As the year 2010 begins and Congress once again considers enacting laws that some believe endanger the free enterprise system and personal liberties, a collection of essays in Liberty Versus the Tyranny of Socialism are timely. The book asks questions that many American are pondering since the election of Barack Obama.
- Do we want socialized medicine
- Is this the America that we want?
The author of the essays, Walter E. Williams, is a distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University and a nationally syndicated columnist who writes with provocative insights and brutal honesty.
Although many of the hard-hitting essays focus on the growth of government and the loss of liberty, many others demonstrate how the tools of free market economics can be used to improve the lives of Americans.
The essays are written using language that ordinary people understand rather than that in the realm of the trade and the cost of good and services. They deal with diverse areas such as racial discrimination, national defense, and even marriage. The topics in the book also include education, environment and health, government, law and society.
Professor Williams does not pretend that the essays are without the bias of his unyielding defense of personal liberty. His premise is that each of us owns himself as private property. He defines the institution of private property as the right held by the owner to keep, acquire, dispose, and exclude from use.
He writes
"The premise of self-ownership determines what human acts are moral and immoral and consistent with that premise. For example, rape, murder, slavery, fraud, and theft are immoral because they violate private property."
Although Liberty Versus the Tyranny of Socialism was published in October 2008, it is especially timely as William's essays predate the Congress's and Obama's continuing efforts to take over more of the private sector.
More about Walter E. Williams
He is the author of several books and more than sixty articles which have appeared in Economic Inquiry, American Economic Review, Social Science Quarterly, Reader's Digest and Newsweek.
Williams, Walter E. Liberty Versus the Tyranny of Socialism. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press/Stanford University, 2008.
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U.S. Capitalism transitioning into Socialism
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Video with speech by Walter E. Williams below.
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