Rose Wilder Lane, The Discovery of Freedom (1943).
When Government has a monopoly of all production and all distribution, as many Governments have, it can not permit any economic activity that competes with it. This means that it can not permit any new use of productive energy, for the new always competes with the old and destroys it. Men who build railroads destroy stage coach lines.
It’s nice to elect the right people, but that isn’t the way you solve things. The way you solve things is by making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right things.
Milton Friedman, c. 1977
On Christmas Day in 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as president of the Soviet Union. Ukraine’s referendum was also finalized and Ukraine officially left the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union itself dissolved the next day, in what might be described as the “best belated Christmas present ever.”
On December 25, 1910, economist Rose Director Friedman was born. She may be best known as the wife of Nobel Laureate economist Milton Friedman, and co-author with her husband of the bestseller Free to Choose.
There’s a quiet on Christmas morning . . . after Santa has come and gone . . . and the kids are still sound asleep . . . sugar plum fairies dancing to their gentle snoring.
A moment to stop and think.
I hope they’ll like their presents; they always do. There’s so much love my wife and I want to share, to give to them.
Of course, the biggest gifts are never under the tree. The most important being a stable home, with love, and the freedom for children to grow into themselves.
My parents gave me that . . . along with the bicycles and baseball gloves and some really good books. I’ve tried to be the same kind of parent.
Another incredible endowment I’ve enjoyed is to be born in a country “conceived in liberty.” A place where individual citizens are the sovereigns, creating government to be a servant and not a master. Land of the free.
What a gift!
But Tom Paine told us that, “What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly, ’tis dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”
Freedom is under siege. And, therefore, we who love freedom, grateful for our historic luck, must come together to protect our “expensive” gift.
Some may get discouraged after setbacks, but none of us got involved in politics because we like “the game” and figured we’d pile up a shelf of trophies. We’re engaged because we must be and we seek victories because, as Churchill once put it, “without victory, there is no survival.”
In 1776, on this very day, General George Washington and his soldiers of the American Revolution crossed the Delaware River to score a surprise military victory against the British at Trenton, New Jersey.
Thank goodness, for these brave patriots and their muskets. Three Americans gave their lives in the battle. To secure our liberty.
Today, the Gift has been handed to us. Not to play with on Christmas morning and forget about, not to let get broken without our fixing it, but to protect and defend and cherish.
My commentary strives to illuminate, at times amuse and, most of all, to motivate toward action, bringing citizens together. Citizens in Charge protects the initiative process — the best weapon citizens have to cut taxes, term-limit politicians, stop the drug war, protect property rights, and place limits on government. The Liberty Initiative Fund partners with leaders across the nation putting measures on the ballot to protect freedom and hold government accountable.
Thanks for your gifts to these efforts and to the many other important ones. We aim to protect the precious gift of freedom.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays!
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On December 24, 1818, the first performance of “Silent Night” took place in the church of St. Nikolaus in Oberndorf, Austria. Father Joseph Mohr had written the lyrics earlier, commissioning nearby schoolteacher and organist, Franz Xavier Gruber, to compose a melody appropriate for guitar accompaniment. It is one of the world’s most recognizable
Christopher Buckley, son of William F. Buckley and author of satirical novels such as Thank You For Smoking and Supreme Courtship, was born on Christmas Eve, 1952
Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and show the whole world that a Freeman, contending for liberty on his own ground, is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth.
General Orders, Headquarters, New York (2 July 1776)
On December 23, 1783, George Washington resigned as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, at the Maryland State House in Annapolis, Maryland.
On December 23, 1783, George Washington resigned as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, at the Maryland State House in Annapolis, Maryland.
Reason provides some interesting reporting on labor activism & legislation — and their actual results.