activism

I’ve always liked the idea–which I’ve heard from Albert Jay Nock and Leonard Read–that your primary task is to improve yourself–to strive for excellence in yourself. Then you become a bright light that attracts people; they see you are good, and successful, and worth emlating or listening to–so you win people over by the power of attraction. They come to you, and then you have more success spreading the ideas of liberty than if you go around being a boor. See the following excerpts from Nock and Read:

From A stroll with Albert Jay Nock by Robert M. Thornton:

Albert Jay Nock was not a reformer and found offensive any society with a “monstrous itch for changing people.” He had “a great horror of every attempt to change anybody; or I should rather say, every wish to change anybody; for that is the important thing.” Whenever one “wishes to change anybody, one becomes like the socialists, vegetarians, prohibitionists; and this, as Rabelais says, ‘is a terrible thing to think upon.’” The only thing we can do to improve society, he declared, “is to present society with one improved unit.” Let each person direct his efforts at himself or herself, not others; or as Voltaire put it, “Il faut cultiver notre jardin.”

From Frederick A. Manchester, Apropos of the Presidency:

The Remnant that Saves

It would appear, then, that if we want to have leaders of high quality, Presidents among them, we, the American people, shall have to increase our understand­ing in politics and related fields. It is fortunately not necessary that all of us should become thus edu­cated, but only a sizable minority—the remnant that saves. But how are we to build up this sizable minority?

Begin, says Mr. Read in the document I quoted at the begin­ning of these remarks, by genu­inely enlightening ourselves, as in­dividuals—morally as well as so­cially, economically, and politi­cally. Thereafter, if I understand him correctly, he would have us trust mainly to the power of ex­ample. “The power of attraction—of attracting others follows all self-improvement,” he says, “as faithfully as does one’s shadow.” In thus asserting this power he undoubtedly has behind him tradi­tional wisdom. “Example,” says Burke, comprehensively, “is the school of mankind; it will learn at no other.”

The Manchester article, from a 1959 issue of The Freeman,  is apparently quoting “Wake Up—It’s Tomorrow” by Leonard E. Read, Notes from FEE, January 1959, which I cannot find; similar thoughts appear to be in Read’s How To Advance Liberty: A Learning, Not a Selling, Problem, which is available in text here and in audio and video here (and below):

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