“Few discoveries are more irritating than those which expose the pedigree of ideas.” – Lord Action
As I watch our political “leaders” vote to steal the wealth of our children and grandchildren, as I watch our nation running to embrace the concepts of socialism as a solution for the nation’s economic crisis, I must say I am shocked at how far we have come. I ask the question, “how did we get here?” David Hume, eighteenth century philosopher states, “It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.” That doesn’t answer the question, we will do that over time , in future blogs, but it does at least give us as starting place for reflection. What makes this so difficult to accept, this current embrace of socialistic ideals, is they have been tried and failed.
It is time to assess how far we have come. We must learn from those who saw socialism up close and who have analyzed it. One such person is, economist Friedrich A. Hayek, who warned us in 1944, in his book, “The Road to Serfdom” of the “unpalatable truth that is Germany whose fate we are in some danger of repeating.” Hayek then warns us,
“the danger is not immediate” and the conditions “are still remote…[y]et, though the road be long, it is one which it becomes more difficult to turn back as one advances. If in the long run we are the makers of our own fate, in the short run we are the captives of the ideas we have created. Only if we recognize the danger in time can we hope to avert it.”
Hayek was concerned with the creep toward economic control (socialism) and the road to totalitarianism. The creep has become a flood, today!
Don’t forget the front cover of Newsweek, “We Are All Socialist Now.” The battle between the free-market, as the means to wealth creation, verses the control of the means of production and the consumption of wealth by a central government, is now! We must move past our anger and disbelief and plan for a long battle in the marketplace of ideas, as long as we are free to do so.
Ayn Rand, in a letter to Leonard Read, dated August 1, 1946 wrote,
“I fully sympathize with your anger at the conservatives who claim that they oppose compulsion except for their particular pet cause. That is their usual attitude, and the most damaging to our side. Nothing can be done about it, except by attacking it at the source. The source is the fact that people have lost all conception of principles. The cure has to begin by re-educating them to an understanding of the nature of principles and of their application. This is one instance that shows that our battle has to be fought on philosophical grounds.” [Emphasis added]
For Freedom’s Sake is committed to engage in the battle of ideas. We are taking action by dusting off the “old books” and the “old ideas” of the wise men and women who championed the principles of freedom before us and we will present their arguments to the next generation. We will also highlight the best of our contemporary scholars who articulate the ideals which are foundational to the constitution of liberty. We will be working to reach college and high school students with these ideas. It is they, who will either suffer under economic tyranny or live to see the freedom’s granted to all men by God, that we dedicate our efforts.
For Freedom’s Sake
