Part II, Introduction

Part II



THE PHILOSOPHY OF FREEDOM

In this section I present those papers in which I have attempted to set forth exactly what I stand for and why. The first paper, “The Case for Economic Freedom,” was given as a speech on numerous occasions (particularly at seminars organized by the Foundation for Economic Education at Irvington, New York) before being put down on paper. The second paper was originally prepared for an appearance before the students and faculty of the college where I teach, Wabash College, and was my attempt to tell them the kind of person (in Rogge) they were harboring in their midst. “Who’s to Blame” was presented to an even earlier convocation at Wabash College, at a time when I was serving as Dean of the College. It is presented as a further development of the idea of personal responsibility discussed in the first two papers of this section. “Paradise in Posey County” was another of my chapel messages to young men; in it I explore (and criticize) the idea of Utopia as displayed in two famous experiments in communal living in Indiana.

16. Richard La Piere,

The Freudian Ethic (New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1959) p. 166.

17. Mark Holloway,

Heavens on Earth: Utopian Communities in America 1680-1880, 2d ed. (New York: Peter Smith, 1966), p. 101.

18. John Humphrey Noyes,

History of American Socialisms (1870), p. 43.