“How can we really know what we want if we’ve never had it before? The less free we are, the less we know what freedom feels like and how it shapes who we are. The more dependent on government we become, the less we crave independence. This is why it is important to find literature that takes us out of our present moment and introduces us to different ways of thinking. We have to imagine a different ideal. This is why I’m nuts for a book that came out right at the end of the Gilded Age, and just before we got the permanent income tax and the Fed, as well as World War I. It is the last look at the mindset of what I could call the real ‘greatest generation.’”
