I Chose Liberty - Ludwig von Mises Institute

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NORMAN BARRY
A TOURIST’S GUIDE TO LIBERTY
I seem to meet a lot of libertarians these days: in pub (bar) conversations, bus stop chats
and lawn mowing encounters with the neighbors. Political discussions in England usually
begin and end with a harangue against the once-revered National Health Service. But I
was on a long train ride from Edinburgh to London a few weeks ago and fell into a desultory
conversation with an American visitor. We talked a little about his forthcoming trip
to Stratford for Shakespeare, I told him that Tom Stoppard is the only Right wing playwright
who has ever lived and he wondered whether he would get to see Buckingham Palace. Then
it turned out that he had recently been a student at Grove City College and had been taught
Austrian economics. I am not sure who was more amazed, him or me, but we both were
soon exchanging names and book titles and experiencing that joy that comes from unexpected
agreement in unlikely circumstances. I have forgotten the guy’s name but he might
be famous one day.
Of course, libertarian ideas are as far as ever from seriously influencing politics and
despite the alleged death of socialism we in Britain, and Europe especially, are still living
in semi-collectivist societies. But at least the ideas are alive and there are many more
like-minded people around. It is a lot different from the early 1970s when I began my
personal odyssey in search of liberty. At that time everybody I ever met said they believed
in liberty but it meant one thing only—sex. The 60s had been and gone and still people
didn’t see the intimate connection between freedom in the bedroom and the gyrations
of the stock market.
I did not have a bad education at the University of Exeter. Marxism had not made its
ruinous comeback; that was a feature of the dreadful 70s. I was taught political theory by
a man who got his modest anti-Marxism from Karl Popper, so although I might not have
learned a lot about liberty I got some sensible philosophy and could spot nonsense quickly.
I knew socialism to be just that but I hadn’t worked out precisely why and I certainly
did not know of a feasible alternative. Just showing that the nationalization of the means
of production, distribution and exchange doesn’t work wasn’t enough when the enemy
could go on about the “alienation” caused by the division of labor in capitalist society and
hold up pictures of Che Guevara as if he were a rock star. But I was never taught the meaning
of freedom, still less the efficiency properties of markets. The economists at university
were a lot brighter than historians, political scientists or sociologists and weren’t so obviously
Left wing, but they didn’t know how to market their product. I took a course in economics
and knew that demand curves sloped downwards to the right but did not really understand