Freedom in One Lesson

55.

Individual Rights, Freedom,
and the Better World

Most people are in favor of a better world; but ask them how to achieve it, and they may not have anything substantial to say. Without a solid understanding of why the world isn’t better and a positive vision of achievable changes that would improve society, the desire for a better world does not translate into a better world in reality.

Leonard Read is one of a very few who understands why individuals— and therefore, society—fall short of what they can become. He also offers a path toward improvement. His vision involves expanding freedom by defending (or reestablishing) the individual rights and responsibilities that make it possible. Read’s 1973 book Who’s Listening? (Read 1973) offers an example of his wisdom.

Growth in consciousness is possible only in intellectual and spiritual freedom, that is, when the self is freed from managing or judging the lives of others. The better world begins with that man who attends to his inner freedom. . . .

The nemeses to outer freedom are . . . coercive impositions by other persons. Other people are to run our lives and not we ourselves! . . . Carry this way of life to its logical conclusion and I am no longer a man but only putty to be molded—and by whom? . . . Those so blind . . . they naively believe they can manage your life better than you can. . . .

. . . An example cannot be found where domineering in practice—man lording it over man—has resulted in success. The record is failure, without exception. . . .

. . . Individual freedom is now being abandoned in favor of the old, the primitive, the domineering way of life. . . .

. . . The dominators in office merely echo those in the population who believe their interests are best served by living at the expense of others. . . .

. . . The individual who stands for even one special privilege endorses the principle of coercive exploitation . . . that living off others is morally admissible. . . .

You have the right to do with yourself and your own whatever you please so long as your pursuits . . . do no injury to me and mine. . . . I owe you nothing more than noninterference. . . .

. . . We have now . . . strayed so far from reason that mere wishes are regarded as rights. . . .

Correction of this tendency requires recognition of a simple truth: only the individual has rights. It is exclusively the individual who experiences justice or injustice, who evidences morality or immorality, who gains or loses. . . . The collective, no matter how you lump it, has neither mind nor conscience, nor any other personal attribute— not one! . . .

. . . We stand not as a mass but as millions of discrete individuals . . . each entitled to precisely the same right as any of the others, all equal in every respect before the civil law.

. . . What is it that you as one of these millions owe me and all the others? Exactly what l owe you, whoever you may be: the opportunity, without let or hindrance, to go as far creatively as your aspirations and talents will permit! This is what l owe you—no more no less. . . .

Unfortunately, there is nothing in the nature of government that enables it to curb its tendency to grow at the expense of the individual. If there is to be any limitation upon government, it must be developed in such a way that it does not call for additional governmental activity; in other words, it must be expressed personally and voluntarily in the form of self-discipline . . . of such high order that one is not tempted to covet his neighbor’s success, or even to subsidize—and thereby aggravate—his neighbor’s alleged ignorance or poverty or other defect of character.

In a word, mind one’s own business. . . .

In brief, living off others by a resort to coercion, once condoned, even in minor and exceptional cases, tears the principle asunder. . . . Break the principle and no stopping place remains; logic and reason, right and wrong no longer serve as guides. . . .

. . . To save . . . unfortunates by breaking a principle, simply because one cannot see how they otherwise would be saved, is to endanger a whole nation; it is to reduce everyone to a status begging compassion.

. . . Living off others by free and willing exchange is right. . . . If we cannot envision its practice as . . . the more beneficial to all, let us not abandon the principle but look to the limits of our own vision. Freedom works! . . .

. . . Any arrangement that calls for coercive control over the creative actions of citizen—these are social disasters. . . .

. . . There are today, during a moral and economic crisis in human affairs, no more than a very small minority who in their own names are speaking, writing, and standing for what is right about private property and voluntary exchange, and what is wrong about coercive intervention and unlimited government. . . .

. . . Were all individuals devoted to their own improvement . . . there would not be a seeker after power among us. . . . There could be no authoritarianism. . . . Individual liberty prevails in a society where no one lords it over others, and the person tending to his own growth feels no need to rule others.

I am old enough to remember the Superman who was devoted to “ Truth, Justice, and the American Way.” But now there seems to be a wide gap between the American way, on the one hand, and truth and justice, on the other.

Leonard Read understands this gap and offers insightful counsel on how to begin the process of restoration. Since only individuals can receive benefits or be harmed, and since ultimately only individuals make choices, improvement rests not with collectives but with individuals. The heart of enabling that improvement, therefore, is equal and equally inviolable individual rights, which keep people from imposing coercion on others but make every mutually voluntary arrangement possible. In recognizing that, Read points the way to a truly better world. But our wisdom needs to grow to reflect his own if we are to achieve that world.

Freedom’s flag is high on the mast only when it is raised there by wisdom. And it is sustained there only by an enduring and continuing wisdom. . . . Raising freedom’s flag above half-mast depends on an improving discernment of truth and justice.