Libertas

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” ~Mark Twain

Mark Twain (1835-1910) "That's the difference between governments and individuals. Governments don't care, individuals do."

I don’t really remember much of American History from my “schooling.” Most of my education in public school and college regarding the American Revolution and the Founding Fathers covered their failures and hypocrisies, especially the fact that many of them owned slaves, especially Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, but their ideas were hardly mentioned. In fact, my strongest memory of learning about the American Revolution came from the book, Johnny Tremain, when I was in forth grade. Maybe that’s why I was inoculated from so much of the poison that the education establishment spews out.

Despite the public school systems failure to teach real history, or maybe because of its failure, I love history. Since history was never really taught (we took social studies, remember) the schools didn’t ruin it for me like they ruined so many other subjects. Of course, the schools had to cover the American Revolution. That would be too suspicious to parents, and so we studied American history, and I lost interest in that particular topic.

John Locke (1632-1704) "Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself."

In college I have no memory of studying American History. I think I managed to test out of American history. That may be another reason I wasn’t taught much about the evil “American Experience.” On the other hand, I never really studied the ideas of liberty from John Locke and the American Founders.

Since we had to be protected from Eurocentrism, we studied World History. Even though that covered the evils of Western colonialism, I never heard of the evils of Islamic imperialism or their slave trade. I never learned about true Vietnamese patriots such as Trần Hưng Đạo (maybe because he fought the Mongols and not the French), or Phan Bội Châu, the father of the Vietnamese nationalist, or Nguyễn Thái Học, another Vietnamese nationalist. The communists Hồ Chí Minh and Võ Nguyên Giáp were the only nationalists mentioned.

Bartolomé de las Casas (1484-1566)

I had to take Latin American History in the Spanish department to learn of Bartolomé de las Casas and his fight for the Native Americans or even Tomás Aquino (Thomas Aquinas) for that matter. But did I read anything by John Locke? No. He was at least mentioned, but I never heard of the classical liberals such as Frédéric Bastiat, Benjamin Constant, Jean-Baptiste Say or the Austrian Economists, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich von Hayek, and Murray Rothbard.

The evils of colonialism were certainly covered in World History, but we never heard of Bartolomé de las Casas and the Spanish Scholastics from Salamanca who defended the rights of native Americans or the the classical liberals of Europe and America who condemned colonialism. We hardly studied what they believed, and much less why they believed it or who they were. So, even though I didn’t fall for much of the anti-western bias in college, I also learned nothing of liberty and free-market capitalism.

Like most Americans, I never really knew the ideas of the Founding Fathers except on a very superficial basis. My “schooling” had been worthless in that regard. It took Ron Paul to wake me up to the ideas of the American Founding Fathers, the European classical liberals and the Austrian Economists mentioned above.

Americans have so forgotten the ideals of the American Revolution that when a man like Ron Paul merely repeats their ideas, he’s laughed at as a ridiculous crank or condemned as a dangerous radical. Comparing their ideas and statements to today’s politicians is startling, even frightening.

Since studying their ideas, I have come to believe they are vital to stop what is happening in the US. America and Europe need to wake up from their slumber and remember their liberal traditions of individual rights and liberty. The police state is growing. I never in my life thought that I would be worried about living in the US, but I am now. A strong dose of Jefferson, Washington, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Paine would help a great deal, despite their sins and failures, to turn the West back towards individual rights and liberty and destroy the ever growing police state.

So, turn off the damn TV, read a book, or at least an essay by these men, and maybe start investing in tar and feathers.

Recommended:

Acton Institute

Freedom School

Ludwig von Mises Institute

The Online Freedom Academy

Bastiat Collection by Frédéric Bastiat

A Libertarian Reader Edited by David Boaz

Two Treatises On Government by John Locke

Conceived In Liberty by Murray Rothbard

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