14.

I Prefer Security to Freedom

15.

Ideal Candidates versus
Ideal Government

One of the striking things about recent elections is the number of people who claim to be the ideal candidate for president. At the core of each of their campaigns is a promise to redistribute the economic pie to give a bigger piece to whomever is being addressed at the time. Each candidate becomes, in H.L. Mencken’s words, “a broker in pillage” and “every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods” (Mencken 1956).

16.

Promises We Do and Do Not Live By

Here is a less than upbeat thought: “Civilization rests on a set of promises. . . . If the promises are broken too often the civilization dies” (quoted in Read 1976a). That Herbert Agar quote, combined with the recognition that promises are increasingly going unkept in society, is the sobering way Leonard Read begins “Promises Men Do and Do Not Live By,” from his 1976 book Comes the Dawn (Read 1976a). Since what he wrote at that time seems even more applicable today, it is worth considerable attention.

17.

How Not to Be Owned

Who insists they want to be owned? No one I know. And yet freedom is a rare outlier in history, infrequently and slowly gained but often quickly lost. Given its slow, halting achievement and potentially precipitous decline, we should give the preservation of our self-ownership deeper and more consistent thought.

Leonard Read does just that in “How Not to Be Owned,” from his 1974 book Having My Way (Read 1974). The connection between rights and liberty made in the title is worth revisiting. Here are some highlights.

18.

The Roots of Concord and Discord

In all three synoptic Gospels, Jesus says that “a house divided against itself cannot stand” (Matthew 12:25; Mark 3:25; Luke 11:17). But more Americans have probably heard this quote in the context of Abraham Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech about slavery, delivered on June 16, 1858 after he was chosen over Stephen Douglas as the Illinois Republican nominee for the US Senate.

19.

Harmonizing to Each His Own

20.

Preemption: Legal Thievery

While it is not a very common term, preemption shows up on occasion in our discourse. Sporting events and specials preempt regularly scheduled programs, and under the supremacy clause of the Constitution, federal law is said to preempt state legislative powers. But seldom have I seen it applied to government preemption of citizens’ rights, the protection of which, according to John Locke, is its central task.

21.

How Socialism Harms All Individuals

22.

A Cliché of Socialism:
Under Public Ownership,
We the People Own It

Leonard Read always has an ear out for widely accepted but misleading clichés that serve to aggrandize government power and limit liberty. In his 1965 article “A Cliché of Socialism: Under Public Ownership, We the People Own it!” (Read 1965a), he focuses his attention on the large gap between public ownership of assets and the idea that “we the people” own them.

23.

Unscrambling Socialism

Many years ago, in “Unscrambling Socialism” (Read 1964e), Leonard Read wrote the following: “Any adept student of human action knows that it isn’t enough merely to ‘drop anchor’ in today’s sea of socialism, that is, to stop where we are. The U.S. is already playing host to more parasitic socialism than the economy can contain or sustain . . . [and] there comes a point in time in growth when any parasite will destroy its host.”