The Discovery of Freedom: Mans Struggle Against Authority by Rose Wilder Lane

The Discovery of Freedom: Mans Struggle Against Authority Reviews

• 
  Patrick Peterson

  Sept. 12, 2017:
  Listened to most of the book again over the last week or so and loved it just as much, perhaps more, than I did before. What a wonderful book. There are flaws, for sure, as the introductions make clear, but the overall theme and many, many, probably most of her points backing up the theme are very solid. Highly recommended.
  
  March 27, 2017:
  I actually listened to the audiobook version of this edition from Laissez Faire Books. The main narrator was Jeff Riggenbach. The Preface by Jeff Tucker and the Foreword by Wendy McElroy were read by two other people, not identified.
  
  The book was wonderful. The reading, especially by Jeff Riggenbach was superb.
  I can certainly see how Rose Wilder Lane herself described her writing it in a "white heat." The passion comes through, loud and clear, and is super impressive.
  
  I had previously read in the 1980s Lane's pamphlet "Give me Liberty" and liked it, but did not think it was great. I had read Henry Grady Weaver's "The Mainspring of Human Progress" (published by FEE.org), based on "The Discovery of Freedom" and liked that too. Many libertarians, including Roy Childs had urged me to read "The Discovery of Freedom" too, and I think I even had a paperback copy at some point. But I always had too many books to read for my limited time. What got me over the hump on this, was the fact that it was an audiobook - I popped the USB memory stick with the MP3 file into my vehicle's radio and away it played. I was able to enjoy it in just a few days over the last couple weeks.
  
  Time is short, so just a few highlights:
  1. The book is passionate, but beautifully written. Lane can really tell a story, and she tells many to highlight and persuade the reader about her main theme - Freedom is the key to humankind's progress.
  
  2. The stories of how government regulations waste precious human time and energy are classic. The examples from France, on retailing paperwork requirements and purchasing of a spool of thread and autos, made me think - how stupid could they get? but then I rethought for a second, and decided, we just need to document some of the many ways the government in the US has started to do these same idiotic things, and perhaps we can actually get rid of a few of them. The mounting paperwork, legal mumbo-jumbo and passing of the buck is just getting to be overwhelming to initiative and enterprise and solving life's basic problems. Loved this little phrase she used to describe the French obedience to the regs: "The French people were as loyal as sunflowers drying in a draught." Are the American people following the same politically correct path?
  
  3. Her grasp and powerful retelling of important historical episodes, epochs, and lessons are priceless. That is not to say I agree with all she says. I think she is wrong in some particular respects. But if you don't know about what she explains, you will be enriched. In particular, if you think that the tradition of Islam is without merit, you just don't know your history. Her recounting of the amazing civilization of the Saracens is breathtaking. I remembered this from "The Mainspring of Human Progress" so was prepared... but only to some extent. Don't miss this section, and references throughout the rest of the book too.
  
  4. Enjoyed her section on education in the US, just before the final summary - especially her contrasting the early free period vs. the later German influenced, compulsory stage and it's effects. The US has been hurt badly by the change and it is showing in spades.
  
  5. Her whole attitude toward the importance of freedom is so refreshing and uplifting.
  
  What a marvelous book. Highly recommended.
• 
  Daniel Villines

  The idea put forward by Rose Wilder Lane has merit. I think most people would agree that limited government interference in one's life leads to an increased ability to survive and thrive in this world. It's and idea that acknowledges that government cannot understand any one person's individual needs so laws and regulations that try to shape the behaviors and actions of an individual are generally a bad thing. Had Lane simply presented this idea, its successes and its failures, there would have probably been widespread acceptance of her book.
  
  But Lane passionately and desperately tries to prove this idea in the extreme, which is something that cannot be proven. Present this idea to a dozen people and a spectrum of replies will be received in return. Complicate the presentation with a specific example and those replies will change. There is no correct opinion beyond the mind of any individual and the specific case being considered.
  
  In spite of this reality, Lane presses ahead with her efforts and departs from reason. First, she defines all individuals that disagree with her as having a single spiritual flaw: a deep seeded religious faith in their respective Old World Governments (and the word Government is purposely capitalized throughout the book as an allusion to God). After profiling all those in opposition to her as religious devotees, her writing focuses on affecting their enlightenment through education.
  
  Lane's educational curriculum is comprised of arguments consisting of half-truths, over-simplifications, and mistruths to support her points. She dwells extensively on examples where she presents elements that are supportive to her assertions while completely ignoring relevant elements to the contrary. American history, European history, and the history of the Middle-East are all subjects that are cherry-picked and shaped by Lane.
  
  The Discovery of Freedom was published in 1943 and leaders of the time used similar methods to educate their citizens with their own versions of the truth. Roosevelt used fireside chats, Hitler used his grand assemblies, and Churchill used his oratory skills. Lane's methods are in keeping with the times. The book rings of classic propaganda served up for acceptance as the truth as long as no questions are asked.
  
  This propagandistic style creates significant problems for the book. While Lane wants people to abandon their presumed religious beliefs in their Government, it becomes apparent that she is perfectly willing to accept a faith-based conversion to her point of view and to have the newly converted pre-programmed with her spoon-fed Truths. This approach implies Lane's lack of trust in those that would be converted and by extension, a lack of trust, by Lane, in her own idea. After all, an idea that is true should be able to withstand evidence to the contrary.
  
  As a consequence, The Discovery of Freedom reads with a continuous undertone of skepticism and Lane's credibility as an educator continuously evaporates along the way. There are passages that contradict earlier discussions. For instance, Lane asserts that individual voting for the president of the United States and our senators is a dangerous thing; that US citizens should have a religious faith in the Electoral College delegates and senators that would be appointed by State governments if it were not for the Seventeenth Amendment. The universal flaw used by Lane against her opponents finally becomes a quality that should be embraced by true believers in the original US Constitution and the government it formed. The irony runs deep.
  
  The best part of this version of The Discovery of Freedom is the foreword. I have to give its writer, Windy McElroy, and the publisher credit for not editing out Lane's own opinions regarding The Discovery of Freedom. During Lane's lifetime, only the initial run of 1,000 copies was published and she would not allow a second printing. In her words, Lane said, "It's a very bad book. I ought to know. I wrote it." And I happen to agree.
  
• 
  Zinger

  I didn’t give this book a 5 only because if wasn’t polished, which I believe is the same complaint Laura Wilder Lane has.
  
  This book really lays it out in black and white, in clear descriptions, of why nations are cursed with poverty and stagnation, or prosper and flourish. The “Old World” believed that people needed authority to exist and that government is the great human parent that grants permissions and takes care of people. The “New World” exposed that belief as a lie. Individuals do not need permissions from government and governments do not and cannot provide for people. Individuals are the source of energy who convert raw materials into goods and services. Government is only a parasite that feeds off of individuals’ wealth and then uses force to inhibit individual energies.
  
  As the Declaration of Independence teaches, governments are created by the people with the sole purpose to protect individual rights. Anything more or less than this cometh of evil.
  
  I worry that many Americans want to revert back to the old world by looking to government as the great provider and sacrificing their freedoms and liberties while worshiping the almighty state. Just look at the people we elect (republicans or democrats)!
  
• 
  Sarah

  There were so many moments I wanted to leap online and give this book 5 stars as a high-five, so many times I looked around for paper to jot down a great quote or insight. It was like an entire book expanding on one of my favorite book quotes, from Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, about how the state and society don't exist, save as the manifestation of the acts of responsible individuals, with whom responsibility and blame must solely lie. Despite having internalized this already, Rose Wilder Lane had so many interesting parallels to draw that had never occurred to me, applied it to so many areas of life. Her personal experience with European culture, something I don't have, was very interesting and valuable to me, even if I know I can't verify her impressions for myself.
  
  I just couldn't give the book 5 stars in the end, though. I would totally recommend it, it was entertaining and insightful and made so many great points. However, I couldn't help but see what the foreword explained the author herself saw, and I think it does keep it from being unreservedly awesome. It was prone to hyperbole to the point you started to mistrust how much the author really looked into a particular historical example. The historical examples were sometimes so short, and analysis as well, that I couldn't help but feel important info was being omitted, which was even more confusing when pages and pages would be devoted to a single person's story of a single venture, as opposed to expanding on the hundreds of years generalized about before. I sympathize, and I caught myself getting caught up in the pace and emotion of a chapter for expressing so powerfully something I felt, but then it would flag, and I'd sort of sheepishly cool off and lament that this would probably not affect someone who didn't already "know that human energy cannot be controlled," as she would often say :).
  
  Still a really great book. It was inspirational at times in optimism and awe at the course of history, frightening at other times when pointing out fragility and so many examples of failure, and just really fun to read. I'll definitely have to go back and grab some quotes in a second reading.
• 
  Tammie

  I'm excited to be reading this book! Rose Wilder Lane was the daughter of Laura Ingals Wilder! Rose was leaning toward socialism at one point in her life. Then went Europe as a writer for the Red Cross just after World War I and had quite the Paradigm shift! Very excited to read it all!!!!
• 
  Sean Rosenthal

  Interesting Quotes:
  
  "Men in office do not use their energy productively; that is not their function. Their function is to use human energy as force to stop the uses of human energy that a majority does not approve, or at least does not defend. Men in government must take the wealth they consumer, from the wealth that productive men create."
  
  -Rose Wilder Lane, the Discovery of Freedom
  
  
  "From Sultan to slave, every good Moslem lived in submission to the Unknowable, as Spartans submitted to the Law of Lycurgus, as savages submit to tabu, as communists and fascists and nazis submit to The Party, and as some Americans believe that individuals should and must submit to an enforced Social Good, to the Will of the Majority, to a Planned Economy, to many other pagan gods that do not exist."
  
  -Rose Wilder Lane, the Discovery of Freedom
  
  "Anyone who says that economic security is a human right, has been to much babied. While he babbles, other men are risking and losing their lives to protect him. They are fighting the sea, fighting the land, fighting disease and insects and weather and space and time, for him, while he chatters that all men have a right to security and that some pagan god -- Society, The State, The Government, The Commune -- must give it to them. Let the fighting men stop fighting this inhuman earth for one hour, and he will learn how much security there is."
  
  -Rose Wilder Lane, The Discovery of Freedom
• 
  Todd

  Rose Wilder Lane, where have you been all my life?! What a great read, and one that somehow doesn't roll off every tongue when it comes to works on freedom and liberty. Like her contemporary,
  Isabel Paterson, she focuses on the topic of energy in terms of human energy. However, Lane is much more entertaining and accessible, whereas Paterson's genius makes her harder for casual readers to follow. All humans are free and humans must live in a community, a brotherhood, in order to harness their energy to the maximum extent. For those who fail to recognize both of these truths, they condemn themselves and/or their fellows to a lifetime of poverty and minuscule, if any, material progress.
  
  Lane focuses on the unbelievable human progress made from around the time of the American Revolution until she was writing, and contrasted it with the whole rest of human history. She even contrasted the already high standard of living in the United States with the lagging one in Western Europe, not to mention the rest of the world. In this, she is very like
  Deirdre McCloskey, especially in tracing the pivotal difference being the liberty that allowed those who made this unprecedented progress.
  
  Lane gets into some tangents not necessarily helpful to her main thesis, though these also are not harmful to her main point. For instance, she indicates that something controls all energy, then immediately gives out that what controls the energy of everything but humans is unknown. A bit like
  John Maynard Keynes ascribing the source of economic activity to unknown "animal spirits." Unlike Keynes though, Lane's inability to talk about other energies is quite unconnected to the thrust of her argument over the fact that only an individual can control his or her own energy and a third party can only try to block, discourage, or clumsily redirect the energy of others, and their inability to do better will only result in the piling on of further energy and resources to increase the force to achieve the desired (but unattainable) outcome.
  
  Lane describes that the belief that life is a zero-sum game is pagan religion in authority that has had few heretics speaking out against it. Her description of Islamic relative freedom and tolerance was reasonably accurate for its early period, but the way she stretches it out over the course of the whole history of Islamic empire falls victim to the Andalusian myth and would do well to check
  Bat Ye'or's brilliant trilogy on Dhimmis and Dhimmitude. Further, she is unable to describe why the Islamic empire suddenly declined and was conquered by relatively less free outsiders. If she had understood that liberty did not fare well over the long haul, as it seldom does, it would not have seemed so inexplicable. This is a lesson we would do well to study closely in our own era of growing government and shrinking liberty--McCloskey's look at the self-destruction of Dutch liberty tracks well with this devolution story as well. In principle, at least, Lane recognizes this truth, "Responsibility-evading citizens in this Republic, if they become numerous enough, can wreck the Republic, the Revolution, and the whole modern world. But not one of them can evade responsibility. Each one will be responsible." (p 194)
  
  Lane gives the impression that she is sympathetic to full-on Anarchism by virtue of many of her comments elsewhere, but she turns out to be realistic about the human condition: "It [force] is necessary because--to date, and perhaps forever--a few men stupidly use force to injure others, and nothing but force will stop them." (p 28)
  
  Lane is a good and compelling writer. Her few minor flaws present no obstruction to her main ideas. For those interested in the human condition, in freedom (or its alternatives), or an entertaining and no-holds-barred view of the world, this is an excellent read. I would strongly recommend it to anyone.
• 
  Joe

  Surprisingly expansive view of human history and the role of individuals who know they are free. The text written in 1943 is shockingly salient to prevalent attitudes in the 21st century. Lane describes eloquently how knowing individuals act responsibly with their freedom vs. the rest of humanity who erroneously believe they are dependent subjects to some superior authority (government, state, tribal leaders) and act only on orders.
  
  Lane promotes the truth of the brotherhood of all humanity and the foundational equality in all groups, but asserts that the human cooperation necessary to survive, develop, and improve civilization originates with the energy of the individual. Only the individual can choose to act.
  
  She also rightly criticizes the violent state as the originator of war. She claims that America is unique in limiting government powers rather than allowing government to limit individual freedom. And this difference has lead to the unprecedented growth and improvement.
  
  Her representative stories from history to highlight how the knowledge of freedom improved the world were a bright surprise. I really enjoyed her perspective and insight into human history.
  
  Favorite quotes from "The Third Attempt"
  "In trying to make any other person responsible for his welfare, he must try to transfer his control of himself to that other man, for control and responsibility can not be separated."
  
  "In demanding that men in Government be responsible for his welfare, a citizen is demanding control of his affairs by men whose only power is the use of force."
  
  "Responsibility-evading citizens in this Republic, if they become numerous enough, can wreck the Republic, the Revolution, and the whole modern world."
• 
  Jacquelyn

  I enjoyed this book's telling of early history even if her sources aren't cited, and her summaries are questionable.
  
  In fact, I enjoyed right up until she declares feudalism to be the perfection of human society (not a direct quote, I'm paraphrasing). I honestly thought she was saying this ironically or sarcastically, that she was about to rip it apart in the next chapter. But she never does. She was serious. She then praises wealthy [English] gentlemen landowners as being the guardians of the people. As a continuation of feudalism, but run by 'gentlemen' as established by her beloved 'Saracens'. Landowners, who didn't have to earn their wealth, but are lords by virtue of their birth. And they should be responsible for governing the general public? She clearly isn't pro-meritocracy or truly anti-government. She was writing as simply pro-Aristocracy.
  
  I find her apparent disconnect with her own family history (Laura Ingalls Wilder was her mother) fascinating. She came from a frontier farming family yet she extolls the virtues of being ruled/directed/governed by upper classes. And unlike Ayn Rand, she made little to no mention of/allusion to social mobility based on ones own ability. This was no 'rise from the ashes to greatness' work. This was about working hard and letting the 'educated gentlemen' make the calls. It says nothing of becoming one of the 'educated gentlemen' class.
• 
  AngieA

  This was a challenging read. I learned a lot of history and found myself uncomfortable in places. Women didn't want the vote? Hmmm. I read this book for two reasons; the author, Rose Wilder Lane, is the daughter (and collaborator) of Laura Ingalls Wilder of "Little House" fame and I had only read one other thing she had written, a history of needle work for Woman's Day Magazine. I wish I still had that book. She compiled and published this in 1943 during WWII so she mentions Hitler fairly often along with Mussolini and Stalin. The biggest take away for me is how we as Americans seem to be falling into the void that was the death knell of other democracies. Nationalism. Protectionism. People expecting more from the government than it was designed to give. Her prose, according to the back cover, is "stark and strong." I agree. This book had "a huge impact on American libertarian thought in the 20th Century." I do not know a lot about Libertarian politics so I thought this would lay some groundwork. And it did. It certainly left me thinking. The last paragraph: "Win this war? Of course Americans will win this war. This is only a war; there is more than that. Five generations of Americans have led the Revolution, and the time is coming when Americans will set this whole world free."
• 
  Andrew Post

  While some of the conclusions drawn may perhaps be overly hasty and general...the basic premise is sound. And it's a revolutionary one. This book is going to be required reading for my (homeschooled) children, and I wish every American, particularly those currently in power in Washington, could be persuaded to read it thoroughly.
• 
  Cliff

  Essential reading ... if flawed. The book appears to me to be a collection of essays that are collected without sufficient editorial oversight to make them read more as one work. There is an awkward repetition and lack of coherent organization that makes it somewhat off-putting if taken as one long read, but when treated as many shorter works, most of the segments are, in themselves, profound. The author was a journalist (and a novelist) so there are no citations for her warrants, making it hard to take some of her assertions (mainly historical) too seriously without independent research, but her reasoning in the book is remarkable.
• 
  Tom

  Impressive argument for human freedom and a compelling frame in which to view the world and society's history. I would give it five star but some of the nuts and bolts of the history is incorrect and years later the author recognized this and she actually regretted the work. However this absolutely does not take away from the message and the beautiful delivery.
• 
  Chuck Russo

  Good book, but not one of the best of its kind.
• 
  Teri

  Less government, not more!
• 
  Craig Bolton

  The Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle Against Authority by Rose Wilder Lane (1993)
• 
  Brian Ogstad

  A great book written in 1943(?) detailing mans struggle against authority... in essence, the same story Larken Rose tells in The Most Dangerous Superstition.