In America, an individual's freedom to make and live by a decision is at the core of our identify and success as a nation and society. Columnist George Will spoke of this at a seminar last spring. (Bolded italics are mine.):
"We began in 1945 an astonishingly clear social experiment: We divided
the city of Berlin, the country of Germany, the continent of Europe,
indeed the whole world, and we had a test. On one side was the
socialist model that says that society is best run by edicts, issued
from a coterie of experts from above. The American model, on the other
hand, called for a maximum dispersal of decision-making and information
markets allocating wealth and opportunity. The results are clear: We
are here, they are not. The Soviet Union tried for 70 years to plant
Marxism with bayonets in Eastern Europe. Today there are more Marxists
on the Harvard faculty than there are in Eastern Europe." Link
Reprinted by permission from IMPRIMIS, the national speech digest of Hillsdale College, www.hillsdale.edu.