Rose Wilder Lane - The Discovery of Freedom

The Discovery of Freedom

In the early 1940s, despite continuing requests from editors for both fiction and non-fiction material, Lane turned away from commercial writing and became known as one of the most influential American libertarians of the middle 20th century. She vehemently opposed the New Deal, perceived "creeping socialism," Social Security, wartime rationing and all forms of taxation, claiming she ceased writing highly paid commercial fiction to protest paying income taxes. She cut her income and expenses to the bare minimum, and lived a modern-day version of her ancestors' pioneer life on her rural land near Danbury, Connecticut. Literary critic and political writer Isabel Paterson had urged the move to Connecticut, where she would be only "up country a few miles" from Paterson, who had been a friend for many years.

A staunch opponent of communism after experiencing it first hand in the Soviet Union during her Red Cross travels, Lane wrote the seminal The Discovery of Freedom (1943), and tirelessly promoted and wrote about individual freedom, and its impact on humanity. The same year also saw the publication of Isabel Paterson's The God of the Machine and Ayn Rand's novel The Fountainhead, and the three women have been referred to as the founding mothers of the American libertarian movement with the publication of these works.

Writer Albert Jay Nock wrote that Lane's and Paterson's nonfiction works were "the only intelligible books on the philosophy of individualism that have been written in America this century." The two women had "shown the male world of this period how to think fundamentally ... They don't fumble and fiddle around—every shot goes straight to the centre." Journalist John Chamberlain credits Rand, Paterson and Lane with his final "conversion" from socialism to what he called "an older American philosophy" of libertarian and conservative ideas.

In 1943, Lane was thrust into the national spotlight through her response to a radio poll on Social Security. She mailed in a post-card with a response likening the Social Security system to a Ponzi scheme that would ultimately destroy the US. The subsequent events remain unclear, but wartime monitoring of the mails eventually resulted in a Connecticut State Trooper being dispatched to her farmhouse (supposedly at the request of the FBI) to question her motives. Lane's vehement response to this infringement on her right of free speech resulted in a flurry of newspaper articles and the publishing of a pamphlet, "What is this, the Gestapo?," that was meant to remind Americans to be watchful of their rights, despite the wartime exigencies.

There was an FBI file compiled on Lane during this time, which is now available under the Freedom of Information Act.

As Lane grew older, her political opinions solidified as a fundamentalist libertarian, and her defense of what she considered to be basic American principles of liberty and freedom could become harsh and abrasive in the face of disagreement. She broke with her old friend and political ally, Isabel Paterson in 1946, and, in the 1950s, had an acrimonious correspondence with writer Max Eastman.