Personal Snapshots
Forecasts & Strategies
August 2002

Call 1-800-USA-1776 and Receive a FEE Gift!

"The cause of America is in great measure the cause of all mankind."

— Tom Paine, Common Sense (1776)

Good news! We have just acquired two of the most memorable toll-free numbers for FEE: 800/USA-1776 and 888/USA-1776. We wish to thank Terry and Sue Easton of California for this generous gift. After attending the FEE National Convention in May, they were so impressed with the exciting things we are doing here at FEE that they decided to donate these two highly valued toll-free numbers, along with a dozen related websites (such as www.800USA1776.com). Terry is an expert in telecommunications and a longtime supporter of FEE and other free-market organizations. He says that these toll-free numbers were previously owned by the U.S. Bicentennial Commission, which organized the 1976 celebration of the 200th Anniversary of the birth of our nation.

I can’t think of a more fitting 800 number for FEE. The year 1776 changed the world forever, and the good ol’ USA, as embodied by the Declaration of Independence, was the primary reason why 1776 was a revolutionary year.

A Year of Miracles

Like most Americans, I’ve always been fascinated by the events of 1776. It was a year of earth-shattering events that transformed forever the Western world.

• It is, of course, the year the American colonies broke off relations with the Mother Country, declared political independence from monarchy, and established the words of Thomas Jefferson that "all men are born equal" and endowed with certain "inalienable rights."
  
  
• It is the year that Adam Smith’s monumental Wealth of Nations was published, a powerful declaration of economic independence. Smith proclaimed the establishment of a "system of natural liberty" and the "invisible hand" doctrine that private enterprise would benefit the public wealth.
  
  
• It is the year the eminent British historian Edward Gibbon published the first volume of his classic history, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It was considered a scandalous book because it blamed the decline and fall of Rome after it adopted Christianity as its state religion. Through his review of the Roman world, Gibbon emphasized the principles of "liberty, virtue and courage."
  
  
• Last but not least, 1776 is the year Thomas Paine’s Common Sense was printed, and Paine, more than any other revolutionary figure, symbolized the Age of Enlightenment. Paine’s philosophy encompassed the entire compass of liberty. He was a radical who advanced democratic emancipation, individual rights, religious tolerance and competitive capitalism.

Just as Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, Edward Gibbon and Tom Paine were radicals of their day, so FEE and its supporters are the radicals of our day, supporting maximum political, economic and religious freedom.

Calling All Patriots: Call This Number!

To celebrate this new toll-free number, I urge each one of you to call 800/USA-1776 (800/872-1776) and declare your support for 1776, American independence and FEE. Use this opportunity to do one of the following:

1) Subscribe to our award-winning Ideas on Liberty ($39 a year). I write a monthly column. So do Walter Williams, Larry Reed, and other major libertarians and conservatives.

2) Order a copy of my book, The Making of Modern Economics, the story of economic freedom through the eyes of great economic thinkers, including Adam Smith, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, Ludwig von Mises and Milton Friedman. Only $39.95 for hardback, $24.95 paper, plus $5 S&H.

3) Sign up to attend our Liberty Banquet & FEE Benefit on October 25 at the New York Hilton Hotel. A "friend of FEE" pays $250 per person ($149 for dinner only).

4) Join the 1776 Club by making a donation in any amount with the numbers "1776" or "76" in them. Funds from the 1776 Club go to help assist needy students to come to FEE seminars and other events.

Anyone who calls will receive a FEE gift — a complimentary copy of The Mainspring of Human Progress, by Henry Grady Weaver, or Government — An Ideal Concept, by Leonard Read.