Anatomy of Freedom

In Defense of Freedom: A Conservative Credo, by Frank S. Meyer. Regnery, $3.95

In an essay brilliant with destructive analysis, aimed on the one side at Liberal collectivism and on the other at a dangerous strain he sees in some of the New Conservatives, Frank Meyer re-opens the great conversation which humanity will always be ready to engage in, we hope, about the nature and scope of freedom. Mr. Meyer writes as a man who has gone over the ground in conscience; and what he has found is that the individual, the irreducible person, is the primary reality and the sole repository of virtue. He has found further that the state is much more likely to impede the realization of virtue than to assist it; and that the more monopolistic the state becomes, the greater obstacle it is to those who desire to live rational lives in freedom. And finally he argues that even those who deprecate the overgrown state and place their trust in the smaller organic community are relying too much upon external forces and even disguised coercion to be true friends of freedom. These are findings that deserve to be searchingly appraised.

RW

About the Author

Richard M. Weaver

Featured Tags

In Defense of Freedom: A Conservative Credo, by Frank S. Meyer. Regnery, $3.95

In an essay brilliant with destructive analysis, aimed on the one side at Liberal collectivism and on the other at a dangerous strain he sees in some of the New Conservatives, Frank Meyer re-opens the great conversation which humanity will always be ready to engage in, we hope, about the nature and scope of freedom. Mr. Meyer writes as a man who has gone over the ground in conscience; and what he has found is that the individual, the irreducible person, is the primary reality and the sole repository of virtue. He has found further that the state is much more likely to impede the realization of virtue than to assist it; and that the more monopolistic the state becomes, the greater obstacle it is to those who desire to live rational lives in freedom. And finally he argues that even those who deprecate the overgrown state and place their trust in the smaller organic community are relying too much upon external forces and even disguised coercion to be true friends of freedom. These are findings that deserve to be searchingly appraised.