Hat tip to Dr. Richard Ebeling for reminding us it was Hayek's 115th Birthday today.

Here's a snippet of what he posted about it:

"Today, May 8th would be Friedrich A. Hayek’s 115th birthday. Born on May 8, 1899, Hayek passed away on March 23, 1992, at the age of 92.

"At a time when growing government intervention threatens to weaken personal and economic freedom even more, it is worth recalling these words by Hayek on the importance of articulating a principled and uncompromising defense of liberty:"

“The preservation of a free system is so difficult precisely because it requires a constant rejection of measures which appear to be required to secure particular results, on no stronger grounds than that they conflict with a general rule [of non-government intervention], and frequently without our knowing what will be the costs of not observing the rule in the particular instance. A successful defense of freedom must therefore be dogmatic and make no concessions to expediency, even where it is not possible to show that, besides the known beneficial effects, some particular harmful result would also follow from its infringement. Freedom will prevail only if it is accepted as a general principle whose application to particular instances requires no justification. It is thus a misunderstanding to blame classical liberalism for having been too doctrinaire. Its defect was not that it adhered too stubbornly to principles, but rather that it lacked principles sufficiently definite to provide clear guidance . . .

“People will not refrain from those restrictions on individual liberty that appear to them the simplest and most direct remedy of a recognized evil, if there does not prevail a strong belief in definite principles. The loss of such belief and the preference for expediency is no part the result of the fact that we no longer have any principles that can be rationally defended.”

F. A. Hayek, “Law, Legislation, and Liberty,” vol. 1: ‘Rules and Order’ (1973)

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The image, above left, is from an event coming up at the Mercatus Center. Click here… or on the image for more information.