October 9, 2010

Where Freedom Must Be Won

Justin Katz

I came across this quotation in a brief obituary that National Review printed memorializing Guatemalan freedom and business advocate, and university founder, Manuel Ayau:

I learned that freedom must triumph in people’s minds and hearts before it can make any headway in politics.

Here's an expanded version, from an expanded biography:

Even when we won a battle now and then, we continued to lose the war against statism. I realized that we would make no real progress unless we changed the underlying ideas of the people. We had to take a long-run perspective. I learned that freedom must triumph in people’s minds and hearts before it can make any headway in politics.

Truly, the people of the United States, and Rhode Island especially, would do well to heed these words. One begins to feel, sometimes, as if people do not really believe in freedom — do not trust it, for themselves and even more for others.

We often get heat from the right and left, alike, on Anchor Rising, because we're not so much partisan as ideological. It's always been our objective to change underlying ideas, whatever the more immediate political calculations might appear to require.