Leonard Read was an important leader in the libertarian movement from the time he started the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) in 1946 until his death. What primarily put him in that role was his unwavering commitment to liberty. But it was also due to his concern with the fact that not all forms of leadership and education were effective and consistent with liberty. While he dealt with those latter issues widely throughout his work, it was the main topic of his 1962 Elements of Libertarian Leadership, passing its 60th anniversary this year.
At a time when America’s political leadership is far from effective, and even farther from working to enhance citizens’ liberty, it seems an appropriate time to re-consider Read’s words, because he could already say six decades ago that “our waning individual liberty is more difficult to restore than most people judge.”
...The solution to the problem of rescuing an individual liberty on the skids requires, broadly speaking, the mastery of two disciplines: the philosophy of freedom and the methodology of freedom. The former has to do with an understanding of what freedom actually is, and the latter with the techniques, means, and methods by which an improved state of freedom may be effected.
...Right method…consists of self-improvement. If everyone were devoted to the perfection of self, there could be no meddlers amongst us, and without meddlers there could be no socialism.
If people followed Read’s path of “perfection of self,” which would result in no meddlers or socialism, one must consider what is ruled out by that approach.
...Liberty…does not and cannot include any action, regardless of sponsorship, which lessens the liberty of a single human being.
...Unrestraint carried to the point of impairing the liberty of others is the exercise of license, not liberty. To minimize the exercise of license is to maximize the area of liberty. Ideally, government would restrain license, not indulge in it; make it difficult, not easy; disgraceful, not popular. A government that does otherwise is licentious, not libertarian.
...To do as one pleases, if it infringes upon the freedom of another, is not freedom at all--its tyranny. It is impossible for freedom to be composed of freedom negations. Total freedom…as relating to society and government, is the ideal to be sought. This is a goal to be kept uppermost in mind, and any deviations from it are to be disapproved.
...A philosophy which concedes that each individual is an end in himself is a philosophy that precludes the practice of the few using the many as means.
...Freedom…The individual is both its means and its end--the only foundation of freedom, and also its crowning object.
But knowing some things that are ruled out is not sufficient if we are to succeed in advancing liberty in a world where “in spite of…lip service to freedom, our actual liberties continue to dwindle. The centralized state makes more and more of our decisions for us.”
...Fighting to retain liberty…is tantamount to fighting for life itself.
...It is useless to name all the various panaceas…aimed at the mere preservation of individual freedom. For we cannot preserve that which has already been so largely lost. We have a restoration job on our hands. Freedom must experience a rebirth in America; that is, we must re-establish it from fundamental principles.
...When all of us come to believe that the preservation of liberty is a responsibility that can be delegated, then liberty will have not a single defender. Authoritarians thrive in the absence of libertarian thinking like weeds in the absence of cultivation.
...The gospel of freedom cannot be effectively preached from within institutions headed in the socialistic direction…become a part of their machinery, and it follows that one must not only accommodate himself to, but put his stamp of approval on, the deviations and compromises implicit in such arrangements.
...As the belief grows that coercion is the only practical way to get things done…the belief in man acting privately, freely, voluntarily, competitively, cooperatively, declines.
...Free men lose faith in themselves when government takes over an activity…A decline in faith in free men and what they can accomplish results in a rising faith in disastrous authoritarianism.
So what is the path forward towards a renewed liberty; a flourishing freedom?
...The price of freedom [is] an intellectual and spiritual renaissance with all the hard thinking and difficult introspection required to energize such a revolution in thinking.
...The…price that must be paid for freedom [is] the intellectual and spiritual effort required to grasp the full implications of the idea expressed in these words of the Declaration of Independence: [Men]…“are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” …It…denies the state as the endower of men’s rights and…it follows from a man’s inherent right to life that he has a right to sustain his life, the sustenance of life being nothing more nor less than the fruits of one’s own labor.
...Unless we believe that man’s rights are endowments of our Creator and, therefore, inalienable, we must conclude that the rights to life and liberty derive from some human collective and that they are alienable, being at the disposal of the collective will.
...This conception makes impossible…any ascendancy of government beyond its principled position. It restricts the powers of government to the exercise of such force as any individual is morally warranted in employing…Government, logically, can have no powers beyond those which individuals may properly exercise…Man is free to act creatively or productively as he pleases. Here we have the absence of any and all political restraints on creative action…government limited to defense of life and property [as opposed to] government regulation and control of every aspect of our lives.
...Each individual is an end in himself…No other person or set of persons, however organized, has any moral sanction to interfere…no person is warranted in compelling any human being to serve merely as a means to his own ends.
What obstacles must be overcome along that path, if substantial expansion of freedom is to be possible?
...Those who refuse to rule themselves are usually bent on ruling others.
...[Ask] Why is it that a person who obviously cannot manage himself, let alone those who are beholden to him, concludes that he is competent to direct a nation of people or the whole world when even the wisest of men would feel utterly incompetent for any such project.
...If the state can grant a man’s rights, it can also retract them; that is, it is in control of rights. Freedom of choice as to how one employs himself or what he does with the fruits of his own labor is expanded or contracted according to the caprice of those who have gained command of the political apparatus…extensions of the premise that man’s rights derive from the state.
...Bad ideas, if they are to be rendered ineffective, must be replaced with good ideas…but how few there are who can skillfully, persuasively, and attractively explain authoritarianism’s opposite: the free market, private property, limited government philosophy! In the absence of this ability state interventionism thrives.
...The ideal society…must severely limit its political officialdom, denying it any degree of rulership in the overriding sense. With this done, the leadership must spring from among the people. Unless there emerges in a society an aristocracy of high principle, that society can never be free…potential leaders with a devotion to those moral principles upon which the philosophy of freedom and, therefore, a free economy must rest.
...All that retards the development of the human potential is anti-freedom. All that advances the individual’s wholeness or completeness as a spiritual, moral, and wise human being is freedom in action.
So what are the means for advancing freedom without violating the principles of freedom?
...The more destructive the end in view the more fitting are compulsive means, disintegrative methods; the more creative the end in view the more antagonistic to a solution are compulsive methods and the more must reliance be placed on attractive, integrative forces.
...The gaining of wisdom or the understanding of freedom is not imposed by man upon men, nor can it be. It is not marketed or sold.
...Truth, wisdom, an understanding of freedom, an expanding consciousness are the highest of human aims and the methods of attaining them must be of an equally high order.
...Logically, we cannot accept as right for ourselves that which we construe to be wrong for everyone else.
...Physical persuasion--coercion--as a means to broadening an understanding of freedom is patently absurd.
...Advancement of libertarian ideals requires that each of us understands that the higher grade the objective, the higher grade must the method be…if the objective be the expansion of another’s consciousness or the increasing of his wisdom, then only high-grade methods can be effective.
...Liberty can’t be saved by those who retire into their ivory towers or take to the hills…to bemoan its plight. It is the individual who is active who pushes liberty over the brink--or rescues her.
...[Libertarians’ lives must exhibit] the power of attraction…[which] draws to itself whatever is susceptible to its force. This is at once its merit and its limitation.
...The omnipotent state--authoritarianism--will not be liquidated except by liberated individuals.
Leonard Read’s most famous book was Anything That’s Peaceful (1964). That title summarized the libertarian view in a nutshell--freedom in all things but what infringes on others’ equal freedom, based on each person’s self-ownership, and its implications. In Elements of Libertarian Leadership, he was already deeply concerned about how to move toward such a world. Given that Americans have instead moved far in the opposite direction since then, and that libertarian leadership is thus even more necessary to reverse it, we could benefit from again asking what such leadership should look like if it is to succeed.
