I Chose Liberty - Ludwig von Mises Institute

272 I Chose Liberty: Autobiographies of Contemporary Libertarians
ambitions may have been stirring within. I learned firsthand that politics is not for me. If
you want to know why, see my essay entitled, “Don’t Expect Much From Politics.”
I deal with heroes every day of the week as a part of my job. They included my hardworking
staff during my tenure at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. I could name
them all but I’ll cite just one here for reasons of space—senior vice president Joe Overton.
There’s no more talented or dedicated genius in our movement than Joe, and probably not
a single organization of our kind that wouldn’t love to hire him away. He’s not an attentionseeker,
but people who know him understand that we all owe him a great debt for his
leadership and innovative ideas for advancing liberty. He was my right-hand man and best
friend for almost 20 years and I was privileged to be Best Man at his wedding. I cannot
imagine our success at the Mackinac Center without him. I also was ably assisted by many
others, such as assistant Kendra Shrode and the indomitable executive vice president, Joe
Lehman. You can read about these people at www.mackinac.org.
My heroes also include the leaders within our sister think tanks in state after state.
Many of them work at a big missionary discount because they believe in liberty. I wish I
could cite them all, but I’ll name just a few: Darcy Olson at the Goldwater Institute in
Arizona, Bob Williams at the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, Alex Chafuen and Jo Kwong
at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, Bridgett Wagner at the Heritage Foundation,
Chip Mellor at the Institute for Justice, Chris Derry at the Bluegrass Institute in Kentucky,
and Tracie Sharp at the State Policy Network are all good examples. So is Peter Holle, who
heads up the Pioneer Centre for Public Policy up in Winnipeg, Canada, and Linda Whetstone
who helps free market groups all over the world from her home in England. My good friend
James Shikwati of Kenya, who has started East Africa’s first free market think tank, is
another. (Let me put a plug in for him by referring to his website, at www.irenkenya.org.)
I’ve met hundreds of fascinating people over the years but the activists in the Polish freedom
underground in the late 1980s will always be among the most interesting to me because of
their perseverance in the face of the Soviet empire. I remember visiting with a couple in 1986,
Zbigniew and Sofia Romaszewski, who had just gotten out of prison for running an underground
radio. They were active once again on behalf of freedom because it meant everything
to them. I asked them many questions including, “When you were broadcasting, how did you
know if people were listening?” I’ve recounted Sophia’s reply hundreds of times to audiences
all over the country, and my eyes still well up every time I think of it. She said, “We could only
broadcast a few minutes at a time and then had to go off the air to avoid detection, but one
night we asked people to blink their lights if they were listening and were supportive of freedom
for Poland. We then went to the window and for hours, all of Warsaw was blinking!”
It’s largely because of people like Zbigniew and Sofia that millions once behind the
Iron Curtain are free today.
I’ve met Margaret Thatcher several times and had breakfast with President Reagan in
the White House. I admire them both very much.
I once interviewed the Finance Minister of Haiti in the year after Duvalier was ousted.
His name was Leslie Delatour and he was accomplishing amazing things—privatizing and
freeing up the economy. Too bad he was gone in a year, replaced by another batch of statist
demagogues.