ABSTRACT
The organized liberty of mankind is established by laws and usages which seek to limit coercive authority, traditional prerogatives, vested rights, and all manner of predatory, violent, fraudulent dealing among men. A free society is one in which inequalities in the condition of men, in their rewards, and in their social status do not arise out of extrinsic and artificial causes — out of the physical power to coerce, out of legal privilege, out of special prerogative, or out of fraud, sharp practice, necessitous bargaining. The ultimate concern of the liberal is with the enhancement of real values by men who actually observe, reason, meditate, invent, dig, construct — seeking to arrange the world to satisfy human demands. To design a personal plan for a new society is a pleasant form of madness; it is in imagination to play at being God and Caesar to the human race.
