| Introduction: The Northwood Idea |
| Every nation has developed and flowered - with art, music, and the other ornaments and means of civilization - only on the basis of flourishing business, trade and commerce. This was true of the Phoenicians, Ancient Greece and Ancient Egypt, the Chinese civilization, the Byzantine Empire, Venice, Florence, Spain, England, France, Germany and the United States. Go through the history of each and you'll find in its origins that period in which commerce and finance were highly regarded and relatively free in a developing civilization |
| Again and again, however, these eras of progress have ended as the intelligentsia became worshipers of the Alimighty State. Then these intellectuals- scribes and priests - became more and more scornful of businessmen; and business lost its vision because it lost its men of vision. Men of talent and imagination, instead, accepted the faith of the state-employed intellectuals that a well-schooled elite must make more and more choices for the general run of the population and compel the inferior masses to accept the planning and direction of their lives. |
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