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The Medieval Inventor and Entrepreneur Who Sparked the Motor of the World

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In Medieval Europe, economic mobility was determined by heredity, and since no one chooses their parents, opportunities were limited and pathways for improving one’s lot in life were pre-determined. The feudal system favored the nobility who extracted rents and taxes from the peasants and craftsmen. To limit the abuse and keep more of what they earned, merchants and craftsmen formed guilds, meaning labor unions, to negotiate prices, manage quality, and enforce rules of conduct among guild members.

The only language used for communication across Europe was Latin, and all printed material was manufactured by hand, so illiteracy was nearly everyone’s lot in life. The most literate were the monks who transcribed Bibles. Such was the power of the Church, which was safeguarded by illiteracy, until the year 1522. Over a two year period, 300,000 printed copies of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses were distributed throughout Germany and Europe. Luther’s goal was to kneecap the power of church leaders in their selling of indulgences, which they did in order to enrich themselves further. This was the first shot fired in the Protestant Reformation, and the first widespread distribution of mass produced pamphlets and ideas. And the gun that fired the shot was the recently developed printing press, the one created by the entrepreneur, inventor, and Poetic Justice Warrior Johannes Gutenberg.

The Invention That Changed Everything

While its not clear when Gutenberg came up with the idea for mass printing using moveable type, most likely it was around the year 1440. At the same time, it is believed that Dutchman Laurens Jansz Koster also built a printing press. While it is not rare that two independent minds come up with the same groundbreaking discovery simultaneously, the preponderance of evidence suggests the honor rightfully belongs to Gutenberg.

While the records are sparse, it seems Gutenberg was testing prototype presses while living in Strasbourg, and then in Mainz, while he was experimenting with copper engraved printing. In 1448 Gutenberg took out a loan, presumably to begin construction of a fully working press with all the necessary tools. In 1450, he took out another loan from a wealthy investor, Johann Fust, who along with his son in law Peter Schoffer, joined Gutenberg’s printing enterprise. It makes sense that Schoffer, who had experience as a scribe, created the first typefaces.

In 1452, after taking out a third loan, production began on Gutenberg’s Bible project, and in 1455 they printed 180 copies of the infamous 42 line Gutenberg Bible. During this period Gutenberg accepted commissions for much more profitable printing projects, and as poetic justice would have it, the Church ordered thousands of indulgences to bestow upon their wealthy sinners, er, generous donors.

The Modern Period

The Gutenberg press is a singularity in human history, which means dramatic and irreversible change, and ushered in the modern era. Besides the Reformation, it included the grand achievements of the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery. But at the personal level, it meant growing literacy and the rise of vernacular language, meaning that people could read and learn in the language of their local population. This led to new cultural cohesion among people of the same language and borders, and the emergence of the middle class.

The late modern period was also one of grand achievements. It was the Age of Reason which inspired the Shot Heard Round the World – the American Revolution – and the Industrial Revolution. It was the dawning of the knowledge economy. Literacy soared, ideas and information were mass distributed, and the premodern hierarchies of nobility, church, and guilds were leveled. The power of the human mind was unleashed for the first time in history. The difference between Modernism and the Classicism of ancient Greece and Rome is that they didn’t share our reverence for natural law and natural rights.

What is essential to understand is that in the millennia that preceded the knowledge economy, human life routinely meant disease and despair, only to be interrupted by horrid cruelty. Human life was cheap. As historian Jay Winik explains in his book The Great Upheaval:

Torture was universally employed for all manner of crimes. Rarely was there mercy. One might be hanged, drawn, and quartered. Ordinary criminals and political dissidents alike were routinely beheaded, burned, or broken alive on a wheel. Counterfeiters were punished by pouring molten metal down their throats.

This did not end until mass literacy begat the knowledge economy, the Age of Reason, individualism, the consent of the governed, capitalism, and the Industrial Revolution. Roughly in that order. The Industrial Revolution was central to the end of slavery in the Western world, and unimaginable global prosperity.

The Knowledge Problem

Johannes Gutenberg was patient and peaceful, and had an unusually low time preference, meaning a long-term vision, but not even he could have predicted the amazing consequences of two phenomena: the mass dispersion of all human knowledge, and the massive increase in all human knowledge. As economist Friedrich Hayek explained, “The mind cannot foresee its own advance.”

However, Gutenberg did solve the knowledge problem. Like the creation of money was the catalyst for humanity to escape the tribal, hunter-gatherer mode of living, and provided the tool for mutual, peaceful exchange, the creation of the printing press was the catalyst for organically derived knowledge at the local level, and the universality of knowledge for individual self-creation.

Hayek described the impossibility of any group of people to possess sufficient knowledge for managing human resources more efficiently and peacefully than free markets. In the most cited article in the second half of the 20th century, The Use of Knowledge in Society:

The peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined precisely by the fact that the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess.

One of the greatest achievements of Gutenberg’s ingenuity was that economic mobility was liberalized. Anyone engaged in self-creation, who live lives of reason, purpose, and pride, can work their way into any economic strata they aspire to. Such is the legacy of Poetic Justice Warrior Johannes Gutenberg.

 

 

 

 

 

Human Action

The Austrian Champion of Laissez-Faire Human Action and the Micro-Economic Decisions of Individuals

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All Poetic Justice Warriors share common character traits, not the least of which is that they are magnificent exponents for human action. But perhaps no one has lionized the ideal of human action more than the Austrian economist, Ludwig von Mises, whose signature publication is his book, Human Action. As economics professor Peter Leeson says about Human Action, “In my opinion it is the most important book on economics of the twentieth century and quite possibly the most important book in economics, period.”

Human Action

Human Action is Mises’ signature achievement. In it, he single-handedly constructs and preserves the so-called Austrian School of free market individual economics in the face of Communism, Socialism, Interventionism and Keynesianism. And economics professor Hans Sennholz continues:

In the world of economic literature, Human Action now holds the position which Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations used to occupy. It is the science of every kind of human action. It applies to all ends and all means, both material and ideal, the sublime and the base, the noble and ignoble.

In it, Mises built on the foundations of classical and Austrian school economists to expand the science by presenting a general theory of individual choice and individual preference in all human action. But the best megaphone for Mises’ contribution to Western Civilization is Mises himself:

We conceive what incentive induced people not to consider themselves simply as rivals in a struggle for the appropriation of the limited supply of means of subsistence made available by nature. The factor that brought about primitive society and daily works toward its progressive intensification is human action that is animated by the insight into the higher productivity of labor achieved under the division of labor.

Economist Murray Rothbard adds to Mises insight: “Human Action was indeed about everything. The book was a revelation to those of us drenched in modern economics. It provided an entirely new and superb structure of correct economic methodology and theory.” Or as Mises explains, “Economics is life.”

A Life of Reason, Purpose, and Pride

Human Action was published in America in 1949, and like any monumental achievement, it was the result of a lifetime of work and challenges. In his treatise published in 1927 titled Liberalism, Mises compared the instability caused by government economic intervention, the impossibility of socialism, and the ideal of laissez-faire capitalism. And Mises knew of which he spoke, for in the inflationary aftermath of World War I, he was the economic advisor to the Marxist Socialist leader of Austria, Otto Bauer, and Mises dissuaded Bauer from joining the Bolshevik cause that he and his wife were so enamored with. As Mises later put it:

Everyone was so convinced of the inevitability of the coming Bolshevism that they were intent merely on securing for themselves a favorable position in the new order. The Catholic Church and its follower, the Christian Social Party, were ready to welcome Bolshevism with the same ardor that the archbishops twenty years later welcomed Nazism. Bank managers and industrialists hoped to earn a good living under Bolshevism.

Five years prior to Liberalism, Mises published his book titled Socialism and stated,

The advocates of socialism came up with the absurd recommendation of substituting equations of mathematical catallactics, depicting an image from which human action is eliminated, for the monetary calculation in the market economy.

Here Mises made the definitive case that central planning for the allocation of scarce resources was not only inefficient, it was impossible. Only markets can perform this allocation. Ever since Mises – and only because of Mises – all parties have conceded that Socialist economics is impossible to execute, and therefore all Socialist promises, dreams and wishes are false.

By 1934, Mises became aware of the impending Nazi threat to his beloved Austria and accepted a position at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Switzerland. And when Germany conquered France in 1940, he and his wife Margit left everything behind and arrived in New York City virtually impoverished. During this period, Keynesian economics had been adopted by the American socialists in government and academia, and socialism and Nazism were taking over Europe.

Capitalism, The Unknown Ideal

While destructive wars and accelerating statism were swallowing up 20th century Western Civilization, and the spirit of his free market colleagues, Mises ever remained the Poetic Justice Warrior – a battle that may have seemed hopeless. In 1956 he published a short book, The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, which is a wonderful and startling defense of capitalism’s economic democracy – startling only to those who vilify economic freedom. Or as Andy Duncan writes:

Via the pages of this book, Mises had told me the truth about life, the universe, and everything. He’d tumbled the monuments in my mind, to Marx, by taking a wrecking ball to them. This book essentially details the societally destructive power of human envy. Like a fine Bossa Nova dancer in perfect tune with his own epistemological theory, Mises slices and slashes at the tenets of Marxism until there’s nothing left but malevolent dust.

What Mises does is ask and answer the basic questions that are rooted in socialist envy, for example:

The greater the amount of capital invested per head of the worker, the more and the better goods can be produced and consumed. This is what capitalism has brought about and brings about daily anew. Yet, most present-day governments and political parties are eager to destroy this system. Why do they all loathe capitalism? Why do they, while enjoying the well-being capitalism bestows upon them?

The sternness of capitalism consists in the fact that it handles everybody according to his contribution to the well-being of his fellow men. To each according to his accomplishments, does not allow of any excuse for personal shortcomings. They loathe capitalism because it has assigned to this other man the position they themselves would like to have. Such is the case with those people who are commonly called the intellectuals.

The Root of Money and Integrity

In 1912 Mises published his first monumental book, The Theory of Money and Credit, which integrated broad market economics and individual human action. As Rothbard explains, “he transformed monetary theory from an unrealistic and distorted concentration on mechanistic relations between aggregates, to one consistent with the theory of individual choice.” Mises’ achievement was to highlight the micro-economic decisions of individuals as being the root cause of wealth creation and economic stability, not government policy and their econometric models.

Prior to this book, Mises published three articles about foreign exchange and the integrity of the gold standard, and he exposed central banker’s preference for inflation, low interest rates, and low exchange rates. He became convinced that fiat currency and monetary inflation were responsible for balance of payments deficits, not the other way around, and that it incentivized graft by policy makers. As Rothbard tells us:

Perhaps, if the public had been informed of the corruption that almost always accompanies government intervention, the activities of the statists and inflationists might have become desanctified, and Mises heroic and life long struggle might have been more successful.

In fact, according to historian Dr. Earlene Craver, Mises was denied professorships because he was a laissez-faire liberal in a world of big government interventionists, and he was unwilling to compromise his principles. Mises’ steadfastness to truth can be found in his motto from Virgil’s Aeneid. “Do not give in to evil but proceed ever more boldly against it.” Spoken like a proud Poetic Justice Warrior.

 

 

The Uniquely American Self-Made Man

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Is there really such a thing as a self-made man or woman? The common wisdom of the progressive left is no, as famously expressed by President Barack Obama when he said “you didn’t build that.” Obama went on to say that anyone’s success is because of the circumstances created by government policy and government spending. This implies that everyone has a duty to government service, and even worse, it implies that successful people have a duty to “give back.” To believe this drivel is to ignore two facts – that self-made men and women pay for everything, and that our government exists by the consent of the governed.

These are the self-made men and women who gave us the most free and comfortable living standards the world has ever known. Yet we owe them no duty, just admiration and gratitude. Frederick Douglass is the Poetic Justice Warrior who epitomizes this, and who created and delivered the Self-Made Men lectures in 1872.

If not ourselves great, we like to explain why others are so. We are stingy in our praise to merit, but generous in our praise to chance. Besides, a man feels himself measurably great when he can point out the precise moment and circumstance which made his neighbor great. He easily fancies that the slight difference between himself and his friend is simply one of luck.

Perhaps no one in American history has a better claim to the title self-made man than the one who escaped slavery to become one of the America’s greatest anti-slavery activists, and an author, lecturer, and diplomat.

The Self-Creation Process

The Self-Made Men lectures celebrated heroic figures who rose from obscurity through their own hard work. Douglass referred to engineers, poets, political revolutionaries, and industrialists. “If they climbed high, they built their own ladders.” But Douglass also acknowledges the role of contemporaries and predecessors in helping everyone create their own fortunes.

Properly speaking, there are in the world no such men as self-made men. We have reaped where others have sown, and that which others have strewn, we have gathered. The brotherhood and inter-dependence of mankind are guarded and defended at all points.

Yet, this does not diminish the idea that everyone has the capacity for self-creation, as this draw my life video demonstrates, and Douglass knew how it was done and what it meant. Self-made men do not accomplish their status through luck or fate. They accomplish it with vision, ingenuity, and perseverance, or as Douglass put it – WORK! WORK!! WORK!!! WORK!!!!

One thing Douglass never told his audience was to follow your dreams. To him, this would encourage passivity and negate self-reliance. While dreams are important, they are the easy part. For Douglass, to have ambition, will, and aspirations is very self-regarding, and this is necessary for self-creation. It has nothing to do with service to your fellow man, that is a natural consequence of living free and with dignity, or what Douglass calls “mutual esteem.” And to Douglass, self-creation has an aesthetic quality:

Art is a special revelation of the higher powers of the human soul. There is in the contemplation of art, an unconscious comparison constantly going on in the mind of the pure forms of beauty and excellence, which are without, to those which are within and native to human heart. It is process of soul-awakening self-revelation. Art is both an expression of ideals, and a means by which we can contemplate those ideals more objectively.

As biographer Timothy Sandefur says about Douglass’ philosophy, “making art plays a role in self-creation and self-definition. The self-made man is like an artist who sculpts his life and his actions to reflect his model of the ideal.”

Asserting One’s Abilities

During the Civil War, Frederick Douglass served as recruiting officer for the Union Army. However, he never urged black Americans to enlist out of service to their country. They owed the country nothing. To Douglass, the United States owed black Americans the right to fight, to be free to assert themselves, to build their sense of self-worth. As he famously said, “citizenship rests on three boxes – the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.” Douglass was not an advocate of non-violence, but an enemy of those who initiate force. Or as he put it during recruiting speeches, “Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow.” In other words, the threat and use of violence shackles you, don’t depend on others to win your freedom and dignity.

In April 1863, Douglass published a letter encouraging blacks to enlist in the 54th Massachusetts Regiment. In it he gave nine reasons to enlist. The first one was a question of action or inaction. Another reason was that, “every Negro-hated and slavery-lover in the land regards the arming of Negroes as a calamity and is doing its best to prevent it.” Others include the necessity for learning the use of firearms, defending themselves against accusations of cowardice, and taking ownership of their freedom, dignity, and self-respect. The eighth reason was to help prevent America from drifting back into pro-slavery compromise at the end of the war, which was Douglass’ greatest fear.

What Douglass wrote was echoed over 100 years later by Poetic Justice Warrior Ayn Rand in her address to the graduating class at West Point in 1974, “The defense of one’s country means that a man is personally unwilling to live as the conquered slave of any enemy, foreign or domestic.”

The Romantic Manifesto

Douglass was the most photographed American of the 19th century, and someone who delivered lectures on the new science of picture making. He said about asserting one’s self in this gentler context:

Making pictures is one of the most basic aspects of what it means to be human. Picture making is the process by which man is able to posit his own subjective nature outside of himself, so that it becomes the subject of astute observation and contemplation. When we make pictures, we make an abstract ideal concrete.

His portraits are unsmiling, intentionally so. He refused to play into the caricature of the happy, docile slave. Much like early 20th century black leaders such as J. B. Stradford, O. W. Gurley, and W. E. B. DuBois refused to be referred to by their first names by white men. It was a blatant form of condescension in the Jim Crow South. But Douglass’ sense of life was utterly romantic. His favorite authors were Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, and Lord Byron because of their timeless characters of nobility, idealism and strength. Douglass was also a dedicated advocate for women’s suffrage, he understood clearly that female slaves suffered most. As Douglass explains in his autobiography.

Conscience is an interior dialogue with the self, and slavery obliterates it. The self-made man who asserts his ability and becomes an independently real person, cannot outsource the functions of conscience. On the contrary, he seeks to bolster his conscience, and exercise it more vigorously over his actions so that the story of his life as whole will be a comprehensive, focused, and rewarding one.

A Poetic Justice Warrior like Douglass would never submit to the unchosen obligations of the social justice warrior who boasts “you didn’t build that.”

 

 

The Classical Roman Consul Who Inspired America’s Classical Liberal Constitution

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Between October 1787 and April 1788, a series of 77 articles were published in New York City newspapers to promote the ratification of the newly created Constitution of the United States. Each of the thirteen states would hold a Constitutional Convention to ratify or reject it, and a minimum of nine states would need to approve it in order to form a new government. The author of these essays, to which 8 more were added when they were compiled into a book, now known as The Federalist Papers, was none other than Publius.

Publius, also known as Publius Valerius, was one of four ancient Roman aristocrats who led the overthrow of the Roman monarchy in 509 BC, helped create the Roman Republic, and was elected the first of two Roman Consuls. The Republic lasted nearly 500 years until it was destroyed by the dictatorship of Julius Caesar. The pseudonym was chosen as a response to a series of articles against the ratification of the Constitution published under the pseudonyms Cato and Brutus, and later dubbed the Anti-Federalist Papers. It is believed that the Anti-Federalist papers were written by Founding Fathers Patrick Henry, George Clinton, Richard Henry Lee, Mercy Otis Warren, Samuel Bryan, and others.

The exact attributions are not known, but they were all credible and heartfelt defenses against centralized government power. For example, Mercy Otis Warren was a correspondent and adviser to the likes of George Washington, John Adams, Patrick Henry, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Samuel Adams. Besides her historical account of the American revolution, she published a series of poems in 1790 under her own name, which was highly unusual for a woman to do at the time.

Republicanism versus Democracy

In Federalist 10, considered the most consequential of the Federalist Papers, Publius makes the case against direct democracy and the factionalism it incites. In it he expresses his contempt for majority rule at the expense of the natural rights of each individual. The Founders’ experience under the Articles of Confederation convinced them that people with similar interests and resources should not be able to rule as a mob.

Publius describes the Constitution as a “happy combination” of a republic and democracy. “The great and aggregate interests being referred to the national, the local and particular to the State legislatures.” The result of this is American style Federalism, a decentralized governmental structure, that as Publius explains, would make it “more difficult for unworthy candidates to practice the vicious arts by which elections are too often carried.”

One of the Anti-Federalist criticisms is that centralized government over a large territory couldn’t succeed, failure would result in the rise to power of an autocratic ruler, and revert to an oppressive regime. In Federalist 14, Publius argues that this is not possible in a republic that has three branches of government, each with its own responsibilities and powers, and with checks and balances over the others. What Publius does in this case is to refute the Anti-Federalist argument that relies on the thinking of the French political philosopher Montesquieu by using Montesquieu’s own solution to the problem.

Bill of Rights or No Bill of Rights

In our postmodern world, the debate over the Bill of Rights is about the efficacy of each of the first ten Amendments individually. Freedom of speech is under attack by the political correctness elites, the right to bear arms is under attack by state media and their elected minions, illegal search and seizure is under attack by the surveillance state, and the tenth amendment, the one that reserves powers not enumerated in the Constitution to the States, aka Federalism, has been effectively abrogated.

However, in 1787 the debate was over the need for a Bill of Rights at all. As Publius writes in Federalist 84:

I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and in the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers which are not granted; and on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted.

The fear was that if specific rights were enumerated, they would be the only rights that were protected, and that government could expand its powers to control behavior that was not specified in the Constitution. While the Bill of  Rights eventually passed – this was necessary for ratification – the foresight is extraordinary.

The Publius writers are Poetic Justice Warriors with all of the character traits – reason, purpose and pride. Those who dismiss the relevance of the Constitution in our postmodern world have but a fraction of the intellect or character of Publius. Or as historian Richard B. Morris explains, in the essays that make up The Federalist Papers, Publius has created an “incomparable exposition of the Constitution, a classic in political science unsurpassed in both breadth and depth by the product of any later American writer.”

Original Intent

There is a lot of debate these days about how the Constitution should be interpreted. Do we consider it a ‘living document’ whose meaning changes according to the whims of the political majority, as the progressive movement insists, or do we interpret it according to the meaning of the words as they were written, also known as constructionism and originalism? But at the beginning of the Constitutional Convention there was no original intent, many delegates were there to fix the Articles of Confederation, and others like Publius understood the need to scrap the Articles and start over. After four months of debates, compromises, and draft copies, all while sequestered in the sweltering heat of Independence Hall, the new Constitution was perfected and ready to go on the road for ratification by the States.

Unanimous consent was existential for the new republic in order to insulate the union from foreign powers, and Publius knew this. These eloquent political philosophers were the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Jay, the first Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, and the father of the Constitution James Madison. And as poetic justice would have it, their principles, compromises, meticulous language, and most important of all, their incredible understanding of human nature, paved the way for the abolition of slavery four score and seven years after the Declaration of Independence. Or as escaped slave (and advisor to President Lincoln) Frederick Douglass put it:

I hold that the Federal Government was never, in its essence, anything but an anti-slavery government. Abolish slavery tomorrow, and not a sentence or a syllable to the Constitution need be altered. It was purposely so framed as to give no claim, no sanction to the claim, of property in man. If, in its origin, slavery had any relation to the government, it was only as the scaffolding to the magnificent structure, to be removed as soon as the building was completed.

 

 

 

The Father of Classical Liberalism Whose Ideas Are Inscribed In Our Souls

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On nurturing children, we “should well study their natures and aptitudes and see, by often trials, what turn they easily take and what becomes them, observe what their native stock is, how it may be improved, and what it is fit for.” This attitude could have been expressed by the renowned educator and Poetic Justice Warrior Maria Montessori, but it is not hers. However, it is a radical shift away from the Renaissance emphasis on Classical Greek philosophy, and toward the Enlightenment view of human beings as unique individuals.

For insight on personal liberty and self-reliance,

If man in the state of nature be so free, as has been said; if he be absolute lord of his own person and possessions, equal to the greatest, and subject to no body, why will he part with his freedom? Why will he give up this empire, and subject himself to the dominion and control of any other power?

This sentiment might easily be attributed to Poetic Justice Warriors Booker T. Washington or Ayn Rand, but it is not theirs. It was however a radical shift away from the notion of the divine right of kings. And it was the precursor for the Great Upheaval of the late 18th century, the one that resulted in a brief experiment with enlightened despotism in Russia, a brutal and failed revolution in France, and according to President John Adams, the successful revolution of the mind to supplant British hegemony in America.

The source of the first quote is Some Thoughts Concerning Education, published in 1693; and the second is from Two Treatises of Government, published in 1689. Both were achievements of Poetic Justice Warrior John Locke. These were truly radical ideas at the time, and they furthered the course of human history toward human flourishing.

All the King’s Men

In 17th century Europe, the feudal system had largely replaced slavery. While serfs had a few basic rights such as access to the legal system, some freedom of movement and church sanctuary, they lived lives of servitude. In England, there was a great deal of political pressure, particularly from the Whig movement, to replace the absolute monarchy of King Charles II with a constitutional monarchy that would limit the authority of the sovereign. Locke had a long and close relationship with a founder of the Whigs, Lord Ashley, for whom Locke and his team of doctors had saved from liver disease by performing surgery.

Because of Locke’s implication in a plot to assissinate King Charles II (there is little evidence that Locke was involved), he exiled himself to the Netherlands for five years in 1683 (or be hung, drawn and quartered). It was during this time in Amsterdam that Locke surrounded himself with the intellectual heirs to the rationalist philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, and in particular Spinoza’s philosophical treatise titled Ethics. While there was conflict between Locke’s empiricism and Spinoza’s rationalism, Locke was impressed with Spinoza’s arguments regarding political and religious tolerance, and the separation of church and state. This period also gave him time to complete his signature achievements – Two Treatises of Government, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, and A Letter Concerning Toleration.

Back in England, there was increasing resentment against a Catholic monarch wielding absolute authority justified by the divine right of kings. In 1688, the Glorious Revolution led by English parliamentarians and an invading Dutch fleet and army organized by the Prince of Orange, installed a constitutional monarchy led by William III and his wife Mary II. It was then that Locke, accompanied by Mary II, returned to England. The following year the English Bill of Rights was passed by parliament and Locke finally published his Treatises, Essay, and Letter. While Locke was associated with the Whig party that controlled parliament, his conception of natural rights (rights not derived from any law or government) were still considered radical at the time.

The Road from Serfdom

Locke’s Two Treatises of Government contain powerful arguments for limited government, separation of powers, and the consent of the governed. But he is not the first to espouse these ideas. According to historian Peter Berkowitz, they can be found in much earlier work. For example, the Bible talks about equality, but it is not based on natural rights. And in classical Greek philosophy, political structures should accommodate human virtues, not personal liberty. It was John Locke who combined seemingly unrelated ideas into a cohesive framework that coalesced into America’s Declaration of Independence and Constitution nearly a century later.

It starts with Locke’s theory of knowledge, known as Tabula Rasa in Latin, meaning that all human beings are born without innate ideas. He asserts that all people acquire knowledge through perception, experience, and introspection. This idea can be traced back to the 11th century Persian philosopher Avicenna, and before that to Aristotle. His theories on education consider the mind and body to be one integrated system, that children should be considered rational beings, and that virtue is taught by delaying gratification. Locke adds to this his theory of every person’s sense of self, or individualism:

Thus, from the consideration of ourselves, and what we infallibly find in our own constitutions, our reason leads us to the knowledge of this certain and evident truth, that there is an eternal, most powerful, and most knowing being; which whether any one will please to call God, it matters not!

This naturally leads to the right of each human being to ownership of their life and property. As Berkowitz explains about Locke’s achievement, political power is rooted in freedom and equality by and for all. For political systems to be legitimate, they must protect natural rights, and it must be by the consent of the governed. Locke proved that no one is born to rule others, and no one is born to serve rulers. But freedom and equality are not absolute, political structures should only protect their citizens from the threat of force imposed by others.

As poetic justice would have it, Locke’s Two Treatises laid dormant in western political thought until the American resistance against British taxation resurrected it. Personal liberty became the subject of debates in both America and Britain, and in 1773, Two Treatises of Government was finally published in America. Consequently, it had profound influence on Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and the other great American political philosophers that triggered Adams’ revolution of the mind, and fostered the soul of America.

 

 

The Dominican Friar Who Introduced the Western World to Western Civilization.

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Perhaps the most challenging and controversial question of human existence is, well, human existence. How did we acquire consciousness, and when?  Was it an emergent phenomenon as suggested by Darwin’s theory of natural selection, or was it a supernaturally induced spark that created our inner voice, our sense of the future, and formed language? This is an enduring historical, scientific, religious, and philosophical conundrum, and a contentious one at that.

A similar, and existentially important question is: when and how did human beings make the giant leap from the mind-numbing stagnation of the Dark Ages to the humanism and achievements of The Enlightenment? Was it an emergent phenomenon, divine inspiration, or was it a spark induced by a few mere mortals? This question is also one of history, science, religion, and philosophy. While the histiography is complex, there is one individual who resolved the religious and philosophical differences that paved the way for Romanticism and the Scientific Method. This Poetic Justice Warrior bridged the gap between Catholic hegemony and The Renaissance. He is the Italian Dominican Friar Saint Thomas Aquinas.

The Teacher, Philosopher and Theologian

The bridge that Aquinas built was constructed with the ancient girders of Aristotle’s reason, and this was no small feat. It required extraordinary insight and courage as he risked possible excommunication from the Church. To be accused of blasphemy was a very serious matter. For example, three years after Aquinas’ death in 1274, the Bishop of Paris issued a condemnation to declare that God’s absolute power superseded any principles that are derived from reason.

The condemnation listed over 200 such heretical propositions; many were Aristotle’s, and twenty were from Thomas Aquinas’ own philosophy known as Thomism. One example of Thomism is self-determination and inductive reasoning:

The will does not precede the intellect but follows upon it. It freely chooses among the many goods that are presented to it as desirable according to a changeable judgment or evaluation. Consequently, the choice follows the final practical judgment. But the will is the cause of it being the final one.

Another example of Thomism is Aquinas connecting the divine and the Law of Identity (everything behaves according to its nature):

Consequently, the one God, unique and simple, alone subsists in absolute being. All other things that participate in being have a nature whereby their being is restricted; they are constituted of essence and being, as really distinct principles.

As is frequently the case with poetic justice, it takes time and patience, and is an inevitable force of nature. Fifty years after his death, Aquinas was canonized as a saint, in 1567 he was awarded the title of Doctor of the Church for his research and writing, and in 1879 Pope Leo XIII declared Aquinas’s theology a definitive exposition of Catholic doctrine.

Enter The Modern Era

Thomas Aquinas utilized a method of thinking and learning known as Scholasticism, which is a system of critical thought that was a departure from traditional Christian theology. Scholasticism is closely associated with the rise of modern universities in Europe, and it relies heavily on dialectical reasoning, which is a form of debate that excludes subjective or emotional elements. The goal is to arrive at objective truth. Rational arguments are broken down into inferences that move premises toward logical conclusions. This is essential for resolving contradictions because contradictions cannot exist. The significance of this, especially in the late Middle Ages, cannot be underestimated. Scholasticism was the crucial method needed to reconcile Christian theology with Classical philosophy, and pave the way for the Modern era.

Aquinas’ signature achievement is his masterwork Summa Theologica, and it is considered to be the pinnacle of scholastic, medieval, and Christian philosophy. Within Summa there are several main characters, and two of these people could have been considered heresy. One is the Islamic, Aristotelian philosopher and polymath Ibn Sina (Avicenna), and the other is Aristotle himself, referred to as The Philosopher. But how did Classical Greek philosophy resurrect itself after a 1000 year absence in the Christian world? According to philosopher Stephen Hicks:

1085 is a significant year. Spain becomes fully Christian again. And at Toledo and various other points, the Christians rediscover all sorts of Greek and Roman texts that had been lost to Western Europe. And curious minds start to read some of these texts and discover these magnificent civilizations that had existed long before and shockingly were not Christian. How was it possible?

Not only was Aquinas born into a prominent Catholic family during a time of enormous transition for Europe, he was a strong-willed and highly educated renegade. As a young man, his parents held Aquinas under house arrest for a year because of his plans to join the Dominican Order, by whom he had been introduced to Aristotelian philosophy while enrolled at university in Naples.

Postmodern Progressives vs. The Enlightenment

The fall of Rome in the 5th century A. D. led to the fall of literacy, and the rise of St. Augustine’s influence over Christian doctrine. According to Hicks, “the dominant Augustinian Christian theology is very anti-empirical, it emphasizes revelation, mysticism, authority, and faith. Reason, to the extent that is allowed, is severely subordinated.” Its doctrine teaches that the divine controls all that will ever happen, force is permitted against heretics, people are inherently evil, and that reason, purpose and pride are bound to fail.

Incidentally, the rise of so-called progressivism in 20th century western culture has similar characteristics. While literacy is very high, its doctrine is government control, intolerance of debate, people are inherently victims, and individualism has failed. This can only lead us down the Road to Serfdom, and ultimately to the slavery which had been eradicated by western capitalists.

Not only did Aquinas usher the Catholic church into the Age of Reason, whereby it became a major force for higher education throughout the western world, he helped pave the way for the level of human consciousness that nature intended. And this unleashed a spontaneous force of nature that brought human flourishing to the entire world. While the pagans of classical Greece and Rome were slave owners (it was common and accepted nearly everywhere on earth) and placed no particular value on individuals, Christians began to regard slavery as inhuman. After all, central to Christian theology is the idea that all human beings are equal in the eyes of God, an idea also enshrined in the US Declaration of Independence. As President John Adams wrote, “The Revolution was in the minds of the people.”

And this is the spark, combining the Classical ideal of reason to the Christian ideal of equality, that freed the human mind and led to Western Civilization’s hallmarks of personal liberty, self-reliance, invention, religious and ethnic tolerance, limited government, the arts and unimaginable prosperity. All of which describes individualism, a Classical and ancient Hebrew idea best championed by Poetic Justice Warrior Ayn Rand, “The world you desire can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.”

 

The Diminuitive Russian Emigre Who is America’s Greatest Defender

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The 10th Venice International Film Festival began August 30, 1942. One of the films entered was from famed Italian director, Goffredo Alessandrini; and he hired Italy’s top studio, Scalera Films, to produce it. Alessandrini’s goal was to film a drama of epic proportions. For his ambitious project, Alessandrini chose the perfect vehicle to adapt to the screen, wartime Italy’s best selling novel, We The Living by Ayn Rand. To guarantee its success, three of Italy’s top box office stars were hired, and it subsequently became a smash hit among Italian audiences, the Italian Gone With The Wind if you will.

The Irrepressible Human Spirit

This romantic drama was the story of a strong, independent woman facing the challenges of life in a spiritless and ruthless Bolshevik Russia. According to Rand, the novel is not about Soviet Russia in particular, but about the sanctity of human life, and a woman’s spirit that could not be crushed by the State. Mussolini’s fascist government eventually banned the film after two months, and ordered all copies to be delivered to government authorities for destruction. The success of the novel in fascist Italy, and its film version (which Rand did not know about, let alone authorize) were the first of many monumental achievements for Ayn Rand. Her body of work, briefly described below, make Rand an obvious choice for Poetic Justice Warrior.

We The Living, published in 1936, was Rand’s opening salvo for her sense of life in the world of fiction. As an émigré from Soviet Russia in 1926, she could speak with authority about the life-sapping totalitarianism that held her country hostage. So it makes sense that she was shocked to find acceptance of Soviet style oppression among American intellectuals and politicians. In fact, finding a publisher for We The Living was a struggle, they were worried that no one would believe the violence and despair that Rand described in her novel.

The Individualist Ideal

Rand’s next project, The Fountainhead, was published in 1943, and it was about the struggle between individualism and collectivism in Man’s soul. Like the heroine Kira in We The Living, Rand created a new heroic character to illustrate a life of purpose and pride. In this case, it was the architect Howard Roark, and his character became Rand’s prototype of how life could and should be lived.

For contrast, Rand created antagonists that are all too common in everyday life. One is the conformist Peter Keating who asked “Can’t you ever do things without reason, like everyone else?” But worst of all was the spirit-crushing Ellsworth Toohey whose mission was “If you kill a man’s sense of personal value, he’ll submit.” Roark refused to submit. A non-fictional version of Toohey is the American progressive democrat John Dewey, who believed “There is no obvious social motive for the acquirement of mere learning, there is no clear social gain in success thereat.”

Another important philosophical theme from The Fountainhead is the Law of Identity, meaning everything has its own unique properties, they behave only according to their nature. Existence exists, or as Roark explains, “No two materials are alike. No two buildings have the same purpose. Every form has its own meaning. Every man creates his meaning and form and goal.”

The Fountainhead became a best-selling novel, and 1949 it was also produced as a film with A list actors, this time by a Hollywood studio. The intellectuals remained unimpressed, and Rand was frustrated that none of them understood her achievement. When a friend suggested that she explain her philosophy in non-fiction, she replied no, everything is in the novel, I will go on strike.

The Motor of the World

Rand’s next novel was Atlas Shrugged. Published in 1957, it was originally titled The Strike. It is loaded with heroic characters and true to life antagonists. Critics complain that the characters are one dimensional, and the heroes millionaire industrialists, but this reveals a lack of understanding. Ostensibly, many of the strikers were also managers and skilled tradesmen. Atlas is their story too. They were hired because of their integrity and skill, and were well compensated and appreciated. They went on strike because they refused to lend sanction to the heavy handed authoritarians who exploit their value, loot their employers, and produce nothing,

Like the previous two novels, it’s a love story, and it’s about the struggle between the individual and the collective. But its also a thriller – the desperate search for society’s destroyer, the strike organizer who demonstrated what happens when people of the mind retire to happy valley. The scope is so rich and deep that we’ll focus on one element, the economics of Atlas Shrugged.

Rand’s economics are almost identical to those of Jean-Baptiste Say, our first Poetic Justice Warrior. Say discovered that in a market economy, capital is the mind of its owner. As Rand explains, “Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think.” Both Say and Rand taught us that it’s the producers that matter; they create markets, they create consumers, they create wealth. And not just wealth, they explained the root of money itself. Say poured the foundation of all other economic theory, Rand uncovered the fountainhead of human flourishing.

Ayn Rand’s achievement is an original and integrated system of philosophy called Objectivism. Its precepts include the laws of identity and causality, reason and free will. Its basis is rational egoism, or the moral pursuit of one’s self-interest. Each person’s life is its own standard of morality. As Rand explains, nothing can prevent an individual from acting on their judgement except other people, and only this makes the case for morally defensible government.

I Choose To Live

As poetic justice would have it, Atlas set records for book sales in 2008 and 2009 because of the government induced banking crisis that was prophesized in its pages – what had been a fictional novel 50 years earlier. And in another sublime example of poetic justice, the original movie negative of We The Living was saved. The Scalera studio chief put another film into its container to be destroyed by Italian authorities in 1942. The original was subsequently discovered in 1968, and it was in marvelous condition.

The film survived because one person chose life for We The Living, as its heroine Kira chose to live. Instead of submitting to an existence of despair in Russia, she chose to risk murder for the hope of flourishing in Finland. Kira was shot in the back and killed by a Russian soldier. Her alternative was to never know freedom; a choice no different than what a loving parent would do to save her child.

Rand, through her fictional character Kira, had solved an enduring philosophical problem. Kira’s highest value was her life, and she chose to live as humans are meant to live. With her capacity for reason, Kira perceived reality and what she ought to do. Here Rand bridged the philosophical gap between what is, and what people ought to do – the gap between facts and values. Perhaps Rand’s greatest philosophical achievement was to prove that reason can be applied to values. She proved that values are not purely subjective, much like she proved that the human mind cannot be separated from the body. They are an integrated system.

For Ayn Rand, facts, logic and values guide principles, and principles guide action for human flourishing. This includes healthy emotional responses such as goodwill and benevolence. These are the same emotions that Rand credits for Western civilization’s celebration of life we know as the Christmas season, and that define Poetic Justice Warriors. Please click to learn more.

The Relentless Innovator in Childhood Education Who Inspires Teachers Worldwide

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According to the flow theory of learning, there are eight mental states that are experienced during any learning process, whether the subject is music, writing, education, sports, or art. Three of these mental states are anxiety, relaxation, and flow. Anxiety occurs when someone’s skill level is too low for the challenge, and relaxation happens when the skill level is higher than the task at hand. Neither condition is optimal for learning. Flow is the ideal match of skill and challenge. It induces the mental state that is also described as immersion; we know it as losing track of time.

According to Dr. Jerry Kilpatrick in his book Montessori, Dewey, and Capitalism, successful learning is the result of this kind of concentrated effort; and it has three components: interest, attention, and independence. This is what enables people to pursue personal long-term goals, whether its productive work, relationships, or their well-being. Or as Kilpatrick says himself, “an educational approach that cultivates independence of judgment and action and that enables the individual to develop purpose in life.”

Tale of Two Teachers

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there were two distinguished educators who discovered the importance of inducing flow in young children. The process allows students to choose what to pursue and what keeps their attention. These educators are Maria Montessori and John Dewey.

However, their methods and opinions differ because their ultimate goals for educating children were so different. Montessori’s philosophy for teaching was utterly individualist, Dewey’s collectivist. The progressive American schools Dewey inspired were short on content and long on social interaction because his creed was straight out of Rousseau’s Social Contract: “personal interests must be subordinated to the general will.”

In contrast, Montessori’s goal was to develop the mind of each child and teach them how to differentiate – learn the nature of things. This leads to concept formation and abstract ideas, and then how to apply them. In other words, principles guiding actions. While Dewey’s approach has dominated government monopoly schools, Montessori has thousands of classrooms all over the world, and her books have been translated into many languages for the training of new teachers. Because of all of this, we are proud to honor Maria Montessori as a Poetic Justice Warrior.

The Montessori Method

Montessori began developing methods for childhood education after graduating from the University of Rome medical program in 1896. Her first assignment was to observe mentally disabled children, and this included research into the major work on educational theory of the previous 200 years.

By applying reason to reality, she created an organized system for teaching children with learning disabilities including uniquely designed materials and activities. In 1900, Montessori introduced an educational program for their teachers, established a research lab, and adapted the Montessori Method for mainstream students. It wasn’t long before some of the students who were labeled as deficient were passing tests intended for so-called “normal” children.

One misconception of the Montessori method is that it is unstructured. But according to Montessori Answers:

Each child has a written work plan with a list of jobs that they specifically need to complete. During work time, as the jobs are finished, the children record it on the plan. As the teacher corrects and reviews the work, she then records information about each child’s understanding and progress on the concepts.

This method of learning, known as inductive reasoning, is critical to human flourishing. It allows for new information to be added to prior knowledge, and to identify and correct false premises. As Montessori Answers continues:

Simple mistakes are corrected with the child either on the spot, or the next day. Deeper misconceptions that require a review of the concept or a different material, is recorded in the lesson plan book. Additionally, the need for a more advanced lesson or new topic is also recorded. New lessons are usually presented the next work period.

The inductive method allows the student, or any other human being with an active mind, to evaluate the probability of a premise being true and testing it. In the world of statistics, this is known as Bayesian Logic, which has led to wonderful achievements in information technology, economic science, and cancer research.

The Nature of Bureaucracy

As economist Ludwig von Mises has taught us:

The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau. What an alluring utopia! What a noble cause to fight!

Dewey believed that: “Democracy, and the one ultimate ethical ideal of humanity are, to my mind synonymous.” For that to work, compulsory public schools were essential to reconstruct society, and to enforce a fully formed public opinion for its designated citizens, experts, and politicians (the latter were Dewey’s enforcers). To appreciate the inevitable horrors of this dystopian future, take a look at the recent Divergent movie series.

In stark contrast, Montessori exiled herself from Mussolini’s Italy in 1934 because of her anti-fascist views, and spent the World War II years creating schools, training teachers, and lecturing in India. As philosopher Ayn Rand observed in her 1971 essay Don’t Let It Go –

The middle class has created an antidote which is perhaps the most hopeful movement of recent years; the spontaneous, unorganized, grass roots revival of the Montessori system of education – a system aimed at the cognitive, i.e. rational, faculty.

The Nexus of Philosophy and Education

While in India, Montessori developed new educational materials for young children to teach the natural world; working directly with plants and animals while learning botany, zoology, and geology. She expanded her research to include teenagers and infants; creating different planes of learning for different stages of cognitive development.

Philosophy professor Michael Berliner sums up Montessori’s contribution to childhood education best:

Since the purpose of education is to develop a certain kind of individual and society, education involves the practical implementation of philosophic ideals. Despite the success of Montessori schools, there is amazingly little understanding of the reasons for that success.

At present, the supporters of the Montessori method are unable to defend it against either the educational establishment or compromisers from within Montessori ranks. Teachers and parents need to understand the real philosophic meaning of the Montessori method. Ayn Rand’s philosophy makes that understanding possible.

Because Dewey’s progressive education bureaucracy disregards self-determination, it produces many young adults lacking purpose, and social justice warriors. The social costs of this include unemployed young men, and all too often, fatherless children and drug abuse. Fortunately, today’s parents can take back their responsibilities. Montessori, charter and home schools, online classrooms, and many other resources that apply reason to reality, such as Connor Boyack’s Tuttle Twins book series, are wonderful choices. Vibrant markets create choice.

As parents, future parents, or long-term thinkers, you can help create choice and join our latest Poetic Justice Warrior, Maria Montessori. To learn more please take our PJW quiz.

A Former Slave’s Determination to Transcend Politics with Philosophy and Economics in the Jim Crow South

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In the European Theater, during World War II, the 332nd Fighter Group flew 179 bomber escort missions, losing bomber aircraft on only seven of them. They experienced losses at about half the rate of the rest of the 15th Air Force. In fact, bomber groups specifically requested the 332nd to escort them because of their skill and daring. They also flew 1400 other combat missions over Italy and Germany. These airmen were awarded 96 Distinguished Flying Crosses, 14 bronze stars, 744 Air Medals, 8 Purple Hearts, and 1 Silver Star.

Obviously, the men of 332nd did more than their share to secure the promises of Western Civilization for future generations. So, who were these guys? What made them special? What common traits did they share? How did they acquire them?

They were all trained at Moton Field in Alabama and educated at Tuskegee University. Of course, we’re talking about the infamous Tuskegee Airmen, a segregated, mostly African-American unit of pilots, navigators and bombardiers recruited and trained in the Jim Crow south. And it is the ironclad, life fulfilling principles taught at Tuskegee that inspired their natural talents. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree: these are the same principles that define the founder of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, and our latest Poetic Justice Warrior, Booker T. Washington.

Spontaneous Political Order

Poetic justice is a consequence of reality, a spontaneous force of nature. Poetic justice warriors understand this, they are peaceful and patient as they employ reason to forge human progress, or as Booker T. Washington states:

In my opinion, the time will come when the South will encourage all of its citizens to vote. It will see that it pays better, from every standpoint, to have healthy, vigorous life than to have that political stagnation which always results when one-half of the population has no share and no interest in the Government.

It is this philosophy that labeled Washington as being too accommodating to the politically dominant white supremacists of the south. One of his harshest critics was the famed civil rights activist W. E. B. DuBois. But in 1910, DuBois had to be convinced to join the founding board of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as the only African-American. Regardless of race, all 22 of them with the addition of DuBois, were strident socialists with aspirations to create a communist utopia in America.

Washington, however, was an individualist and a principled capitalist. This difference between Booker and DuBois is stark. According to Burgess Owens in his book Liberalism,

Washington also secretly funded civil rights lawsuits. Note, however, that in Washington’s day, such lawsuits were a serious matter, and not the routinely frivolous exercises in extortion they have in recent years become.

DuBois, who loved the centralized, unlimited power of the totalitarian state, praised Hitler’s National Socialism in pre-war Germany, and embraced Stalin’s Soviet Union.

The Capitalist, Educator and Philanthropist

Like Frederick Douglass before him, Washington was born into slavery and was told that he wasn’t supposed to know how to read. Accordingly, he was determined to learn for himself what this awful reading thing was all about. He eventually worked his way through the Hampton Institute where he subsequently joined the faculty. At age 24 he was asked to create a teachers college in Macon County, Alabama. This was 1881, and the following year he was able to buy the burned out hulk of a nearby plantation house and its 100 acres.

In order to create school buildings and raise money, Washington and his students built a brick making operation from scratch, and the quality of their product was so superior that builders from all over the region were placing orders. Fortunately, the rail spur to Selma had been rebuilt the year before to accommodate the creation of the Tuskegee Institute.

Washington’s philosophy was one of personal achievement, education, self-reliance, and productive economic activity. Instead of educating students in the classics, as DuBois insisted, he was educating students to learn how to make a living, to apply reason to reality, or as he says himself:

Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way. Success in life is founded upon attention to the small things. Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which one has overcome while trying to succeed.

Not only did Tuskegee University become the most influential black institution of higher education in America, Booker was also able to create an impressive network of wealthy white philanthropists, including Andrew Carnegie, and funnel money to countless black schools throughout the south.

The Political Economics Philosopher

Instead of confronting racists and their politically sponsored terror wing directly, Booker rejected the collectivism of the social justice warriors of his time. He did it in the same way and for the same reasons that Frederick Douglass did, by dealing with the reality of the place in which he lived with a clear vision for a better future. This was necessary in order to secure the inevitable rewards of free markets protected by the US Constitution.

Instead of the forced integration being pushed by his contemporaries, Washington believed that integration would occur naturally as African-Americans developed new skills; and through entrepreneurship, become more prosperous. In other words, integration would be a spontaneous force of nature, aka poetic justice.

Booker was integral (and became black America’s unofficial leader) in the building of self-sufficient black communities and institutions throughout the country. According to historian C. Vann Woodward, Washington was “The businessman’s gospel of free enterprise, competition, and laissez faire. They never had a more loyal exponent.” While DuBois was consorting with his totalitarian wannabes in 1910, Booker was doing something productive, as Burgess Owens explains:

This entrepreneurial spirit was highlighted at America’s first business network convention, hosted by the Negro Business League in 1910. Booker T. Washington founded the Negro Business League in 1900 with the support of Andrew Carnegie, spotlighting many self-made millionaires.

Poetic Justice Served

Booker T. Washington died in 1915, and DuBois survived him by many years. As a result, Booker’s legacy has been largely ignored by state monopoly education, in no small part because John Dewey, a founding member of the NAACP, is also the father of America’s public school system. According to Owens, “since DuBois’ followers control the writing of history textbooks, and the media’s coverage of black affairs, we get a sanitized version of his place in American history, and often as not, no version at all of Washington’s.”

But this travesty is being corrected, thanks to the movies and books that have been produced about the Tuskegee Airmen, and because of new biographies such as Robert Norrell’s Up From History. And now, we are recognizing Booker T. Washington’s contributions to Western Civilization by honoring him as the prolific Poetic Justice Warrior who inspired former slaves and their extended families to enterpreneurship, as did Anders Chydenius for peasant farmers in Sweden a century earlier.

The Individual Mind Behind the Swedish Economic Miracle

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No Statesman is yet found capable of stating positively which trade will give us the greatest National gain, and consequently the Legislator must remain irresolute as to what goal he should guide our workmen to by his laws. Who could be so stupid, someone will probably think, as not to know this?

These powerful words are from The National Gain, and its author is the parish priest Anders Chydenius. This pamphlet was published in 1765 in what is now Finland, but at the time it was part of the Swedish empire. And he wrote this before Adam Smith‘s invisible hand, Frederick Bastiat‘s The Law, and F. A. Hayek‘s knowledge problem. Chydenius was an original thinker with radical ideas, and largely unknown, in part because he wrote in Swedish.

In fact, he didn’t know English or French, so he was unaware of the Enlightenment ideas percolating through Europe. So even as a country parson, he is a giant among Enlightenment philosophers, and a self-taught economist in his own right. He visualized a future of natural rights and free markets for the least powerful citizens. He is a man of concrete principles, and a distinguished Poetic Justice Warrior.

Freedom of the Press and Economic Freedom

Anders Chydenius was born into a brief period of time in Nordic history known as the Age of Liberty. It began with the death of King Charles XII in 1718, and the creation of a parliamentary system. But even then, peasant farmers had no property rights, and Sweden was one of the poorest countries in all of Europe. Because of a mercantilist guild system, farmers were required to produce and sell according to the whims of economic central planners. As Chydenius explains in The National Gain:

Man thrives when he enjoys his needs and comforts, which, according to our ordinary way of speaking, are called goods. Nature produces them, but they can never be of use to us without labour.

Chydenius’ goal was to fight for the right of peasant farmers to sell their produce as they saw fit, meaning freedom of labor and property. In order to realize his free market principles in a pragmatic way, he entered politics. In 1765 Chydenius was elected to the Swedish parliament.

And he knew, that to accomplish this amazing feat of economic freedom, all citizens needed to gain political freedom. Because of his leadership, Sweden became the first country in the world to add freedom of the press to its constitution. This was 25 years before America’s Bill of Rights. But as the political hierarchy would have it, Chydenius was forced out of parliament in 1766 for his principled criticism of government monetary policy.

Natural Rights, Freedom of Religion, Immigration, and Identity Groups

In the realm of economics, Anders Chydenius was a firm proponent of peasants being able to choose for themselves how to specialize and what to produce. Even more outrageous, he advocated for employers and employees to be able to negotiate the price of labor among themselves, a man of reason against stupid minimum wage laws. After parliament was dissolved in 1772, Chydenius was recalled to government to assist the king with civil liberties and economic freedom for the king’s new program of Enlightened despotism.

During this time Chydenius also fought for freedom of religion and immigration. He liberalized migration to Sweden by Jews and Catholics, and loosened restrictions on their ability to practice their religion. As an example of the value Chydenius held for each human life, he wrote in his 1778 essay, Thoughts Upon the Natural Rights of Servants and Peasants:

Nature shapes them exactly like us. Their posture in the crib is the same as ours, their souls have the same reason as other peoples’, whereby it is plain to see that the Lord of creation also had intended them to have equal rights with other people.

And he had a similar understanding of modern day identity politics, this from his 1777 essay In Rural Trade:

Petty princes busy themselves with dabbling in matters they do not understand in order to satisfy their own or someone else’s prejudices, or in blindly following some minister’s advice. They gather together a great many of their subjects in separate flocks and bestow favors on them at the cost of the others, and these favors they elevate into fixed privileges.

And Chydenius was willing to fight for small victories. The solution to special interest groups, as proposed by Chydenius to the Swedish parliament for the poor province of Lapland to gain prosperity, reads as follows:

Free state, private ownership and individual freedom. Inhabitants could choose whatever profession, freedom of trade would be complete, there would be no privileges, regulation or taxes. Bureaucracy would be nonexistent, and the only officer would be a judge who would oversee that no-one’s rights would be suppressed.

Poetic Justice Served

When King Gustav reverted to autocratic rule, Chydenius returned to private life. As a peaceful and patient man of reason, Chydenius was also a scientist, inventor, and founder of an orchestra. He inoculated peasant farmers against smallpox, performed cataract eye surgery, and experimented with new breeds of animals and plants. When he died in 1803, at the age of 73, almost none of his economic reforms had taken hold, and Swedes continued to emigrate to other parts of Europe and America to escape regulation and poverty. As Chydenius had observed in his essay, What Are The Reasons for Emigration From Sweden?

Workers yearn for freedom. They would rather settle among people whose speech they do not understand but among whom they may move and act freely, and in their decision one reads this motto: a homeland without freedom and the chance for improvement is a great word with little meaning.

As Poetic Justice would have it, the very poor Swedes were very literate – 75% of Swedes could read and write, and in 1840 a non-violent revolution for classical liberalism began. Anders Chydenius’ common sense radicalism fueled a century of free markets, innovation and prosperity. So much so that by 1950 Sweden was one the wealthiest societies in the world. Infant mortality fell 85%, GDP per capita increased seven fold, and life expectancy increased by 26 years because Sweden had the lowest regulatory and tax burden in the developed western world. This had unleashed the power of the individual as our greatest natural resource, as Chydenius insisted it would.

The Road from Serfdom

The catalyst for the widespread adoption of Chydenius’ recipes for economic and political freedom was a newspaper – Aftonbladet, and its publisher, Lars Johan Hierta. Eventually the Swedish government had to back off its resistance against reform, and in 1848 King Oscar I appointed the entrepreneur and free trade advocate Johan August Gripenstedt to be his Finance Minister. Perhaps historian Charles Evans describes Chydenius’ economic philosophy best:

Peasants left to their own devices could run the economic activity of the nation better the nation’s best and brightest in positions of authority.

The printing press was the megaphone, Chydenius was the voice, and the political power of kings was replaced with the economic power of peasants turned entrepreneurs. Anders Chydenius was the Poetic Justice Warrior that inspired generations of new ones, and it is they who engineered the Swedish economic miracle. They are the individualists at the core of western civilization’s ideals. To learn more, please visit www.centerforindividualism.org/pjw.

 

 

 

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