F.A. Hayek and The road to Serfdom

What a stunning book! Can hardly believe I never read it before--well, wait, yes I can. I went to school when FDR was idolized and I was a Democrat for 40 years. Figures.

It's not like you have to go deep into a bunch of anecdotes to figure it out. He gives the plot away, and I don't use the term lightly, on page 5. This book is now number one on Amazon because Glenn Beck recommended it, but it was published in 1944 in the midst of World War II.

In 1944 Hayek warned the United States and England, that although they were in the midst of fighting a war against the German Nazis, they were committing all the same mistakes that led up to the National Socialists taking over and the rise of Hitler.

It is necessary now to state the unpalatable truth that it is Germany whose fate we are in some danger of repeating. . . the trend of thought in Germany during and after the last war and the present current of ideas in the democracies. . . There is the same contempt for 19th century liberalism, the same spurious "realism" and even cynicism, the same fatalistic acceptance of "inevitable trends." And at least 9 out of every 10 of the lessons which our most vociferous reformers are so anxious we should learn from this war are precisely the lessons which the Germans did learn from the last war and which have done much to produce the Nazi system. . . it is not so many years since the socialist policy of that country was generally held up by progressives as an example to be imitated.

In short, Hayek points out that the rise of naziism and facism was NOT a reaction against the socialist trends of the preceding period but a necessary outcome of those tendencies.

READ THIS BOOK. Believe it or not (and I hardly can) there are two copies in the Upper Arlington Public Library with 10 holds. I guess because of it's 1944 publication date, it managed to slip through the banning of conservative titles. I'll return my copy at the end of the week, and it's not a long read.