson's Golden Rule for domestic tranquility of "equal rights for all, special privileges for none."

Today the vast majority of Americans, including many blacks, think affirmative action is for the birds. Ditto forced busing to achieve "racial balance" in public schools, and a host of other interventions governing racial "proportionality" for such things as bank credit and government contracts. State-decreed "fairness" becomes, mani festly, state-decreed unfairness supported by dollars from very frequently unwilling taxpayers. Worse, it's a threat to the ability of Americans to live peacefully together. No question that racism is a deep social problem but the larger question is its ori gin-who or what is responsible? Racism, wisely hold Roberts and Stratton, is largely traceable to the state. Some of it of course reaches back to state-sanctioned slavery terminated by the Civil War and the Thir teenth Amendment. But much of it harks back to the New Deal's creation of a Welfare State with its mentality of "entitlements" such as Social Security and Aid to Families with Depen dent Children (AFDC), both enacted in 1935. Judicial, legislative, and bureaucratic action of the last 30 years or so, apart from the impact of ghetto public schools, has but intensified America's polarization.

Schools and parental choice are, I think, critical. The authors point to the 1990 U.S. Supreme Court five-to-four decision in Mis souri v. Jenkins. In 1987 U.S. District Judge Russell Clark ordered that property taxes in Kansas City, Missouri, be doubled be cause school authorities had failed to achieve "racial balance," a situation exac erbated by "white flight" to the suburbs. The Supreme Court upheld Judge Clark's order, with Justices Kennedy, Rehnquist, O'Connor, and Scalia dissenting that "the power of taxation must be under the control of those who are taxed." Judge Clark had required that the Kansas City schools provide, among other things, radio and television studios, swimming pools, greenhouses, a planetarium, and a model United Nations wired for language translation. Initially the cost was estimated at $700 million. The final bill was more like $1.3 billion, or almost twice as much.

In the intervening years Kansas City cit izens cried "No Taxation Without Repre sentation!" and dumped tea-bags on the courthouse steps. To no avail. White flight continued, and when CBS's "60 Minutes" did a segment on Kansas City schools in 1994 a camera panning over a high school class revealed a number of students zonked out, their heads on their desks. Is there a way out of this induced social trauma? Yes. It's back to Jefferson's bid ding of no special privileges. It's back to see that the 1964 law's express prohibition of quotas-section 703(j)-means nothing at the hands of federal judges who "interpret" BOOKS 467 the law, that Uncle Sam, the social engineer, only makes things worse, that Americans have to revert to an era of good will and laissez faire to restore social peace. Con clude Roberts and Stratton: "There is no way to govern a society composed of im placable separate interests except through coercion from above. If we continue the assaults on good will, we will lose our democracy. " D Dr. Peterson, an adjunct scholar at the Heritage Foundation, is the Distinguished Lundy Profes sor Emeritus ofBusiness Philosophy at Campbell University in North Carolina.

Contending With Hayek: On Liberalism, Spontaneous Order and the Post-Communist Societies in Transition edited by Christoph Frei and Robert Nef Peter Lang. 1994 • 228 pages. $33.95 paperback Reviewed by John Attarian F riedrich Hayek is celebrated as a scourge of socialist fallacies and a cham pion of liberty. As Eastern Europe's former Communist countries pursue a freer state, what can Hayek's ideas teach them? Those seeking answers to that question should consult this volume of essays, the result of a colloquium in Zurich in 1992, sponsored by the Liberales Institut, which was founded in 1979 to explore basic polit ical concepts in light of classical liberalism. Thirteen European scholars critically scru tinize Hayek's main social and political ideas and his relevance for the post-Com munist societies. John Gray (Jesus College, Oxford) argues that Hayek's ideas don't provide guidance for the transition out of socialism, and that following his prescriptions will be disas trous. The notion of spontaneous order proves central planning's failure, but mar kets don't just evolve spontaneously; they require institutional underpinnings, such as property and contract law, which post468 THE FREEMAN • JUNE 1996 Communist societies lack. But Anthony de Jasay responds cogently that historical evidence shows that voluntary exchange systems, supported by privately enforced rules, often predated state authority, and that "constructivists" like Gray have it backwards: the post-socialist states lack the means to create a new order. "A spontane ous process, however its critics may scold it for being anarcho-capitalist and exploit ative, generates its own wherewithal for an emergent order, " as in the Czech Republic's case.

Lauding Hayek's long-term perspective, Robert Nef (Liberales Institut) counsels patience for the transition, noting that the destruction of mutual trust and good faith were the worst casualties inflicted by social ism and that the market greatly promotes their restoration. Students of Hayek's "spontaneous or der" and its ethical implications and his epistemological concerns-how to use knowledge and how to elicit it-will find the sophisticated essays by Gerard Radnitzky (University of Trier) and Hardy Bouillon (Gerda Henkel Foundation) useful. Rad nitzky expounds and upholds Hayek's epis temology, notion of cultural evolution, and descriptive ethics; Bouillon unmasks vari ous conceptual confusions in Hayek, e.g., of "freedom" and "power," and reformu lates as necessary. Roland Kley (University of St. Gallen) contends that Hayek errs in seeing the clash between liberalism and socialism as one of different means to shared ends, which can be resolved scientifically without value judgments. Moreover, pace Hayek, the market does not reconcile conflicting claims, and Hayek evades the issue of social justice. Hayek's liberalism, then, has shaky foundations.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe (University ofNe vada, Las Vegas) concurs-from a classical liberal perspective. His essay is one of the book's best; friends of freedom would do well to peruse it. He exposes serious pitfalls in Hayek's thought, e.g., an "ab surd" notion of coercion, under which one "coerces" others if one doesn't provide what they need. Government, Hayek as serts, should ensure a minimum income, spend to augment deficient private invest ment, regulate for health and safety, pro vide public amusements, and so on. In short, Hayek's position is indistinguishable from a statist social democrat's. Hayek's fame, Hoppe concludes, arose because' 'his theory poses no threat whatsoever" to so cial democracy. Those seeking a free market champion must look instead to "the great and unsurpassed Ludwig von Mises. ' , Other essays present Hayek's key ideas, explore the circumstances of Hayek's intel lectual beginnings, and trace the develop ment of his notion of spontaneous order.

Throughout, Hayek's ideas receive the thor ough and serious exploration they deserve. Wide-ranging and timely, its essays models of scholarship and rigorous argument, Con tending with Hayek is a must for liberty loving scholars, especially students of Hayek and of Austrian economics. 0 Dr. Attarian is afree-lance writer in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Speaking Freely: The Public Interest in Unfettered Speech With an introduction by Edward Crane The Media Institute. 1995 • 133 + xxii pages • $14.95 paperback Reviewed by Matthew Carolan S peaking Freely, written from a conser vative-libertarian point of view, con tains five medium-length essays about rela tively contemporary First Amendment controversies: television violence (written by John Corry), indecency legislation (Doug Bandow), mandated children's television time (Adam Thierer), limits on commercial speech (Daniel Troy), and the so-called Fairness Doctrine (E. Brandt Gustavson).

The essays are all well-written, contain interesting historical detail, and are explic itly designed in subject matter and argument to convince a conservative audience-not always sympathetic to free speech-to abandon statist solutions to social patholo gies. At the risk of over-rationalizing this issue, I might say that the argument for regula tion of speech boils down to the false di lemma of the demagogue. How else will we "protect children"? Or, on the subject of commercial speech, "how else will we pro tect consumers?" The idea that consumers can protect themselves, and parents can protect chil dren, is often dismissed by those who fear the dark, incompetent side of human na ture-or believe, in the words of a some what bourgeois and populist rhetoric that "parents [consumers] deserve all the help they can get." The fact that the government is often not helping, but hurting the very interests of those it seeks to "protect" is a strong theme here. For example, the vagueness of pro children viewing standards might lead to the control of moral messages as "hate speech"-or the "fairness" of the federal doctrine might require rebuttals to every religious broadcasting message, thereby chilling religious speech.

Less emphasized but still here is the more abstract, deontological theme that regula tion is simplya violation ofan absolute right, or that what provides you with that extra layer of protection might violate the legiti mate property and speech rights of others. This leads me to wonder when the book will be written for conservatives defending hard-core pornography, or Internet mes sages on how to build atomic bombs. Speak ing Freely is revealing, in that sense, for BOOKS 469 what it does not discuss as much as what it does. It is interesting, for example, to see well-known religious individuals like Mr. Bandow, and Mr. Gustavson (a religious broadcaster), arguing against content con trols in their respective areas of interest, but leaving untouched the broader implications of their message. In that sense I think the producers of this book should give conservatives a little more credit for powers of circumspection. The authors here are batting out the softballs thrown over the heart of the plate-granted, the kind of softballs that a lot of other conservatives and liberals have been miss ing terribly. There is no doubt that what is said here is instructive, eminently valuable, and thoroughly convincing.

But it seems there is a larger philosophical issue that is left alone, and must be ad dressed: Must speech by its nature degen erate and thus lead to increases in degener ate behavior? Is there a teleology to free speech? Will it lead in an evolutionary direction? I for one look forward to more powerful philosophical, metaphysical en gagement between conservatives and liber tarians on the subject of unfettered speech-a kind of investigation about the direction of unfettered culture that one might find, for example, in the writings of the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. We have seen too many instances, it seems to me, of practical political thinking running out of steam when there is not much else behind it. D Mr. Carolan is executive editor of National Review.

Answers to the Liberty Quiz questions on page 463. 1. Trial by battle. Apparently the custom had been to settle many disputes by fighting. King Henry II (1154-1189) introduced a number of legal reforms which, among other things, gave people the option of having a group of peers resolve a dispute. Historian F.W. Maitland: "The person sued might refuse trial by battle and have the question 'Who has the best right to this land?' sub mitted to a body of his neighbors sworn to tell the truth." 2. John Hancock (1737-1793), the re sourceful Boston merchant who defied Brit ish mercantilist restrictions and, with his sloop Liberty, smuggled cloth, hardware, coal, wine, tea, and other contraband. He led protests against British taxes. Hancock was president of the Second Continental Congress, the first elected governor of Mas sachusetts, and the first to sign the Decla ration of Independence. Reportedly, a quar ter of the signers were smugglers.

3. The Bill of Rights. Soon after the Constitutional Convention made its pro posed Constitution public on September 17, 1787, people who became known as Anti federalists objected that it lacked a bill of rights specifically prohibiting the federal government from violating key civil liber ties. The Constitution was ratified without a bill of rights, but Antifederalists threatened to push for a second constitutional conven tion. To head this off, James Madison spon sored a bill of rights during the first session of Congress. 4. The Emancipation Proclamation didn't free a single slave. President Lincoln issued it on September 22, 1862, and it applied only to slaves in the rebel South-then beyond Union control. The aim of this war measure was to help stir insurrection in the South. The Emancipation Proclamation didn't ap ply to the North or loyal border states, so slavery continued there.

5. Southern state governments enacted "black codes" which made it difficult for blacks to compete with whites in business and professions. To help protect freedom of contract and property rights for blacks as well as everyone else, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866. But in 1872, the Supreme Court refused to uphold freedom of contract and property rights for blacks. These were the notorious Slaughter-House Cases. 6. The government school movement gained momentum as politically connected Protestants worked to counter the cultural influence of immigrant Catholic hordes from Ireland and Italy. By controlling school tax money and enacting compulsory attendance laws, Protestants could indoctrinate mil lions in schools they controlled. America was a highly literate nation long before government schools dominated edu cation. This is apparent from the remarkable number of books sold through the mid nineteenth century. In 1863, American Pub lisher's Circular reported some annual sales, including Harriet Beecher Stowe' s Uncle Tom's Cabin, 310,000 and Washington Ir ving's works, 800,000. ,Altogether, Anna Sewall's Black Beauty sold 3 million copies; Noah Webster's spelling book, 24 million copies; William McGuffey's Readers, 125 million copies. Moreover, foreign visitors like Alexis de Tocqueville reported their impressions that literacy was widespread.

7. Contemporary and near-contemporary accounts suggest the Sherman Antitrust Act was passed to provide political cover for the McKinley Tariff, enacted at nearly same time. Back then, many observers com mented on the hypocrisy. For example, New York lawyer Franklin Pierce: "We provide for high duties upon foreign imports for the protection of home industries, and when a monopoly controlling the home market results therefrom, then pass penal laws punishing the monopoly. In this way our politicians prove to the great combina tions who furnish campaign disbursements for political parties their fidelity to monop olistic interests, while, by the penal statute, they assure the people that they are against trusts. " 8. Amidst the deep depression of 1920, President Warren Harding ordered 40 per cent spending cuts. This depression was 470 over by July 1921,and the great boom of the 1920s got underway.

National income grew from an estimated $59.4 billion to $87.2 billion between 1921 and 1929. Record numbers of Americans bought their own homes. Annual sales of radios soared from about $10 million in 1920 to $411 million in 1929. By 1929, there were over 26 million cars registered in the United States, about one for every five Americans. Books sold in record numbers. To be sure, a few groups didn't share in the overall prosperity-notably farmers. They had expanded capacity dramatically during World War I, and afterwards European farmers resumed their normal production levels. So there was substantial excess ca pacity which farmers were reluctant to liq uidate. This depressed agricultural markets for years. 9. Organized crime arose because of al cohol Prohibition during the 1920s. Enter prising individuals filled the continuing de mand for adult beverages. They were often rough characters, because one sometimes had to be rough to enforce illegal con tracts-courts wouldn't do it. As Milton Friedman reported on homicide trends: "There was a steady rise through World War I, and then an even steeper rise when the Eighteenth Amendment prohibiting the production, distribution, and sale of alco holic beverages became effective. That rise peaked in 1933, the year in which the Pro hibition amendment was repealed. The ho micide rate then fell.... "

10. The Federal Reserve System was a key culprit responsible for the Great De pression. The Fed is subject to political influence. In addition, it's always difficult to interpret conflicting information, which means human error is a continuing risk. Because the Fed has considerable impact over the money supply, its errors can have a traumatic impact on the economy, as they did during the 1930s. In general, the half century following the establishment of the Fed was more unstable than the half-century preceding it. 11. Nations raised tariffs on American products as retaliation against the Tariff Act 471 of 1930 (Smoot-Hawley). They singled out products which hurt Americans the most. Spain, for example, retaliated against U.S. tariffs on Spanish cork, wine, and oranges by slapping 125 percent tariffs on U.S. cars. In Italy, Mussolini had resisted pleas for protection until Smoot-Hawley, but after wards he agreed to effectively ban U.S. cars and radios. The Swiss boycotted U.S. prod ucts-typewriters and gasoline were espe cially hard-hit. America's longtime friends and military allies like Canada, Britain, and France were as angry as everyone else.

Overall, following Smoot-Hawley, U.S. ex ports plunged as much as 90 percent. 12. Taxes hit Depression-era farmers harder than anything else, costing more than farm mortgages. State and local govern ments got most of their revenue from prop erty taxes which remained high even though farm commodity prices declined during the Great Depression. 13. The New Deal destroyed jobs by increasing taxes for a variety of spending schemes. For example, New Dealers tried to prop up farm income by reducing farm production, but this destroyed jobs, as Ag riculture Secretary Henry Wallace admitted in 1934: "I am fully aware that acreage adjustment produces its unemployment problem just as the shutting down of facto ries in the cities." Other New Deal job destroyers: National Industrial Recovery Act (1933), which es tablished cartels to restrict production and hence employment; the Wagner Act (1935) which enabled unions to expand their power and get higher wages, thereby reducing the number of jobs employers could afford; the Social Security Act which, by introducing a new payroll tax, increased the cost of cre ating new jobs, reducing the number that could be created; Fair Labor Standards Act (1935)which made it illegalfor employers to hire people who added less value than a minimum wage.

14. The New Deal certainly did not get America out of the Great Depression. In 1932,whenRooseveltwas elected, 11,586,000 people were unemployed. In 1939, almost as many people were still unemployed472 THE FREEMAN • JUNE 1996 11,369,000. In 1932, 16,620,000 people were on welfare. Eight years later, even more people were on welfare-16,908,000. 15. Woodrow Wilson (1916), Franklin Roosevelt (1940), and Lyndon Johnson (1964) all promised the American people to stay out of war, then maneuvered in. 16. According to the late Henry Hazlitt, U.S. legislative bodies enact some 150,000 new laws a year. Estimate is from the 1970s. There's no reason to suppose this number would be lower. Indeed, now that bigger government is back in style, the number seems likely to be higher. 17. The U.S. has 8,753 tariffs on the books. 18. According to James L. Payne's Costly Returns, people spend an estimated 5 billion hours a year unproductively trying to com ply with tax laws.

19. Government regulations cost Ameri cans about $600 billion a year. (See Market Liberalism, a Paradigm/or the 21st Century [Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 1993], p.6.) 20. All these good things which now seem 100 percent American originated elsewhere or owe much to the enterprise of foreign born people. Scoring: If you got fewer than 10 questions right, you can look forward to a lot of fun learning more. Between 10 and 15 questions right: congratulations for knowing so much about liberty. Over 15 questions right: obviously, you're an advanced student of liberty. 150 Years Ago ... In June of 1846, Richard Cobden and John Bright persuaded the British government to abolish its worst import restrictions, on grain, ushering in a glorious era of free trade and peace. According to biographer John Morley, "[Cobden's reception throughout Europe] was everywhere that of a great discoverer in a science which interests the bulk of mankind much more keenly than any other, the science of wealth. He had persuaded the richest country in the world to revolutionize its commercial policy.

People looked on him as a man who had found out a momen tous secret."