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RW
Modern Era
Rose Wilder Lane
1886–1968 · American individualism
Government cannot give what it does not first take.
Lane's Discovery of Freedom argued that the American revolution rested not on a new government but on the rediscovery of the individual's own energy, and that every extension of state planning converts self-reliant people into dependents. She wrote it after decades of travel and reporting, and it became one of the founding texts of the modern libertarian revival.
Why it matters for freedom
She described the American experiment as a wager on the individual, and warned what is lost when the wager is called off.
Who they stood against
the New Deal and the kindness that turns citizens into dependents