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PROGRESSIVISM, INDIVIDUALISM, AND THE PUBLIC
INTELLECTUAL
5 NEO INDIVIDUALISTS
The Neo Individualists are much more aggressive in their statements and expositions than
before. To some degree they include the conservatives and the libertarians, more as a
loose amalgam, but the common theme of the dignity of the individual as being
preeminent is in all cases at the fore. We consider a few here.
5.1 MILTON FRIEDMAN
I thought I would start December with a reflection on Milton Friedman. In the
Introduction of his classic, Capitalism and Freedom, he says from the outset 114 :
"In a much quoted passage in his inaugural address, President Kennedy said: "Ask not
what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country." It is a striking
sign of the temper of our times that the controversy about this passage centered on it
origin and not its content. Neither half of the statement expresses a relation between the
citizen and his government that is worthy of the ideals of free men in a free society. The
paternalistic "what your country can do for you" implies that a government is a patron,
the citizen the ward, a view that is at odds with the free man's belief in his own
responsibility for his own destiny. The organismic "what you can do for your country"
implies that the government is the master or the deity, the citizen a servant or votary. To
the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something
over and above them...
The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his
country. He will ask rather "What can I and my compatriots do through the government"
to help us discharge our individual responsibilities to achieve our several goals and
purposes, and above all, to protect our freedom?"
Hobbes was one of the first modern political thinkers to address liberty in a modern
context. He dealt with the problem of freedom of the individual in a monarchy. His
views were initial attempts but frankly wrong in that his position was to justify the
monarch. He was trying to justify the pre-eminence of a monarchy while at the same time
establishing that men were free, yet there were chains on their freedom. Friedman is the
anti-Hobbes, the one who articulates true freedom, the removal of all chains.
Kennedy's speech is a soft version of Progressive thought. It sent a generation out to do
good, the Peace Corps and Vietnam, Cuba and the Blockade. The irony of Kennedy was
that the funds his father spent to buy his presidency were not obtained as Friedman stated,
What can I and my compatriots do through the government" to help us discharge our
114 Friedman, Capitalism, p. 1.
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