5-Star Reviews of My New Book from George Reisman and Edith Packer

I was honored to receive the following reviews from two people I highly admire. They appear on Dr. Reisman's blog:

Sunday, March 30, 2014

THE PIONEER VS. THE WELFARE STATE: Essays on Liberty in Peril by GEN LAGRECA

Available at Amazon in Kindle format. 99¢.

A New Declaration of Independence

This is a wonderful book. It evoked despair when the author described the conditions of our welfare state. At the same time, and especially as the result of the next-to-last essay “Why I Love America,” it evoked great admiration for our Constitution and Bill of Rights, and resulted in my having hope for the America I also love. Hopefully, the author’s projected “New Declaration of Independence” will someday become a reality. This book should be required reading in all the high schools and colleges of this country.

EDITH PACKER


Strangling the Pioneering Spirit

The essays in this book are gems of excellent, powerful writing in a great cause. Again and again, when the book describes the original, pioneering spirit of America, it brings the reader to a mountaintop of admiration for freedom, for the unimpeded action freedom makes possible, and for the genius of our Founding Fathers in establishing a country dedicated to freedom. And again and again, when it describes the very different spirit that prevails today—the spirit of the welfare state—it plunges the reader into the depths of despair. Here, the reader is made to confront such things as the entitlement mentality run amok and the results of the 700,000 pages of stifling arbitrary rules and regulations that have been promulgated and accumulated in The Federal Register since 1936.

One cannot read this book without a sense of tragic loss over what has gone so terribly wrong in our country. The author concludes with a call for a “NEW Declaration of Independence.” One can only hope that someday it will happen. But for now and the foreseeable future, it would have the greatest difficulty in finding signers, let alone a sufficient number of soldiers willing to fight for a renewal of the ideals on which our country was founded. But enough people reading this book would certainly help to improve the odds.

GEORGE REISMAN

The Pioneer vs. the Welfare State

The pioneers were the men and women of the 18^th and 19^th century who settled the American frontier in search of a better life. Independent, resourceful, and determined, they rose to the challenge of a free people in a new nation founded on liberty. They did something that was restricted in the Old World of authoritarianism: They ran their own lives and controlled their own destiny.

The Pioneer vs. the Welfare State
by Gen LaGreca

As the towns of these early settlers and their successors grew into cities, and manual trades became mechanized, America produced an explosion of new industries and products—oil refineries, electricity, steel, automobiles, airplanes, telephones, etc.—creating abundance on a scale never before imagined. The enterprising people of America became legendary—from the early settlers to the great industrialists to the ambitious individuals on every economic level who dreamed big and worked hard to better their lives. The pioneer spirit became the proud symbol of America. The personal initiative to improve one’s life, unencumbered by the state, achieved worldwide fame as the coveted American Dream.Thanks to the ambitious achievements of pioneer-spirited Americans, the hardship so prevalent in daily existence vanished, and by the 20^th century prosperity became the new normal, raising the standard of living of virtually everyone and creating a thriving middle class. All of this was accomplished in a mere century or so when capitalism and freedom prevailed.

Fast-forward to today, and we see a different country. We see an ever-growing government with a myriad of welfare-state programs that claim to take care of us. We see Americans hampered from seizing the reins of their lives and driving their chariots toward the sun. Instead, they’re conditioned to look to the government to take care of them. From free food and housing to free cell phones and contraceptives, many of our citizens think they have a claim to a guaranteed existence provided to them by taxing and redistributing the earnings of others. Many people think that restricting economic freedom and entangling business in tighter and tighter knots of regulations with give them security against life’s risks. Decades of the paternalistic welfare state have changed the character of the people, causing a growing passivity, insecurity, and dependency—so antithetical to the pioneer spirit.

In the pre-industrial world of hardship, the American pioneers created plenty. In the modern world of plenty, the welfare state creates, nurtures, and perpetuates hardship.

The pioneer and the welfare state represent two opposite views of life and government. The conflict between them is the most important battle of our age. On the one side are the individualists, who cherish personal liberty and want to run their own lives their own way. On the other side are the statists, who want the government to provide for their welfare and who ignore or make light of the coercion by the state and the violation of individual rights that their system entails.

Which side will win in this struggle for the soul of America? The goal of my new book of essays, "The Pioneer vs. the Welfare State," is to influence the outcome. Available on Amazon Kindle.