A new generation of freedom fighters
Monday, October 24, 2011 at 12:41 Impressive turnout for the Liberty League Annual Conference in London on Saturday.
There were 100 places and almost every ticket was sold – £30 for students, £65 for non-students. The day-long event included three panel discussions, one lecture, plus dinner with guest speaker Steve Baker MP who had earlier spoken at the People's Pledge congress for an EU referendum.
Wearing my Free Society hat I was invited to propose an after dinner toast – which I dedicated, unsurprisingly, "to liberty".
I prefaced it by mentioning my late Russian friend George Miller and congratulating the Liberty League on a magnificent achievement – organising two successful events and establishing a burgeoning network of student groups in the space of just nine months.
I'm not sure whether delegates – the majority of whom were less than half my age – fully understood the connection I was making between a Russian dissident and a new generation of libertarians. After all, Cold War warriors like George sound like characters from a rather far-fetched spy novel.
My point, however, was this: Miller, and hundreds like him, were freedom fighters. Individually their contributions were quite small; collectively they made a difference.
Today's libertarians are waging a very different war but the battle against Big Government is no less important and there are plenty of lessons that can be learned from the Cold War, two of them being patience and the need to keep going in the face of apparently insuperable odds.
Reader Comments (2)
A book I am sure Steve Baker and everyone else would endorse is Nobel Prize winner Friedrich von Hayek's The Road to Surfdom which "warned of the danger of tyranny that inevitably results from government control of economic decision-making through central planning.."
Von Hayek would of detested the smoking ban.
Oh！your article so great!rolex gmt replica.but,A good watch may let you cause more brilliant！tag heuer replica watchesI hope you should go thisjaquet droz replica