By Bill Starr

I appreciate Kelly Estes giving me an opportunity to share some thoughts with her readers today.

I decided to take a step back from the day-to-day focus on specific issues and address a more long-term topic.

Those of us who are in the trenches fighting for less government and greater individual liberty may wonder, ‘What can we do to enhance our effectiveness in this battle?’

How can we achieve success in the fight for smaller government?

This is what author Stephen Covey called “sharpening the saw” in his popular book, “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” — how to “renew yourself” and “increase your capacity to produce and to handle the challenges around you.”

Over the last couple of months, I have been slowly working through the book “Elements of Libertarian Leadership,” written by Leonard Read in 1962. This book has a lot of great advice for those who desire to increase their effectiveness in the fight for liberty, regardless of whether you consider yourself a libertarian, conservative, or some other label.

Mr. Read was the founder of the Foundation for Economic Education, which was the first modern libertarian think tank in the United States. A free PDF download of this book is available here.

Mr. Read died in 1983 at the age of 84. In 1991, Jacob Hornberger, founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation, wrote an article titled “The Legacy of Leonard E. Read.“

The whole book is worthwhile, but in this article, Mr. Hornberger summarizes it as follows.

Read argued that the best thing to do was to improve one’s self. That is, rather than rushing out to reform the world, a person should instead spend his time reforming and improving himself…
Read’s reasoning was that as a freedom devotee became more and more proficient in explaining the principles of freedom, a greater number of people would become attracted to his line of thinking. As he would often observe during his final lecture at FEE seminars, all the darkness in the world cannot put out the light of one wee candle…

What Read was actually suggesting, I believe, was that nothing worse can befall a good cause than to have it ineptly defended. And so, rather than try to “set others straight,” one should instead concentrate on setting himself straight. In that way, the activities in which freedom devotees become involved — letters to the editor, political activity, speeches, articles, and so forth — will stand a better chance of attracting others to our philosophy…

Another champion of liberty is Mr. David J. Theroux, founder and president of The Independent Institute, a non-partisan, scholarly research and educational organization in Oakland, California.

In a 2003 interview, Mr. Theroux is asked what he thinks are the most effective things an individual can do if he wants to be free. He replies:

“The first thing to do is learn all about the economics, ethics and the history of liberty in order to understand the world and how it got to be the way it is.

The second task is to find readily accessible and effective ways to apply such ideas in order to influence opinion leaders and large numbers of the public.”

I encourage each person who cares about liberty to construct or continue your own personalized program of continuing education on the principles of freedom.

Then find practical ways of putting what you are learning into use by influencing others to learn about and embrace these values as well.
There are many Americans in the trenches, dedicated to restoring individual liberty and shrinking our bloated government. Can we join together on the path to liberty?

Bill Starr

Bill Starr grew up working on the family hog and grain farm in southeast Indiana and has degrees in engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and Syracuse University. He is married, with three nearly-grown children, all homeschooled since 1997. Bill enjoys reading and writing about politics, history, and the Austrian school of economics, and is a fan of bluegrass music. You can follow his “tweets” at “http://twitter.com/bill_starr” or read his blog at “http://bill-starr.blogspot.com/“.