In our ignorance, we could not see that the Kaiser’s Germany and the Communist International were merely two aspects of the Old World’s reaction against the new, the American principle of individual liberty and human rights.
Rose Wilder Lane, Give Me Liberty (1936).
On August 3, 2008, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died at age 90. His novels, such as One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and Cancer Ward, explored life under totalitarian Communism, and remain classics of modern literature. 
His huge survey of Soviet concentration camps, The Gulag Archipelago, was an important contribution to the demise of Communism as a popular ideology, showing just how horrifying the repression in the Soviet Union had become.
The Declaration of Independence was signed by members of the Continental Congress of the United States, on August 2, 1776.
“Commerce makes the action of arbitrary power over our existence more oppressive than in the past, because, as our speculations are more varied, arbitrary power must multiply itself to reach them. But commerce also makes the action of arbitrary power easier to elude, because it changes the nature of property, which becomes, in virtue of this change, almost impossible to seize.
“Commerce confers a new quality on property, circulation. Without circulation, property is merely a usufruct; political authority can always affect usufruct, because it can prevent its enjoyment; but circulation creates an invisible and invincible obstacle to the actions of social power.
“The effects of commerce extend even further: not only does it emancipate individuals, but, by creating credit, it places authority itself in a position of dependence.”
Benjamin Constant, The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with That of the Moderns, 1819.
On August 1, 1834, Great Britain’s Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 took force, freeing slaves throughout the British empire.
Technically, it freed slaves under the age of six. On the August 1 date in 1838 and 1840, the rest of the empire’s slaves were freed, practically speaking.
August 1 births include Francis Scott Key (1779), composer of the poem “The Star-Spangled Banner”; American authors Richard Henry Dana, Jr. (1815) 
and Herman Melville (1819); and Thomas E. Woods, Jr. (1972), historian and popularizer of Austrian economics (pictured at right), podcaster of the Tom Woods Show.
[W]ith the progress of society, government has within its sphere grown more powerful and efficient, this sphere has not been greatly enlarged. But the sphere of individual activity has greatly enlarged, and with the spread of knowledge the individual has become better able to maintain his rights against society, and governments are becoming less and less able to manage him.
Simon Newcomb, Principles of Political Economy (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1886), p. 447.
What a question! But, even if you have read the document, it might be worth your time to click on over to Townhall.com, and then migrate back here for more reading.
American life is a powerful solvent. As it stamps the immigrant, almost before he can speak English, with an unmistakable muscular tension, cheery self-confidence and habitual challenge in the voice and eyes, so it seems to neutralize every intellectual element, however tough and alien it may be, and to fuse it in the native good-will, complacency, thoughtlessness, and optimism.
George Santayana, Character and Opinion in the United States (1920).
On July 31, 1703, Daniel Defoe — who would later become famous as the author of Robinson Crusoe and other literary works — was placed in a pillory for the crime of seditious libel. The sedition pertained to a satirical pamphlet he had published, “The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters; Or, Proposals for the Establishment of the Church.” 
The mob pelted him with flowers.
On the same date in 1912, Milton Friedman was born. Friedman became one of the most influential economists of the 20th century, and one of the most effective advocates of free markets, as well. His books include Capitalism and Freedom and two famous collaborations, A Monetary History of the United States (with Anna Schwartz) and Free to Choose (with his wife, Rose Friedman).
Free trade — Bernie hates it; Hillary has supported special agreements that increase its scope while still putting the government in a quasi-management position (and, pulled by Bernie’s supporters, has has some “second thoughts”); and the Donald has likened it unto “rape.”
But the case for the free market is pretty clear. Economist Bob Murphy makes the case, here, and puts protectionism in its place.