Thanks to the attention from Glenn Beck, a recent top seller on Amazon.com is Austria’s Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. The book was written in 1944 to fight the drift from individual freedom and free-market competition to a growing dependence on economies controlled by central planning authorities. To Hayek, Stalin’s Soviet Russia was no better than the Nazi “National Socialists.” In all its forms, the increasing spread of socialism has and would always be a threat to individual freedom and economic progress.

Hayek’s book remains a wakeup call to apathetic citizens who take for granted that the improvements achieved through democracy, individual freedom and capitalism have been “acquired once and for all.” Hayek knew what history confirms; freedom must be earned and reearned in every generation.

Rush Limbaugh

Hayek conceded that citizens never consciously choose socialism, but that often well-meaning politicians launch subsidies and promises that create dependence and destroy the individual spirit necessary for political and economic liberty. To Hayek, such “progress” is frightening: “Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom.”

According to President Obama, you’re not capable of providing for your own future. You need the government to provide your healthcare, spend your money to save companies too big to fail, strong-arm evil oil companies and protect you from global warming. Now, if you’re capable of taking care of yourself, you deserve to be taxed at a higher rate to support those who “can’t.”

To Hayek, the central planning socialism depends on will never work. First, no individual or group is smart enough and informed quickly enough to manage all of the variables impacting a country’s success. In a world that changes at the speed of the Internet, government planning and Congressional oversight takes months, not minutes. Secondly, economic planning restricts individual choices. As a result, excessive regulations and planning eventually become coercive involving freedom-killing compliance for “the common good.”