CHAPTER ELEVEN

LIBERTY AND PEACE

THE TIME MAY HAVE COME when we can again search more freely for the root-cause of peace without being met automatically with charges of being a “pacifist.” If pacifist means embracing the objective of peace, it should be no disgrace to be a pacifist.

PART 2

ON MEASURING LIBERTY

Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found.

EDMUND BURKE

CHAPTER TWELVE

A MEASURE OF LIBERTY

LIBERTY IS MORE than a word. It is a thing of substance that can be either present or absent, gained or lost. A person may be free or he may be a slave; presumably it is possible for that person to tell which is which, and that gives rise to the possibility of measurement.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE EXTENT OF LOST LIBERTY

A ROUGH MEASUREMENT of the encroachment on liberty is to be found, then, in the proportion of the product of a person’s labor that is taken from him by force or by threat of force, by government. A study of these figures, over the century and a half of our history as a nation, gives cause for deep concern (see chart on page 108).1

PART 3

THE PRESENT PROBLEM

If the true spark of religious and civil liberty be kindled, it will burn. Human agency cannot extinguish it. Like the earth’s central fire, it may be smothered for a time; the ocean may overwhelm it; mountains may press it down; but its inherent and unconquerable force will heave both the ocean and the land, and at some time or other, in some place or other, the volcano will break out and flame up to heaven.

DANIEL WEBSTER

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

SPECIAL PRIVILEGE

WITH GOVERNMENT in the United States taking 29 cents of each dollar of a person’s income at the present time—an amount identical with that for the USSR in 1929-1930 — what is to be done?

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

RECOVERING LIBERTY

THE FASHION OF THE TIMES seems to be to “resign to the inevitable.” Some say that the wise thing to do is to relax and try to grab as much as possible for one’s self, while the nation declines into the abyss of collectivism. Anyone devoted to the principles of liberty will refuse to accept that solution; he will refuse to accept it on both moral and practical grounds.

APPENDICES

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias. The spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded.

APPENDIX I

FAITHS ABOUT THE NATURE AND DESTINY OF MAN

Before people can be persuaded to abandon one faith they must be given something else to grab hold of as a means of salvation. Men cannot live without faith in something.

JOHN RUSTGARD

THIS DISCUSSION of liberty is predicated on certain faiths regarding mankind.

APPENDIX II

PATTERNS OF VARIATION

VARIATION SEEMS to pervade the universe. Even where once it was believed not to exist, further study and refinement of measurement reveals its presence.