tyranny of the status quo--in private and especially gov-
ernmental arrangements. Only a crisis--actual or
perceived--produces real change. When that crisis occurs,
the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying
around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop
alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and avail-
able until the politically impossible becomes politically in-
evitable.

A personal story will perhaps make my point. Sometime in
the late 1960s I engaged in a debate at the University of
Wisconsin with Leon Keyserling, an unreconstructed collec-
tivist. His clinching blow, as he thought, was to make fun of
my views as utterly reactionary, and he chose to do so by
reading, from the end of chapter 2 of this book, the list of
items that, I said, "cannot, so far as I can see, validly be
justified in terms of the principles outlined above." He was
doing very well with the audience of students as he went
through my castigation of price supports, tariffs, and so on,
until he came to point ¹¹, "Conscription to man the military
services in peacetime." That expression of my opposition to
the draft brought ardent applause and lost him the audience
and the debate.

Incidentally, the draft is the only item on my list of four-
teen unjustified government activities that has so far been
eliminated--and that victory is by no means final. In respect
of many of the other items, we have moved still farther away
from the principles espoused in this book--which is, on one
hand, a reason why the climate of opinion has changed
and, on the other, evidence that that change has so far had
little practical effect. Evidence also that the fundamental
thrust of this book is as pertinent to 1981 as to 1962, even
though some examples and details may be outdated.

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