Thirteen years ago, age 20 and grappling with how to make the world freer, my good friend Leon Drolet (I think only the second time I met him) handed me photocopied article from Liberty magazine. He’d heard I was a Christian, and though he was not, he made several copies of this article and handed them out to every Christian he knew in the political realm.
The article changed my life. It put into words so many things I felt but couldn’t articulate. It generated a burst of mental freedom and set me on a trajectory that altered my intellectual and professional life. I had a great appreciation for theology, philosophy, ethics, and the concept of free-will. I had a great appreciation for the science of human action and free-market economic principles. I knew these things were not in conflict, but I lacked the lexicon to describe how two paths (for me, represented by Milton Friedman and C.S. Lewis) led to the same conclusion about the unnecessary evil of government.
Legate described it for me. I’m not objective enough to determine whether the article itself is really great or if it’s just the time in my life when I read it. Regardless, it’s been lost and found on and off over the years, so I’m thrilled to have pinned down a PDF of the issue in which it appeared.
I’ve uploaded a file below of just the one article for my own records and remembrance. But you can enjoy it too!