Richard Ebeling was the professor I was in charge to communicate and arrange the date to talk to. He was very receptive, and accommodate his schedule easily. His introduction was very natural and smooth, humor is one of the characteristics that I most enjoyed about him.
The article he wrote was Before Modern Collectivism as a response to the 100 anniversary from the start of the World War 1.
As the result of the World War 1, it released the demons that made disaster in the 20th century, such as Lenin, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, Roosevelt introduction to the "New Deal" as answers to America's hardship, it paralleled with Mussolini's reforms in Italy.
Richard states the human losses we've had through collectivism mindsets, with Mao, Hitler, and Stalin.
Things as personal, political and economic freedom we take for granted today, were very different before 1914.
Where in America they had a written constitution that protected, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,
"Only in America could an individual say and do virtually anything that he wanted, as long as it was peaceful and not an infringement on other citizens’ similar individual rights. Only in America was trade across this new and growing country free from government regulations and controls or oppressive taxes, so people could live, work and invest wherever they wanted, for any purpose that took their fancy or offered them profit."
Since ancient times, there have been some thinkers who dreamed of a world with greater freedom for all men. But for most of human history this remained only dreams. The ancient Greeks spoke of the importance of man’s reason and the need for freedom of thought if our minds were to challenge each other’s logic.
For the Romans, their lives were not their own. They belonged to another. They were slaves, regardless of the names and phrases used to describe and defend what was a master-servant relationship. Human society was a world of the unfree.
Then this began to change, first in men’s minds, then in their actions, and finally in the political and economic institutions under which people lived and worked
Freedom means that the individual may live for himself. He lives in society with others with whom he may share values, find mutually beneficial opportunities for association and trade, and for whom he may “sacrifice” if he wisely or unwisely chooses to do so as his own voluntary decision. But the collective does not own the individual and it has no compulsory claim on his creative efforts or the fruits of his labors
Hayek:
“The preservation of a free system is so difficult precisely because it requires a constant rejection of measures which appear to be required to secure particular results, on no stronger grounds than that they conflict with a general rule [of non-government intervention], and frequently without our knowing what will be the costs of not observing the rule in the particular instance. A successful defense of freedom must therefore be dogmatic and make no concessions to expediency, even where it is not possible to show that, besides the known beneficial effects, some particular harmful result would also follow from its infringement. Freedom will prevail only if it is accepted as a general principle whose application to particular instances requires no justification. It is thus a misunderstanding to blame classical liberalism for having been too doctrinaire. Its defect was not that it adhered too stubbornly to principles, but rather that it lacked principles sufficiently definite to provide clear guidance . . .
As Hayek argued on another occasion, if the cause of liberty is to prevail once again, it is necessary for friends of freedom to not be afraid of being radical in their case for classical liberalism – even “utopian” in a right meaning of the term. To once more make it a shining and attractive ideal to imagine a world of free men who are no longer slaves to others, whether they be monarchs or majorities.
It would be a world of sovereign individuals who respect each other, who treat each other with dignity and who view each other as an end in himself, rather than one of those pawns to be moved and sacrificed on that chessboard of society to serve the ends of another who presumes to impose coercive control over his fellow human beings.If we can do this, the collectivist counter-revolution can be defeated and the classical liberal revolutionary ideal of free men who form a great and good society through their associations on the basis of trade rather than tyranny can bring us liberty, peace and prosperity before the end of this new century.
The article he wrote was Before Modern Collectivism as a response to the 100 anniversary from the start of the World War 1.
As the result of the World War 1, it released the demons that made disaster in the 20th century, such as Lenin, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, Roosevelt introduction to the "New Deal" as answers to America's hardship, it paralleled with Mussolini's reforms in Italy.
Richard states the human losses we've had through collectivism mindsets, with Mao, Hitler, and Stalin.
Things as personal, political and economic freedom we take for granted today, were very different before 1914.
Where in America they had a written constitution that protected, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,
"Only in America could an individual say and do virtually anything that he wanted, as long as it was peaceful and not an infringement on other citizens’ similar individual rights. Only in America was trade across this new and growing country free from government regulations and controls or oppressive taxes, so people could live, work and invest wherever they wanted, for any purpose that took their fancy or offered them profit."
Since ancient times, there have been some thinkers who dreamed of a world with greater freedom for all men. But for most of human history this remained only dreams. The ancient Greeks spoke of the importance of man’s reason and the need for freedom of thought if our minds were to challenge each other’s logic.
For the Romans, their lives were not their own. They belonged to another. They were slaves, regardless of the names and phrases used to describe and defend what was a master-servant relationship. Human society was a world of the unfree.
Then this began to change, first in men’s minds, then in their actions, and finally in the political and economic institutions under which people lived and worked
Freedom means that the individual may live for himself. He lives in society with others with whom he may share values, find mutually beneficial opportunities for association and trade, and for whom he may “sacrifice” if he wisely or unwisely chooses to do so as his own voluntary decision. But the collective does not own the individual and it has no compulsory claim on his creative efforts or the fruits of his labors
Hayek:
“The preservation of a free system is so difficult precisely because it requires a constant rejection of measures which appear to be required to secure particular results, on no stronger grounds than that they conflict with a general rule [of non-government intervention], and frequently without our knowing what will be the costs of not observing the rule in the particular instance. A successful defense of freedom must therefore be dogmatic and make no concessions to expediency, even where it is not possible to show that, besides the known beneficial effects, some particular harmful result would also follow from its infringement. Freedom will prevail only if it is accepted as a general principle whose application to particular instances requires no justification. It is thus a misunderstanding to blame classical liberalism for having been too doctrinaire. Its defect was not that it adhered too stubbornly to principles, but rather that it lacked principles sufficiently definite to provide clear guidance . . .
As Hayek argued on another occasion, if the cause of liberty is to prevail once again, it is necessary for friends of freedom to not be afraid of being radical in their case for classical liberalism – even “utopian” in a right meaning of the term. To once more make it a shining and attractive ideal to imagine a world of free men who are no longer slaves to others, whether they be monarchs or majorities.
It would be a world of sovereign individuals who respect each other, who treat each other with dignity and who view each other as an end in himself, rather than one of those pawns to be moved and sacrificed on that chessboard of society to serve the ends of another who presumes to impose coercive control over his fellow human beings.If we can do this, the collectivist counter-revolution can be defeated and the classical liberal revolutionary ideal of free men who form a great and good society through their associations on the basis of trade rather than tyranny can bring us liberty, peace and prosperity before the end of this new century.