Chapter 14

THE UNKNOWN INDIVIDUAL

THE war for American independence was begun by an individual. He was asleep in his bed when someone pounded on his door and shouted out in the night: “The Redcoats are coming!”

But what could he do? He was only one man against the armed might of Britain. If he had been a king, a czar, or a potentate, he could have solved vast problems and done great things – he could have brought the powers of Europe together in harmony and made an everlasting peace and prosperity around the world.

Chapter 15

THE NEW MODEL

ANOTHER six years of confusion and discouragement followed the surrender of Cornwallis. The leaders of the Revolution were negotiating the peace treaty and trying to hold the Continental Congress together, to keep the states from fighting each other, and to figure out a way to pay something on the French debt before the French army moved in to collect it. During this period, when George Washington had less hope than at Valley Forge, the leaders of the Revolution made one last effort to unite the independent states.

Chapter 16

UNPLANNED PLANNING

THE states had united in a voluntary federation; but there was no unified control, no over-all plan.

This is just the opposite of the Old World pattern. In other nations, the overlords develop their ambitious plans, enforced by the firing squad and supported by huge predatory armies. These plans look fine on paper, but they are contradictory to the nature of human energy. They are always at the expense of individual initiative; they always result in oppression, leading to human degradation and war.

Chapter 17

THE REVOLUTION SPREADS

“AN army of principles,” declared Thomas Paine, “will penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot; it will succeed where diplomatic management would fail: it is neither the Rhine, the Channel, nor the ocean that can arrest its progress: it will march on the horizon of the world, and it will conquer.”13-b

PART IV

FRUITS OF FREEDOM

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

HOPE VERSUS FEAR

No one nation or race of people has a monopoly on creative and inventive talent; but new ideas, like natural resources, don’t amount to much unless and until something is done about them. Many of the things we have today are based on inventions of Old World origin. America’s first century of industrial progress was largely a matter of getting something done with the half-baked ideas that had been around collecting dust for centuries – while the vast majority of people were doing without.

Chapter 20

MORAL VERSUS MATERIAL

THE third attempt to set men free has made the great-grandchildren of the revolutionary leaders the best-fed, the best-clothed, the best-housed, and the most prosperous people on the face of the globe. Many of the things that we have come to take for granted as commonplace necessities of life would have been beyond the fondest dreams of luxury-seeking kings and potentates a few years ago.

Chapter 21

FREEDOM VERSUS WAR

UNDEB the pagan fallacy of a static universe in which new wealth cannot be created, the only way to gain an advantage is to take something away from someone else. When men are free, they soon learn that wars of aggression are unprofitable; that human energies are far more productive when applied to the peaceful pursuits of creating and exchanging useful goods and services.

But when war is forced upon them, they always give a good account of themselves. The reasons for this are not far to seek:

APPENDIX