I am a contributing creator of American civilization; it does not create me. I control the stem of this civilization that is within my reach; it does… - Rose Wilder Lane

I am not a prophet. But I do not believe that anything like a majority of Americans are looking for security; I do not believe that the groups of young radicals in the colleges and all over this country are in a ‘flight’ from socialization. I think they are furiously rebelling against it and determined to abolish it. I believe that their revolt is founded solidly on reality, as the similar socialist revolt of our youth was not; and I believe that they will succeed in overturning the status quo (as the socialist did) and end this century as Americans ended the 18th, in a great surge of liberalism, this time world-wide. I mean genuine liberalism. Since the socialists have stolen that good word, true liberals flounder all over the place, calling themselves ‘ libertarians’ and even ‘conservatives,’ but the accurate word, individualists, seems to be gaining ground lately.

In 1800, a prosperous year, the total income of Americans (called ‘the national income’) was something over 2 billion dollars, a fabulous amount then. Capitalists and landlords got 68%, farmers and laborers 32%. In 1930, of tragic memory, near the bottom of ‘the worst depression in history’, the incomes of all Americans amounted to roughly to 75 billion. Of this wage earners (who had increased in number 17%) got 64%+; entrepreneurs, 20%; capitalists and landlords the remaining 16%.

In southern Illinois there was a Terror. The Government men went into that country and took no nonsense; they condemned the land—every farm; offered the owners $7 an acre, or nothing. This was a model project, tearing down houses, building new roads, surveying a Community Center all blueprinted. The people were frantic and furious; they hired lawyers, who told them they could do nothing; they tried to get the facts printed; no newspaper dared do it.