Reading: Introduction to this Economics Course (Transcript)

Matt Welch:                         Hi. I'm Matt Welch, editor in chief of Reason Magazine. I'm joined today by Lawrence Reed, the president of the Foundation for Economic Education, which is widely considered to be the first ever sort of think tank devoted to issues of liberty. Can you tell us a little bit, for people who aren't really aware of FEE and its history, how it started, what it's been over the years?

Lawrence Reed:                 FEE was started in 1946 by the late Leonard Read. He's no relation. He spelled his name R-e-a-d. But he was a well-known man throughout the free market movement. He was a leader in the spread of ideas, and he felt very strongly, in the late 40s, that ideas of liberty were not being given a very good hearing and that there needed to be a scholarly place that would produce publications and programs that would educate people about both economics and the morality of the free and civil society.

Matt Welch:                         Over the years, how has the organization involved, what is it primarily focusing on in 2009?

Lawrence Reed:                 For most of our history, we have published and have been best known for a journal called The Freeman. We continue to publish that and it goes to subscribers all over the world. We also hold seminars for high school and college students. This summer, we will double the number of our previous all-time record, so we're on the move.

Matt Welch:                         Wow. So you're involved with economic education. I imagine that in the year 2009, that's kind of an interesting bittersweet type of thing to be doing. Do you feel like you're rehashing the same arguments that were made or maybe even thought to have been won in the past and now is reoccurring?

Lawrence Reed:                 Yes. We are reviving old ideas and we're to bringing to bear current issues, concepts, and contributions of great thinkers that go back quite a number of years. But people have to constantly learn and re-learn these lessons. FEE is unique in the sense that we not only focus on economic education but also the moral foundations of a free society. So we talk a lot about the importance of things like character and other virtues required, I think, to succeed in a free society.

Matt Welch:                         If you had to name three lessons that are being forgotten or that need to be relearned in 2009, involving economics, what would they be?

Lawrence Reed:                 One would be the government has nothing to give anybody except what it first takes from somebody. Another one, I think, would be a government that's big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you've got. Another one is that the free people are not equal economically. They will generate differences in income because we're different one person to another. Equal people, economically, are not free.

Matt Welch:                         How did you first get involved - when and how - in libertarianism or classical liberalism?

Lawrence Reed:                 I first got involved in 1968 at the age of 14 when I was captivated by events in Czechoslovakia. It's known as Prague spring as there were freedoms blossoming in that country. The great focus in the world was along the question will the Soviets allow the Czechs to do their thing? So I watched that very carefully.  Then in August of '68, the Soviets invaded and within a few days, I saw an ad for a demonstration in Pittsburgh put on by a group called Young Americans for Freedom to protest the invasion. So at age 14, I bought a bus ticket, rode up to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, we burned a Soviet flag, and let the world know we didn't like what they did.

That was the beginning. That's how I first got and connected with The Freeman, with Reason Magazine, and other people in publications and the movement.

Matt Welch:                         And you were one of the first original subscribers to Reason.

Lawrence Reed:                 I remember very well the original labels were hand addressed maybe by Bob Poole himself - I don't know - way back when in '68 or '69 when I was getting it.

Matt Welch:                         Looking at the climate right now, what would you say is your biggest fear about what might happen or is transpiring? And what's your biggest hope for things going in the right direction?

Lawrence Reed:                 My biggest fear at the moment is that Americans in the search for short-term security, the feeling that, well, we've got to do something for now, will sacrifice some critically important and eternal values of liberty and limited government and not get anything to show for it - not even in the way of security. That's my biggest fear.

My hope is that we can turn things around and show the American people that the crisis that we're now in is not the fault of freedom and free markets but just the opposite. That this is a phenomenal learning opportunity here to realize once and for all that government in charge of the economy is a prescription for disaster.

Matt Welch:                         That's great. On that note, I'm Matt Welch for Reason TV. Thank you.