Walter E. Williams is an American economist, commentator, and academic. He is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, as well as a syndicated columnist. His weekly syndicated columns appear on CNSNews.com. (Photo is a screen grab from C-SPAN)

(CNSNews.com) - “We Americans bear an awesome burden to preserve liberty,” says economist and George Mason University Professor Walter Williams, and “if liberty dies in America, it will be dead for all times, everywhere.”

Williams spoke after receiving the 2017 Bradley Prize in Washington, D.C., on Thursday night.

“Now for most of human history, mankind has been subject to arbitrary abuse and control by others,” Williams said.



“It’s personal liberty that’s the rare state of affairs, and enjoyed by only a tiny part of mankind mostly in the western world, and for only a tiny part of its history -- just a couple of centuries or so. We Americans bear an awesome burden to preserve liberty. If liberty dies in America, it will be dead for all times, everywhere.”

Williams called it tragic that “too many of our fellow Americans” accept government conduct as moral when it is clearly immoral:

“Most of us accept that it’s ok for Congress to forcibly use one American to serve the purposes of another American. We just don’t think of it that way. But at least two-thirds of the federal budget can be described as Congress taking the earnings of one American and giving them to another American to whom they do not belong,” Williams said.

While “numerous” government activities fit that category, Williams named just a few of the “handout programs,” including farm subsidies, business bailouts, welfare, food stamps, and Medicaid.

“Keep in mind that the forcible use of one person to serve the purpose of another is a fairly good working definition of slavery,” Williams said.

“Now don’t get me wrong, I personally believe in helping our fellow man in need. I believe that is praiseworthy and laudable to help one’s fellow man by reaching into one’s own pockets to do so. I think it’s worthy of condemnation to help one’s fellow man by reaching into someone else’s pocket to help.”

The Bradley prizes -- up to four prizes of $250,000 each -- are given annually by The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. They are awarded to “innovative thinkers and practitioners whose achievements strengthen the legacy of the Bradley brothers and the ideas to which they were committed.”

Also receiving the Bradley Prize on Thursday night were Peter Berkowitz, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution; Philip Hamburger, a professor at Columbia Law School; and Christopher DeMuth, a distinguished fellow at the Hudson Institute.

According to its mission, “The Bradley brothers were committed to preserving and defending the tradition of free representative government and private enterprise that has enabled the American nation and, in a larger sense, the entire Western world to flourish intellectually and economically. The Bradleys believed that the good society is a free society. The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation is likewise devoted to strengthening American democratic capitalism and the institutions, principles, and values that sustain and nurture it.”