The Freeman 1972 - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

416 THE FREEMAN Julypresent an antidote for discouragement,a way of viewing mattersthat will help to "keep the chinup." Not only yours, but my own!In the area of our concern, it iseasy to mistake success for failure.Why? Simply because success isoften equated with a growingnumber of adherents, failure witha declining number, as if thequality of ideas and the quantityof better thinkers go hand inhand. We tend to expect that anyimprovement in ideas will automaticallyattract a wider audience;whereas, quite the opposite mighthappen.Popularity Contests ­Not the Path to TruthMy thinking in this matter hasbeen stimulated in part by a slightdrop in FEE's mailing list overrecent months, while at the sametime we are told by others thatour publications and seminars arebetter than ever before - and thatwe must do' something to "reachmore people."Were numbers here and now thesole measure of success,' then therecipe would be (1) a.point ofview consistent with "public" or"popular" opinion; and, (2) charismaticpersonalities. Examplescan be found in the political realm:engaging and energetic copycatsof the current consensus puttingthemselves in the vanguard.Were ours just a numbersgame, then we would attractivelyproclaim "free enterprise" andloudly decry "socialism." And letit go at that! For there are millionspaying lip service to freedomand proclaiming opposition to socialismwho are anxious to allythemselves with those of similarleanings - so long as the specificaspects of these opposed ways oflife are left unexamined. But never,for heaven's sake, go beyondthe generalities and attempt a detailedstudy of these ideologies!To do so assures alienation, amarked dwindling of old friends,perhaps a few new ones.Our meditations .at FEE overthe past quarter century have beenpositive and honest. Even our detractorsconcede that we have sooperated, and with consistency. Inthe beginning our position wasmore or less a generalization: infavor of freedom and opposed tosocialism and other variants ofauthoritarianism. But the morewe meditated, the more did somecommonly accepted practices of"free enterprisers" and "anti-socialists"show up as bearing theseeds of socialism behind the labels.Further, we have never heldthe results of these meditations toourselves for fear of giving offense,that is, we have not bowedto. expediency.For instance, some 20 years ago