Henry Hazlitt on the Fight for Liberty

From 1964, the occasion of his Hazlitt's 70th birthday:

Those of us who place a high value on human liberty...find ourselves in a minority (and it sometimes seems a hopeless minority) in ideology... We are the true adherents of liberty... We are the ones who believe in limited government, in the maximization of liberty for the individual and the minimization of coercion to the lowest point compatible with law and order. It is because we are true liberals that we believe in free trade, free markets, free enterprise, private property in the means of production; in brief, that we are for capitalism and against socialism...

I will confess...that I have sometimes repeated myself. In fact, there may be some people unkind enough to say I haven’t been saying anything new for 50 years!

And in a sense they would be right... I’ve been preaching liberty as against coercion; I’ve been preaching capitalism as against socialism; and I’ve been preaching this doctrine in every form and with any excuse. And yet the world is enormously more socialized than when I began...

Is this because the majority just won’t listen to reason? I am enough of an optimist, and I have enough faith in human nature, to believe that people will listen to reason if they are convinced that it is reason. Somewhere, there must be some missing argument, something that we haven’t seen clearly enough, or said clearly enough, or, perhaps, just not said often enough. A minority is in a very awkward position. The individuals in it can’t afford to be just as good as the individuals in the majority. If they hope to convert the majority they have to be much better; and the smaller the minority, the better they have to be. They have to think better. They have to know more. They have to write better. They have to have better controversial manners. Above all, they have to have far more courage. And they have to be infinitely patient...

Yet, in spite of this, I am hopeful.… [We are] still free to write unpopular opinion... So I bring you this message: Be of good heart; be of good spirit. If the battle is not yet won, it is not yet lost either.