The following story is part of Walter Block's Autobiography Archive.

A Libertarian Odyssey

by Ken Schoolland
by Ken Schoolland

My earliest political memory is of a rally at the Arizona State Fairgrounds where Herbert I Led Three Lives Philbrick was speaking about his life as a double agent for the FBI. His story of espionage in the Cold War was chilling and I could see from my Mom’s attitude that this was to be taken seriously. Tyrants, after all, were in the midst of killing 150 million people in the Twentieth Century.

Post World War II movies reinforced the grim view of life under dictators and regular air raid drills made the confrontation seem imminent. (It was scary, but nothing as gruesome as the actual stories of Mao’s China that I heard from Zhao Li, the woman who became my wife thirty years later. Li's life closely paralleled the world of Ayn Rand’s Anthem.) My heroes in those years were G-Men and I wrote a paper in seventh grade explaining why I wanted to become an agent. Later, my interest changed dramatically.

During the Kennedy-Nixon Debates I recall asking my mother what was the difference between Republicans and Democrats. She told me that Democrats wanted government to run our lives and Republicans wanted individuals to run their own lives. It was a vivid contrast, especially as it seemed that greater governmental control could lead to the dreaded dictatorship. As it turned out, I learned that both parties wanted the same thing.

My family supported Barry Goldwater and I recall that during the presidential campaign against Lyndon Johnson I didn’t have much intellectual ammunition to argue with my Democratic friends in high school. My friends were all Democrats and all seemed to know more about the latest news and could shut down any of my arguments. So I decided to read every issue of Newsweek from cover to cover so that I wouldn’t be embarrassed again with my lack of knowledge about current events. This started me on a long addiction to political soap opera, eager to catch the next episode. My magazines of choice changed to Liberty and The Economist, much better guides to political soap.

The first bombing strikes against Vietnam caused me to shudder. But the whole of U.S. action in Vietnam was explained by the authorities as a defensive maneuver or as a battle against communist tyrants who were trying to dominate a free people. When Secretary of State Dean Rusk broadcast that we had an obligation under SEATO to defend South Vietnam against communism, I trusted him – as did everyone I knew at the time. All of my elders were skeptical of politicians, except in times of war. My trust of politicians changed. I rarely ever trust them – especially during war.

From the safety of my college draft deferment, I mimicked my elders and argued publicly that this war was philosophically justified in the struggle for freedom, both for the Vietnamese and for Americans. But I was having some real nightmares, struggling with the huge contradictions between ideas of liberty, of military conscription, and of loyalty to politicians. My attachment to Republicans finally collapsed under the follies of Richard Nixon. The exceptions are Ron Paul and Sam Slom, libertarian Republicans.

At Occidental College, Professor Haring taught my first economics class. Contrary to expectations, it wasn’t at all boring. This weekend preacher had a booming and enthusiastic personality that gave cautious rebuke to statist themes in Paul Samuelson’s textbook. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Samuelson’s views have since been modified.

A filmed debate over monetary and fiscal policy was my introduction to Milton Friedman's brilliance and wit so I soon devoured his book Capitalism and Freedom. I came to realize that the market was a remarkable phenomenon that offered solutions to problems that were only made worse by politics. While Milton will always be my first great economics hero, my views later favored the direction of his son, David, in The Machinery of Freedom.

I could count on one hand the number of university teachers who made any positive impression on me and I thought this would change in graduate school. But graduate professors at Georgetown, despite impressive credentials, were also a disappointment. I came to the conclusion that a professor’s philosophy was fundamental to the worth of his or her lessons. Thirty years among colleagues in the teaching profession has confirmed that conclusion.

After studying in France and working briefly for the J.C. Penney Co. in Virginia, I got hooked on novels by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn (The First Circle) and Ayn Rand (We the Living and Atlas Shrugged). Rand’s philosophy clicked with me. She provided invaluable perspective on human motivations. Ironically, it was about the same time that I landed a position as an international economist in the U.S. Tariff Commission. It was thoroughly demoralizing employment – never honest work. Rather than to produce valuable goods and services, I merely got in the way of those who did. It was the perfect validation of Rand’s assertions about politics and the bureaucracy.

As soon as possible I transferred to the U.S. Department of Commerce and had a brief stint in the White House, Office of the Special Representative for Trade Negotiations. Pay and promotions were coming along great, but ambitions that I had for a career in government contradicted my budding values. I hated Washington D.C. and decided on a career in teaching – as far away as possible.

All of my friends and mentors thought I was crazy to leave the "center of action" and move to Sheldon Jackson College in Sitka, Alaska. Indeed, I was leaving all the potential for power to the people who really hungered for it. Well, so be it. I wouldn’t waste any more of my life in a cesspool.

Alaska is paradise for a libertarian soul. I was the whole Business and Economics Department at this tiny two-year college that mostly catered to Native Alaskans. The wilderness is spectacular and the pioneering folk are even better. I took up flying and theater as hobbies. Many of the plays had libertarian themes: i.e. Rand’s Night of January the 16^th and Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People. Nat Mandel, Kristen Kappel, and I even started our own theater company, the Sitka Summer Players. Students who taught me the most were Bruce Weyhrauch, Rick Lenning, Wes Craske, Karl Moody, Anisha Angasan, and Neal Bauder.

I traveled to Hawaii on vacation one year and stumbled across various Libertarian Party candidates giving speeches at a university campus. I met Roger MacBride, Fred James, Rockne Johnson, Dale Pratt, and others. They introduced me to libertarians in Alaska: Carl Whitson taught me to consistently apply principles to the hardest of issues and Dick Randolph taught me to apply the principles to the hardest of critics. I was also thrilled to discover the world of liberty literature: i.e., Bastiat’s The Law, Rothbard’s For a New Liberty, Block’s Defending the Undefendable, Burris’ Liberty Primer, and Thoreau’s On the Duty of Civil Disobedience.

One little film, "The Incredible Bread Machine" by World Research Inc., permitted me to introduce libertarian ideas to all of my students in Alaska. In class I watched the film in awe a hundred times. Later in Hawaii it was Friedman’s "Free to Choose" video series. The simplest tools were the most fun to use. And why shouldn’t people have fun, instead of drudgery, with such things?

In 1979 I started teaching economics at Hawaii Loa College and I made regular visits to the genius of talk radio, Fred James. Fred invited virtually every libertarian luminary to his show and eagerly sparred with a wide range of statist callers. I even joined him once at the station as he dressed in full costume and makeup to enact a fictional conversation between Thomas Paine (Fred) and Adam Smith (me). The hot Honolulu studio didn’t cooperate, however, and the putty forming Paine’s enlarged nose drooped into a long Pinocchio-like point. Fred was a great champion of both libertarian and Objectivist ideas, but he showed me the libertarian joie de vivre minus the usual Objectivist condescension.

On behalf of the Libertarian Party of Hawaii, I produced weekly radio commentaries for an all-news radio station. These commentaries started as straight monologues and drew no response at all. I was getting nowhere with the audience and the time spent writing kept me from getting anywhere with my girlfriend as well. So why not kill two birds with one stone? So I asked Debby Saito to participate in a little fantasy radio dialogue: "As you may recall, we last left Jonathan Gullible on a remote Pacific island after his boat was blown about by a terrific storm. One day…" And The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible (JG) was born.

The station didn’t much care whether we did commentary or drama, but the audience sure did! Instantly, listener response picked up all over town. I then followed Debby back up to Alaska for a year where she started the Libertarian Party of Sitka and I produced a dramatic radio series from the JG episodes.

Later I spent a couple years teaching in Japan where I met the foremost Japanese Austrian economist, Toshio Murata, translator of von Mises' Human Action. I rekindled an old friendship with a political ally from my college years, Bruce Hobbs. He too had discovered this libertarian movement. When I returned to Hawaii I was fired up for politics, always in "three’s." I ran three times for the U.S. Congress and served three years as Chair of the local party. I learned the talents, the value, and the futility of libertarian political action.

In Hawaii I was fortunate to learn most from the wit and wisdom of a whole new set of students: Marie Gryphon, Misho Ognanovich, Mike Jensen, Graham Thompson, Jon Graham, Winston Posegate, Stuart Hayashi, Geo Olsson, Nicki Moss, and others. I really should have paid them tuition!

Writing was the best way for my philosophy to mature. It required in-depth study of free market literature, constant application to current issues, and feedback to keep me disciplined. My best critic over the years was Lane Yoder, a math professor, racquetball partner, and Go master. Some of the most searching, intellectual correspondence and libertarian discussions were with Mats Hinze, Nicolai Heering, and, still, my Mom. And my greatest promoter was Sam Slom, who published the JG episodes as an economics education project of Small Business Hawaii. The book quickly found its way into economics classes and won a couple of awards.

By this time I read about the work of Vince Miller, Jim Elwood, and Bruce Evoy at the International Society for Individual Liberty (ISIL) and later joined their Board. ISIL was dedicated to translating free market literature and networking globally in order to spread free market ideas. Their mission was perfectly timed with the fall of the Iron Curtain and the opening of so much of the world that had formerly prohibited free market ideas. I was determined to be a part of that introduction.

JG has now been published in nearly 30 languages and has found its way into radio, television, and the Internet. Close friends, Hubert Jongen, Virgis Daukas, Kerry Pearson, Mary Ruwart, and hundreds of others in ISIL, collaborated to bring this about. My most memorable moment came when my dear friend Geo Olsson, introduced JG to Milton Friedman, my single greatest inspiration.

In reading through this, I would have to say that the books and films were all great. But the friends and family were by far the greatest influences on my personal libertarian odyssey.

October 9, 2003

Ken Schoolland [send him mail] is Associate Professor of Economics and Political Science at Hawaii Pacific University, Honolulu, Hawaii. He is the author of two books, The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible: A Free Market Odyssey (published in 29 languages) and Shogun's Ghost: The Dark Side of Japanese Education. Ken is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Society for Individual Liberty and of Libertarian International.

Copyright © 2003 LewRockwell.com