Convertsation

Now that your rose is in bloom
A light hits the gloom on the gray
--Seal

Just finished Rose Wilder Lane's Give Me Liberty. This delightful little book was originally published in 1936 and then expanded for a 1954 republication.

Lane grew up in farm country and lived thru the Panic of 1893. The subsequent depression opened the doors for socialist thought in the US. By the late 1910s Lane had become a communist and like NY writer and colleague Jack Reed espoused the utopian virtues of socialism. Like others, she admired the Bolshevist overthrow of Russia as proof of a new world order.

Her faith in communism weakened when she began to think thru the proposed 'economic revolution' phase of the playbook, where the State supposedly takes over the economic decision-making of capitalists. Her reasoning told her that a group of planners in a room could not cope with the dynamic nature of markets, and their decisions would be far inferior to those operating in free markets. She concluded that standard of living under State authority was certain to languish. Personal visits to Russia helped validate her thinking.

Emerging from this period, she became a staunch advocate of individualism and liberty as the mechanism for social progress.

The last few chapters are interesting in that they were added ten yrs after New Deal policies (and World War II) took effect. She expressed grave concern that Americans were compromising their freedom for the sake of security as promised by the socialists. The last chapter reads as a wake up call to freedom loving Americans that, like many other contrarian works from the time, could have been written yesterday.

An insightful book written by someone who became a champion for liberty after having observed the alternative.

Reference

Lane, R.W. 1954. Give me liberty. Caldwell, ID: The Caxton Printers, Ltd.