Ron Manners has done much for the cause of liberty over his life. In his new book, he reflects on some of his most significant influences, including FEE founder Leonard Read.
On a day in the early 1950s, serendipity, if not Providence itself, scored a hit in Kalgoorlie, Australia. A young Ron Manners, working in his father’s mining business, was opening crates of roller bearings from the U.S. when he noticed crumpled pages of a magazine amongst the packing materials. Something possessed him to set those pages aside so he could later uncrumple them and read the contents.
At home later, his curiosity turned to elation as he perused the smoothed-out pages of The Freeman, the magazine published for many years by the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE):
“I can remember to this day,” writes Ron in his new book, The Impatient Libertarian, “the exhilaration I felt on reading new thoughts about business ethics, the moral foundations for capitalism and the concepts of free markets and individual responsibility—ideas that had never before entered my consciousness.” They transformed his thinking forever, setting him up for a life of advocacy for “the freedom philosophy.”
That was a long time ago. Born in 1953, I was wetting my crib as a teenaged Ron Manners wrote his first of many letters to FEE’s founder, Leonard Read, half a world away. He revealed that FEE’s “freedom ideas” were causing trouble for him among more statist-minded Kalgoorlians. “What should I do?” he asked the man whose writings he had quickly come to admire:
In his reply [Leonard] suggested that the reason I was having so much trouble with my Kalgoorlie audience may have been because I hadn’t spent enough time understanding my own position. He made it clear that principles of liberty and freedom started way back with the musings of Greek philosopher Aristotle having been polished up over the years and that there was much for me to learn. The job of life-long learning never ends, as Leonard was at pains to teach me, in what became a series of thoughtful letters.
Now as he approaches his 90th year, Ron Manners reflects on the powerful influencers in his life—starting with Leonard Read and including John Hospers, Prince Philip, F. A. Hayek, and Sir Antony Fisher. A chapter is devoted to each one of those luminaries, wherein Ron explains how he met and came to respect their words and deeds. As Australia’s best-known libertarian, Ron is himself a major influencer—a fact which Leonard Read foresaw so many years ago.
Why the adjective, Impatient, in the title of Ron’s new book? Suffice it to say that the world is nowhere near as free as Ron hoped it would become in his lifetime. Often, progress has been in the form of three steps forward, two steps backward, at best.
Impatience, however, never equates to inaction in Ron’s case. Though an accomplished businessman (in mining), he is best known around the world for operating only at high speed on behalf of liberty. He never quits. He never slows down.
He is a very active member of the board of directors of the think tank he founded, the Mannkal Economic Education Foundation. He still travels around the world to lecture and attend liberty movement meetings. At FEE, one of the titles I retain is “Ron Manners Global Ambassador for Liberty” in a vain effort to keep up with him.
And now he has authored a book that is part autobiography and part instruction manual. The Impatient Libertarian argues that the right combination of ideas and strategy can achieve success—for the individual and for nations. Ron draws from his own business experience and the insights of those five major influencers in his life to help others win the future.
If you choose to be an activist for liberty like Ron, he advises that you choose one of four forks in the road: 1) education (teaching via the written or spoken word); 2) economic self-protection and self-preservation; 3) non-violent, peaceful civil disobedience; and 4) political action, such as running for public office. I leave it to you, the reader, to discover the details for yourself in Ron’s book.
Having known Ron Manners now for almost half of his life and for more than half of my own, I can honestly say he’s a model of perseverance. He works no less hard for liberty today than he did a half-century ago. He will not give up the fight or give in to the bad arguments of the other side. This is what it means to be a “freedom fighter.”
Thank you, Ron, for this latest contribution in a very long roster of contributions you’ve produced over the decades!
