I Chose Liberty - Ludwig von Mises Institute

376 I Chose Liberty: Autobiographies of Contemporary Libertarians
campaign. I read the Conscience of a Conservative, but that’s all. Satisfied that I was a conservative,
I supported the Vietnam War, as did most loyal Marines.
By the late 1960s, I was married, teaching high school and coaching football, and
growing uneasy about the justification and number of American deaths in Southeast Asia.
As a Republican, I hadn’t trusted the Johnson administration, but I was beginning also to
doubt Nixon. Then, in 1968, my last few months as a Marine Corps Reservist, I went on
a large regional exercise in the Catskill Mountains. By the remotest of chances, I ran into
a member of my original 1962 PLC platoon, who, unbeknownst to me, had also chosen
enlisted duty rather than second lieutenant bars. I was shocked that he, also a high school
teacher, was now openly and fiercely opposed to the war. Standing there in our Marine
uniforms, we seemed sort of disloyal to be discussing it, but then he told me that he had
looked up the service records of our platoon. Of the 42 graduates, including him and me,
30 had been killed while serving as combat officers in the initial years of Vietnam. He
produced for me a typed list of their names, and as I read them, suddenly remembering
their faces and the experiences and laughs we had all shared, my feelings about the war
were altered from unsettled to firmly against. He and I reminisced and talked about foreign
policy for several hours.
I ended the decade of the 1960s believing that, in general, our choice was to be a conservative
and support America’s wars, or to be an anti-American. However, I had convinced
myself that this particular war was an unfortunate exception to previous glories, and so I
opposed it. In January of 1970, we moved back to Topeka, Kansas, where I took a job with
a radio and television station. Several months later, following a regional fair committee meeting
during which I had spoken in defense of free enterprise, a man who owned several area
grocery stores approached me. He asked if I were familiar with the Foundation for Economic
Education (FEE). When I said no, he offered me several back issues of The Freeman, and
informed me that there would be a weekend seminar in Topeka soon, to which there would
be scholarships available. If I had any interest, he would be happy to help me qualify for one
of those. I took the magazines home and looked at them with only moderate interest, as I
recall, but I called the man a few days later and I told him I would consider going to the seminar,
as long as there would be no out-of-pocket costs for me.
A local hero of mine at the time was Kenneth McFarland, one of the most spell-binding
speakers in the country. He lived in Topeka, but traveled the country as part of a General
Motors speakers program to sell “Americanism” to Americans. On the morning of the FEE
seminar, as I was signing in, I happened to hear a man behind me say, “Hello, Leonard,
welcome to Kansas.” As I knew the name of the president of FEE was Leonard Read, I
listened intently. Read informed his greeter that he had just had breakfast with Kenneth
McFarland, a fellow he had never met but with whom he had corresponded off and on for
years. I hadn’t been totally comfortable that I understood FEE’s mission, so I was happily
relieved to hear that the head of the organization was a personal friend of my hero. However,
to my shock and amazement, I heard Read say, “It was a total waste of my time. That guy
is nothing but a narrow-minded flag-waver.” I could not believe my ears. What on earth
was I getting myself into? Maybe friends were right when they warned against falling in
with radicals. Because of this, I was primed to listen extra carefully.