John Stossel‘s latest column suggests that recent news offers mixed signals to those who would like to see libertarian ideas gain a stronger foothold in American politics in 2012.
I fear that much of the country is in agreement with the Wall Street protesters who love free stuff from government — free health care, free college education, free lunch. Elderly Americans want no cuts to Medicare.
Even after the Solyndra scandal, 62 percent of Americans say America should continue to invest in clean energy jobs. Don’t they think about what that money would be producing if left in the hands of free, entrepreneurial individuals? No.
Lots of Americans oppose free trade and free markets. It takes some knowledge to realize that the seeming chaos masks underlying order. The benefits of freedom are not intuitive, and when you go against people’s intuition, they get upset.
The benefits of freedom are largely “unseen,” as the 19th-century French liberal Frederic Bastiat put it. He meant that rising living standards and labor-saving inventions don’t appear to flow from freedom. But they do.
It’s one of the ironies of life that people need not understand freedom for it to work, and because of this, there is the perennial danger that they will give it up without realizing the disastrous consequences that follow.
We freedom lovers have a lot more work to do.
Click play below to watch Stossel describe his conversion to libertarianism. He offered these remarks earlier this month during the John W. Pope Foundation’s 25th anniversary dinner.
