I have four children, so I think often about what I ought to be doing to make a world a better place before I shuffle off this mortal coil. When engaging in these sorts of speculations it quickly becomes clear that we are only fundamentally in control of ourselves, and ourselves alone. We cannot force other people to do what we want them to do. As the ancient Christian martyrs showed, not even the threat of death can force others to believe or do that which they do not wish to do. So, on our own, we can do little other than simply that which is right, regardless of whether or not other people are likely to follow our lead.
We can certainly try to convince others of what is right and what is good. This is true of the what the saints did, and it is true in parenting and leadership in general. This is true of many facets of life such as family, Church, and community.
It is also true within our own intellectual movement that seeks to preserve human freedom—and to preserve the blessings of that freedom. We seek to show others the value of our cause.
This, of course, is exactly what the great minds of our movement have done. Great scholars and spokesmen like Ludwig von Mises, Henry Hazlitt, Murray Rothbard, Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, and others, have spent their lives trying to convince others of what is right and good.
In many ways, they have succeeded.
It is true that many Americans—one survey says one-third of them—have a positive view of socialism. But, that same survey says that more than a half of Americans have a negative view of socialism, while more than half say they have a positive view of capitalism.
Considering the relentless anti-capitalist and anti-freedom propaganda one receives through more than a dozen years of formal schooling, followed by years of exposure to anti-capitalist media and art, it’s truly remarkable that anyone continues to think true freedom is something of value.
Yes, even many of these Americans who claim to like free markets also support—or at least tolerate—countless ways that the state inflicts its despotism upon us. But, we should consider how much worse this situation would be were it not for the relentless work of men like Mises and Rockwell.
Whether they know it or not, the beliefs people hold about the state, about taxes, about freedom, and about socialism and capitalism come from ideological battles that have been waged for centuries. If some people believe that freedom and capitalism are still of value, its because some intellectuals fought to preserve those ideas and make them available and attractive to others. Without the preservation of these ideas, the West would have slipped back into a despotism reminiscent of the ancient world long ago.
So what can we do ourselves to keep these ideas alive? The truth is we can each only do a small part. After all, Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard did not personally engage each and every person influenced by their ideas. Mises and Rothbard did not have the opportunity to broadcast their ideas straight into the minds of millions of other human beings. No, the works of the great scholars of freedom spread through the work of others. These ideas spread through publishers and editors and through every person who showed a book to a friend or shared a video with a family member. We do what we can, but we still always ultimately rely on others to play their own part as well.
Indeed, this process is the same as the process of perpetuating civilization itself. The ideas of great cultural projects like Christendom must be tended and cared for. In this, the ideas are like a campfire to which fuel must be added and which must be watched over. Or else the flame fails and much is lost.
I often return to this analogy because it applies so well to our own efforts, and because it was so well dramatized in a popular film—based on the Cormac McCarthy book of the same name—called No Country for Old Men. If you have not seen this film, I highly recommend it, not just for its craftsmanship, but for its themes of doing the right thing, even if it seems the battle is lost.
At the very end of the film, the themes of the film are recapitulated in a monologue delivered by the film’s narrator, Sheriff Bell, played by Tommy Lee Jones. The words of the monologue are very similar to the words found in the book, and are essentially McCarthy’s words. In the scene, Bell, who is plagued by feelings of being “outmatched” recounts a dream he had about his father:
it was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback goin’ through the mountains of a night, goin’ through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and and there was snow on the ground. He rode past me and kept on goin’. Never said nothin’ goin’ by. He just rode on past and he had his blanket wrapped around him and his head down, and when he rode past I seen he was carryin’ fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. About the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin’ on ahead and that he was fixin’ to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold, and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there.
We the viewers know that Bell regarded his father—also a sheriff—as one who himself preserved civilization and order. So, we see through this story how the author suggests we might look at the problem of preserving that which is good and which is worth saving: we build fires “out there in all that dark and all that cold.” To participate in the good work, we must follow those who came before us out into the dark and build our own fires. At the same time, though, we can also only hope that others follow us into the cold and do likewise. We cannot force them.
The analogy presents a solution: as more people build fires in the dark and the cold, the less dark and cold it will be. But even a single fire will always be better than no fire at all. With no fire at all, how will the other fires be kindled?
We have all known people like the father in the dream. For me, it has long been Lew Rockwell, who has long carried “fire in a horn” and taken it out into the cold to build a larger fire. Lew himself, of course, witnessed Murray Rothbard doing the same.
The rest of us can hope to imitate them, and often, that is enough. Our job is to keep building and tending those fires, lest they be extinguished forever.
