Leonard Read, founder of the Foundation for Economic Education, had very clear views about the legitimate role of laws—solely to restrain harms to individuals’ and their rights, since going farther than that “night watchman” role necessarily violated some citizens’ rights. In fact, in his October 1, 1969, “Read’s Law” article in The Freeman, he even rode a wave of eponymous laws to create a law about fidelity to that principle:
It is becoming more and more fashionable for probers into political economy to concoct a “law” and tack their name onto it. Doubtless, this fad stems from such famous instances as Gresham’s Law: “Bad money drives out good money.” Or, Say’s Law of Markets: “Production generates its own purchasing power.”
This tendency among our contemporaries is a humorous way of presenting a serious idea.
[One of] the best known…is Parkinson’s Law: “Expenses rise to meet income.” A book entitled The Peter Principle [headed] the bestseller list: “In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” Brozen’s Law reads: “Most obviously true economic policy propositions are false.” Rogge’s Rule tickles my fancy: “Whenever the government passes a law for your protection, take to the hills--because you are about to be had!”
What is Read’s Law?
Read’s Law:
“No politician can fly higher in office than he flew while getting there” …And the height to which I aspire is freedom; that is, no restraint against any creative action. In other words, freedom is my idea of high; socialism, statism--call it what you will--is my idea of low.
My “law” [could] be stated something like this: “No politician, after getting into office, can remove any more restraints against freedom than he promised to remove in his campaign speeches.”
An Upper Bound for Politicians
Over the years, I have known numerous aspirants for high office who, in private, endorse the freedom philosophy…Later, as I hear or read his campaign speeches, I find nary a word about the socialism he intends to repeal if elected…Then friends of mine hopefully ask “What achievements for freedom are you looking forward to from so-and-so?” I respond by repeating Read’s Law.
My claim has to do only with an inability to fly higher, not lower. An officeholder’s “ceiling” is set by his campaign speeches; he can descend to any level.
Let me explain how I discovered Read’s Law. The campaign manager of a candidate was my close personal friend. Because his man’s speeches were socialistic, I was critical. “Why, he believes the same as you and I do,” came the reply. “He has to say what he’s saying to get elected. Once in office, he will practice what we believe.” The contention was that his candidate would fly higher in office than he flew while getting there. But no one was able to prove that untenable thesis.
Implications of Read’s Law
This experience led me to three important conclusions. The first is that no officeholder can ever overthrow any socialistic practice unless there is an enormous consensus that it be done away with; otherwise, the practice is too tightly woven into the social fabric to be cast out by some political trick. Ridding our society of TVA or Social Security, for instance, is utterly impossible unless there be a general agreement for repeal. The candidates who never mention repeal in their campaign speeches make no contribution whatsoever to a new consensus. So, they have mustered no support for it, whatever their private views may be…They are impotent. On the other hand, if they had been elected because of their advocacy of repeals, they would then have a popular mandate to so perform.
Second, the candidates who pretend privately to believe in freedom principles and who run for office on other than a clear-cut freedom platform do not understand these principles...Candidates who thoroughly apprehend freedom principles would not--indeed, could not--do other than uphold them.
Finally, let politicians who privately say they are for freedom, but who publicly espouse socialism in order to get elected, be faithful to their public pronouncements…Exposing the fallacies of socialism and explaining the principles of freedom cannot possibly be achieved except through fidelity. Truth can never be found by those or among those who practice dissimulation.
How Read’s Law is Consistent with the Law of Liberty
Read’s Law focused on how campaign rhetoric imposed an upper limit on what a candidate professing the principles of liberty might actually achieve towards that end if elected to office. That is a valuable insight. But it also points to another truth that lovers of liberty need to remember: “The advancement of freedom is not a matter of who wields political power over creative actions; rather, it depends upon the disassembling of such power.”
Politicians are not the answer, so pinning one’s hopes on a particular one being “in charge” is a recipe for disappointment. Those who “fly higher” have the potential to advance freedom, but only by articulating a consistent case for liberty beforehand. Otherwise, they will be unable to disassemble their own and others’ power over us when they are in office, in the face of a political flood tide carrying us rapidly in the opposite direction, a fact made obvious in America’s most recent election. We can only hope that those whose rhetoric barely (if that) reached nap-of-the-earth altitude for liberty and will be in state and federal capitols in 2023 will not crash and burn what made America great.
