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Modern Era
Isabel Paterson
1886–1961 · Classical liberalism
Freedom is a social condition, not a political concession.
The God of the Machine traced human progress to the energy released when individuals are free to trade and invent, and argued that every political system which suppresses that energy eventually starves. Paterson, a Canadian-born newspaper columnist, was one of the three women, with Rose Wilder Lane and Ayn Rand, whose arguments set the tone of the mid-century American liberty movement.
Why it matters for freedom
She argued that freedom is a single fabric: you cannot keep the economic thread and cut the rest.
Who they stood against
the planners who believed a committee could run other people's lives