Getting Through to People

It’s Women’s History Month (who knew?), so over at CATO they’re celebrating the kind of women who usually don’t get celebrated by the kind of women who celebrate things like Women’s History Month. Read:

Paterson, Lane, and Rand began to do just that. Each was an original thinker in her own right. But each also made a mark as a great popularizer of liberal ideas. A few beleaguered liberal economists had argued, with great force, that no planned economy could match the productive efficiency of a capitalist system. Yet these economic arguments, despite their technical force, were unable to match the power of the utopian socialist vision to capture the popular imagination. These three — Lane and Paterson almost entirely bereft of formal education, Rand writing fiction in an adopted tongue — did just that. The sweeping histories of Lane and Paterson chronicled humanity’s ascent from barbarism to civilization in a way that uncovered the necessary links between civil liberties, stable property rights, and material progress.

Amen to that.