Book of the Week

Leonard E. Read, Accent on the Right (1968).  Download it in pdf form here.  Read chapter two online here.  A quote and an excerpt from chapter two are below, but read it the whole thing:

“While there are many who will agree that they, personally, should not kill, steal, enslave, it is only the individual with a first-rate moral nature who will have no hand in encouraging any agency — even government — in doing these things for him or others.”

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Where Will Each Stand?

Let us now return to the question this chapter poses: What shall be construed as wrong and, thus, prohibited? For, I repeat, it is the difference of opinion as to what should be denied others that highlights the essential difference between the collectivists — socialists, statists, interventionists, mercantilists — and those of the libertarian faith. Take stock of what you would prohibit others from doing and you will accurately find your own position in the ideological lineup. Or, this method can be used to determine anyone else’s position.

Consider the following statement:

Government has a positive responsibility in any just society to see to it that each and every one of its citizens acquires all the skills and the opportunities necessary to practice and appreciate the arts to the limit of his natural ability. Enjoyment of the arts and participation in them are among man’s natural rights and essential to his full development as a civilized person. One of the reasons governments are instituted among men is to make this right a reality.

It is significant that the author uses the term “its citizens,” the antecedent of “its” being government. Such a conception is basic to the collectivist philosophy: We — you and I — belong to the state. We are “its” wards! Of course, if one accepts this statist premise, the above position is sensible enough: it has to do with a detail in the state’s paternalistic concern for its charges.

Contests, Socio-Political