Reagan and Hayek
More from Ron Lipsman on Friedrich Hayek:
On the Genius of Friedrich Hayek, II
By: Ron Lipsman
This article is a successor to a previous one in this journal (see here) In that piece I provided a representative sample of the brilliant ideas to be found in Friedrich Hayek’s 1944 book, The Road to Serfdom. I bemoaned the fact that so many of today’s educators are ignorant of Hayek’s thought, and that they pass that ignorance on to the youth of America. One tragic consequence is the people’s choice of economically retarded and philosophically ignorant leaders to govern the nation. The point of the article was to inspire right-thinking conservatives to redouble their efforts to get Hayek added to the curriculum.
In this follow on piece I provide more of Hayek’s wisdom – this time from his other main publication, The Constitution of Liberty (University of Chicago Press, 1960). My hope is that readers, whether they have read the first piece or not, will be further inspired to disseminate and promote Hayek’s ideas.
Chapter 1: Liberty and Liberties, pp. 11-12: The state in which a man is not subject to coercion by the arbitrary will of another or others is often also distinguished as “individual” or “personal” freedom…Even our tentative indication of what we shall mean by “freedom” will have shown that it describes a state which man living among his fellows may hope to approach closely but can hardly expect to realize perfectly. The task of a policy of freedom must therefore be to minimize coercion …. CONTINUE READING
