The present-day delusion is an attempt to enrich everyone at the expense of everyone else; to make plunder universal under the pretense of organizing it.

You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the great struggle for independence.

By our practice, we say that we believe in free enterprise--except . . . Except for public utilities. Except for the railroads. Except for mail delivery. Except for medical services. Except for housing, financing, and real estate transactions. Except for large corporations. Except for education. Except for interest rates. Except for farmers. Except for small business. Except for industrial workers. In short, a case could be made that Americans believe in free enterprise except in whatever activities they happen to be considering.

On both sides of the Atlantic, it is only a little overstated to say that we preach individualism and competitive capitalism, and practice socialism.

The dispute about socialism has thus become largely a dispute about means and not about ends.

We have progressively abandoned that freedom in economic affairs without which personal and political freedom has never existed in the past.

Politically, the goal of today’s dominant trend is statism. Philosophically, the goal is the obliteration of reason; psychologically, it is the erosion of ambition.

Private property and free enterprise are mere skeletons of their past.