ABSTRACT
The free-thinking mind, the fundamental source of new ideas and creations in every field, is stifled under all forms of statism. The freer a country, the more protected are its thinkers. The more stringently a ban on the initiation of force is practiced by a nation's government, the more the creators of life-giving wealth will flourish. Late-nineteenth and turn-of-the-twentieth-century America provide abundant evidence supporting these claims. The leading thinkers of American culture—free to express any idea; to write any book; to invent new technologies; to originate companies; to compete with older ideas or technologies—stunned the world with an outpouring of genius in every field. The United States of the post-Civil War period was transformed in not more than a single generation into the greatest industrial nation of the world. The Humanities flourished in the nation that most fully protected freethinkers from the initiation of force.
