Reception: 6:30 pm. Program: 7:00 pm
Admission: $15 • $10 for Institute Members
$27 Special Admission includes one copy of Neither Liberty Nor Safety • $22 Members. (25% discount!)
Location: The Independent Institute Conference Center, Oakland, CA.
Map and Directions
Senior Fellow in Political Economy for The Independent Institute, Editor of the Institute’s quarterly journal The Independent Review, and author of the new book, Neither Liberty Nor Safety.
From ancient times to the present, politicians, bureaucrats, and interest groups have gained resources and control over the public by playing to people’s fears of various “crises” and by offering “solutions” that often only make problems worse. This tactic has been facilitated by the widespread belief that gaining economic, military, and personal security requires sacrificing liberty. In contrast, Benjamin Franklin once said, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Please join us as Robert Higgs (author, Neither Liberty Nor Safety: Fear, Ideology, and the Growth of Government) shows how fear mongering by politicians and their allies erodes people’s willingness and ability to govern themselves. Dr. Higgs will also expose the false trade-off between freedom and security by showing how the U.S. government’s economic and military interventions in the 20th and 21st centuries have reduced Americans’ civil and economic liberties, prosperity, and genuine security.
“Higgs’s thesis is as persuasive as it is chilling: an increasing and unthinking reliance on government has made us look to politicians and bureaucrats to solve all our problems. Neither Liberty Nor Safety is required reading for anyone interested in the history of government or in the future of America.”
—Michael C. Munger, Professor of Political Science, Duke University
“Neither Liberty Nor Safety is an important addition to Robert Higgs’s systematic analysis of the political uses of fear-mongering. The cancerous growth of the modern ‘guardian’ state—uncontrolled by a ‘higher power’—is our generation’s legacy: future generations will have to control it, submit to it, or escape from it.”
—Thomas S. Szasz, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, SUNY Health Science Center, Syracuse
