My attempt at Bohemian

A while ago, I decided to forsake civilization and live off the land out in the wilderness. So, I sold all my belongings and went into the woods to live the bohemian life, like Thoreau. I built a lean-to shelter, covered myself with bark at night to keep warm, fished out of a nearby stream for food and dug a latrine outside my camp. I also befriended the local wildlife including a little squirrel I named Snickers (because he stole my last snickers bar) and a magpie I named Maggie. Yes, this was going to be a great new life! After a while (about 5 hours), I realized that my new home was only about 20 feet from a footpath in a suburban salt lake city neighborhood, and only about 200 yards from a city park. It turns out that Maggie had actually been run over by a cement truck a few days earlier and tossed into the bushes by a pedestrian. Now I started to understand why she was so friendly and didn't fly away when I would pet her. I thought my heart was going to break. After these heart rending realizations, I decided to give up and drive back home in time to grab an In-N-Out Burger and catch the season finale of “24”. That’s the closest I’ve ever gotten to forsaking civilization and living in the wilderness like Thoreau. I have so many fond memories of my experience. I still think about Maggie sometimes and smile.

Oh, My Soul Hungered

This song perfectly describes how I'm feeling today:

Oh, my soul hungered,
My heart cried out:
"Please Lord, release me
From pain and from doubt."
Oh, my soul hungered
The moment I knelt down to pray,
And felt all my doubts Wash away.

Oh, my soul hungered,
He heard my cry.
The voice of the Lord
Spoke peace to my mind.
Oh, my soul hungered-
Things that were old became new
When I learned to feel
What I already knew.

With all my heart,
With all my soul,
I wrestled before the Lord
To make my life whole.
He filled my hunger-
He fed my soul.

The truth that belonged
To everyone else
Is now a sacred part of myself.
Oh, I found out what I could not find,
When I heard with my heart
What I knew in my mind.
With all my heart,
With all my soul,
I wrestled before the Lord
To make my life whole.
He filled my hunger-
He fed my soul.

Oh, my soul hungered.

Excerpts from letters written in the final months of my LDS mission.

Victoriaville, Quebec April-June 1998

Dear family,

... the work is going great. And I was correct. The Lord was preparing this area for something big... Can you believe all these things that are happening?! Now I know why the adversary was pulling me down. These experiences have really fortified my testimony, especially after conference. I feel like shouting Hallelujah each time I think about all these things. There is a prophet! There is a GOD! Isn't it wonderful?! No matter how hard to understand or how great are the mysteries of GOD, this doesn't destroy the fact that it IS true. And what a miracle it is! "Brethren, shall we not go on in so great a cause? Go forward and not backward. Courage, brethren; and on, on to the victory! Let your hearts rejoice and be exceedingly glad. Let the earth break forth into singing Let the dead speak forth anthems of Eternal praise to the King Immanuel, who hath ordained, before the world was, that which would enable us to redeem them out of their prison; for the prisoners shall go free! I love this work! I love this gospel! DO IT! OK! I love you all. Be good.

-----

How lucky I have been to serve in Quebec for 2 years. This is where I was supposed to come, and I feel that it is the only mission that could have changed my heart so much. My mission might not be the best 2 years of my life, but it certainly has been the best 2 years FOR my life. Last thursday, I was in a little interview with President Froerer, and we were discussing the work I've been doing, my personal life, my thoughts and feelings (as we always do in our once-every-two-month interviews). He said something to me that I will never forget "You're a changed man, brother." I was moved, almost to tears, as I realized it. All this time, I had been focusing on the things I couldn't do and my weaknesses. I had completely ignored to notice how much I have grown and changed. Not of anything on my part, for I owe it all to my Savior. I think that we, as humans, have a tendency to get down on ourselves. We need to notice the strengths we have and use them to overcome our weaknesses. I have learned so many profound truths in reading the words of the ancient prophets, as well as modern prophets. I am reminded of when I was in my first area. I had been praying to be closer to the Lord, to have a stronger testimony, etc... One morning, I woke up, and I heard a voice in my head which said, "Where much is given, much is required". Ever since then, I have tried to sacrifice for the Lord in order to receive his promised blessings..

-----

We are teaching many people right now. Lise is still hanging in there. She has a hard time understanding the importance of [priesthood] authority... She LOVES the Book of Mormon. She knows it is true. I just have to help her understand what that means when the Book of Mormon is true.... The power within the pages of that book is more powerful than anything else on earth... The Lord is blessing this area despite my many weaknesses in this work. I truly feel unworthy of all the blessings the Lord has poured out on me these past few months.

-----

Well, I'm loving every moment of my mission. I owe a great debt to my Savior for making all this possible. Amber, put your faith in Christ always. Live pure and expect that the Lord will bless you. Search him. Seek to get to know him. He is a being with feelings and thoughts and emotions. He knows you. He knows everything about you. Get to know him a little more. I know you will. I love you.

-----

My faith in the Lord has never been tried so hard in my life. To tell you the truth, I was very very close to denying my testimony altogether. But as it says in the Book of Mormon, we don't receive a witness until after the trial of our faith. I have learned that this is true. I know that the Lord's hand is in this work. I know this. We are his tools. When I was in my first area, Elder Hales, my trainer, told me that there would be many times on my mission that I would say that the church can't be true. At the time, I thought to myself, "Yeah right!" He was right. I have never been tried so hard and tested in my life. I have been so close to just throwing my arms in the air and saying, "Forget! I give up!." The adversary works hard on missionaries. I want to tell you, my family, I know GOD lives. I know Christ lives! I know they have a plan for our happiness. Joseph Smith is the prophet of the restoration. He opened this dispensation which has the fulness of the gospel. Gordon B. Hinckley is a prophet of GOD. It is all true. It is all good. And I love it. I love the Book of Mormon with all my heart. I cherish the Bible. I was reading in the Book of Mormon, and I learned a profound truth in Alma 34:14-16 Look at it. We need to always look unto Christ. Look unto Christ and live. He is the master teacher, the master healer. This is my testimony. I will not deny it. I cannot deny it. I love you all so much. Be good and always remember to look unto Christ and live! Think about Ephesians 2:8-9. Just to clear up any confusion on the subject, I will be finishing my mission 29 July 1998. Please keep me in your prayers. I know you will.

-----

And I try to be worldly,
but I just can't cut it
because
Well, because it's like I know about what is what. About the fig tree lumber and the nails that were much larger than sixteen penny
And I've smelled
the wet straw that became a cradle.
I've feasted
When there was nothing
and caught a descending dove.
When there was need of repair,
I've called the carpenter's son
who stripped all the old paint off my house, and
gave me a new many-colored coat, free of charge (because I was a friend), and then I try to be worldly, like I can forget who I am or where I came from or something, but I just can't cut it because I know what is what.

The Inevitability of Melancholy

"I've been looking out a window for 18 years. Dreaming. About what I might feel like when those lights rise in the sky. What if it's not everything I dreamed it would be?"

"It will be."

"And what if it is? What do I do then?"

"Well that's the good part, I guess. You get to go find a new dream."

About 6 months ago, I began to think about my next big challenge. MBA? Done! Ironman? Threepeat! Another masters degree? Now I just might be able to get behind that idea. So, I started getting my papers together to apply to the MAcc program at the U. I talked to some counselors and decided I'd give it a whirl. I applied as a non-matriculated student so I could enroll and take care of some prereqs before starting the program in the fall. I was all ready to start classes when a good friend told me about an opportunity to audition for a community play in Draper called "An Ideal Husband" by Oscar Wilde. I memorized a couple monologues and showed up on the audition day, hoping to at least land a minor role...

...I got a lead role. Rehearsals commenced and it came as no surprise that I couldn't act. I dedicated the next 3 months of my life to this play. I ate, slept, drank Lord Goring, memorized literally hundreds of lines. I studied English accents, tried to get inside Lord Goring's head to understand what made him tick. Learned to tie a bowtie, apply stage makeup, and through it all became a close family with my fellow cast members. As the performances began, I soon realized that there was something beautiful and exciting about this acting thing. A feeling I had never felt before, and I caught the bug. We did 12 performances in all. On our last performance on March 26, 2011, I couldn't help but experience an intense feeling of melancholy. I had grown so close to the entire cast, the performances and the reactions of the audiences were an addictive drug, and I didn't want it to end.

Now, I'm over a week removed from our last performance. The melancholy has passed, but the memory remains. What is life but a series of adventures in which we dare to dream, pursue our dreams, experience incredibly intense emotions in the experience, the adventure ends, and the inevitable feeling of melancholy ensues...then the process starts over and we find new dreams, unexpected dreams, hidden talents. What a tragedy life would be to reach the end and realize that we had not lived. We had not taken a chance, risked it all on one hand and taken a chance to chase a dream. You might fail...and so what? You might not! So go for it! It's all in the making of a character.

Anxiously Engaged

I have to make a few comments about this past week. I competed in Ironman St. George a couple weeks ago. It was my first full Ironman since Kona in 2007. Some are saying that IM St. George has raised the bar for Ironman races around the world by being the hardest...even harder than Kona. I'm still not sure about that yet, but I will say that it was a dang hard course. Tons of climbing, and strong headwinds. Fortunately, the weather was largely in our favor. They had been predicting rain for race day, but the weather gods were smiling upon us as race day dawned clear and calm. Just a few comments about the race: The swim was COLD, but that didn't stop me from posting my best swim split ever - 1:06. The bike was extremely HARD, but that didn't keep me from finishing with a respectable time of 6:23. I had never been more eager to get off the bike and run a marathon. My marathon time wasn't great, but I still posted a time under 5 hours and beat my best Ironman time ever - 12:36:43. For my 3rd Ironman, it was probably one of the most empowering things I have ever done. There will definitely be many more. It was so nice to have my family there for support. My Grandma made a special trip down, and it was so so nice to have her there. I can't express the feelings of love I have in my heart for my family and their amazing support.


6 days later, I graduated from the University of Utah with a Masters in Business Administration. Definitely one of the most empowering days of my life. Once again, my family was there. My dad and brothers drove through the night and spent the bulk of the following day at graduation festivities. I was so happy to have them there. This has been quite a week!

Photo Courtesy of Deseret News

Now, I'm sitting here a few days after finishing my best Ironman ever and earning my MBA degree and wondering what's next. Ah, there will always be more adventures to pursue, my friends! Much love.

TARP - a few random thoughts 18 months later

Yes, in some cases, it's better to let the free market be the free market, and sometimes markets fail. Let's just assume that they didn't pass TARP. What would have happened? Yes, there may have been a major collapse of the large investment banks, and yes, there may have been a lot of pain...in the short term. We don't know how bad it would have been, however I don't think it would have been as bad as the so-called experts predicted. On the other hand, what message has the government sent to Wall Street with TARP and all the bailouts? The message is that excessively risky behavior is OK, and if we take on too much risk? No worry. The government will bail us out again. So where does it end? By bailing out the largest investment houses, the government has simply reinforced the bad behavior, and now there is no incentive to discontinue it. TARP did nothing but reinforce the excessive risk taking....a problem that the government got us into in the first place with easy money from GSE's like FNMA and FDMC. TARP has only delayed a much greater collapse down the road. A collapse that will be infinitely greater because "Helicopter Ben" seems to think that printing money to increase the FED's balance sheet is just fine as long as there is short term liquidity in the market. In my opinion, inflated currency and China owning our debt is a much worse long term scenario.

The current financial reform legislation in congress is also going to ensure large companies that are "too big to fail" will continue to receive bailouts indefinitely. Again, reinforcing risky behavior and making private enterprise too heavily dependent upon the government. Something the founding fathers, especially Thomas Jefferson railed against.

After TARP passed, I remember hearing Bush say that he had to "abandon free market principles to save the free market". Totally incredible, and a complete load of crap in my opinion....

To be fair, I will say that Paulson's idea (TARP) was much better than Geithner's (buying preferred stock in the large investment banks). I hate the idea of the government owning majority interest in private corporations. Buying the illiquid assets due to the market failure was a better idea, and much more "market friendly" than the preferred stock route, which is what we eventually did with most of the TARP funds. Now what is the current administration doing? They're criticizing banks for tightening their lending standards, even though the loose lending practices are what got us into this problem in the first place.

There are a lot of really good resources on this, but for simplicity, I've pasted 2 NPR reports here. They give a relatively succinct and unbiased explanation of what caused the whole thing. Each episode is an hour long. Definitely worth the time, though.

Click on "stream episode".

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/355/the-giant-pool-of-money

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/365/Another-Frightening-Show-About-the-Economy

There is a way to be good again.

It has been on my mind a lot. I've been thinking a lot about restitution and redemption. I have decided to write down a few of my thoughts.

In the book "The Kite Runner", the main character, Amir witnesses the rape of his faithful childhood friend, Hassan. (Hassan and his father, Ali, are servants in the house of Amir's father.) After the rape, Amir is racked with guilt for not having done anything to save Hassan from being assaulted despite Hassan's "guileless devotion" to Amir. Amir eventually can't handle the pain, so he lies and tells his father that Hassan stole his new watch. Ali and Hassan must leave and Amir never sees them again. The Soviets invade Afghanistan in 1979, and Amir and his father flee to America where Amir marries and becomes a successful writer. After his father's death, Amir receives an unexpected call from his father's former Afghan business partner, Rahim Khan, asking him to come to Pakistan because "there is a way to be good again."


It is this phrase, "there is a way to be good again", which has caused me to experience a myriad of poignant thoughts and emotions recently.

Amir makes the journey to Pakistan and meets Rahim Khan where he learns that Hassan is dead and his son, Sohrab is in an orphanage in Afghanistan. Rahim Khan also reveals to Amir that he is actually Hassan's half brother. Amir's father slept with Ali's wife, and she bore him a son they named Hassan - a secret Amir's father took to the grave. And now, Rahim Khan tells Amir that there is a way to be good again. A way to make restitution for his father's sin and for Amir's cruelty to Hassan when they were children. At this meeting, Rahim Khan gives Amir a letter which was written by Hassan before he was killed by the Taliban.

"In the name of God the merciful, the compassionate. Amir Agha with my deepest respects.

My wife and son and I pray this letter finds you in fine health and in the light of God’s good graces. I’m hopeful that one day I will hold one of your letters in my hands and read of your life in America. I’m trying to learn English. It’s such a tricky language, but on day, Agha. I miss your stories. I’ve included a picture of me and my son, Sohrab. He’s a good boy. Rahim Khan and I taught him how to read and write so he doesn’t grow up stupid like his father. And can he shoot with that sling shot you gave me! But I fear for him, Amir. The Afghanistan of our youth is long dead. Kindness is gone from the land, and you cannot escape the killings. Always the killings. I dream that God will guide us to a better day. I dream that my son will grow up to be a good person, a free person, an important person. I dream that flowers will bloom in the streets of Kabul again and music will play in the samovar houses and kites will fly in the skies. And I dream that someday you will return to Kabul to revisit the land of our childhood. If you do, you’ll find an old faithful friend waiting for you. May God be with you always.
Hassan."


Now Amir has a chance to find the restitution and redemption he's been seeking since he was a child. A way to make right so many wrongs which have plagued his soul for so many years. He must go into Afghanistan and rescue Sohrab from the brutal Taliban.

I believe in restitution and redemption. I believe that there IS a way to be good again, and that nothing has to be final. As a Christian, I believe that restitution and redemption can only come in and through the Savior Jesus Christ. He can make everything good again. Only HE can put away the old and make all things new again. Whether it be a convict who has spent 19 years in hard labor for stealing a loaf of bread or a young Afghan whose childhood friend died before he could make amends for past wrongs. There is ALWAYS a way to be good again through Christ.

"Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more.
Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation"
-2 Corinthians 5:16-18


This is the final scene of the movie "The Kite Runner" in which Amir has returned from Afghanistan with Hassan's son, Sohrab. Beautiful reconciliation.

Sucking the Marrow out of Life!

I often feel like Thoreau when he wrote...

“I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, To put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die Discover that I had not lived.”

I was able to get out on the bike today. It's been a few weeks. Being the last day of October and a miraculously gorgeous day, I decided to ride up the canyon in search of some cold mountain air. I rode to Alta, surprising myself that I had that ride in my legs, since I'm really extremely out of shape right now. Alta is at the top of little cottonwood canyon, the hardest climb along the Wasatch Front. It's a full hour of suffering. It felt great to get out and breathe through every pore in my body, especially after a freaky stressful week at work and school. The temperature at alta was just over 40 degrees which made the descent marvelously cold. The pain makes me feel alive!
For me, there is nothing more purifying than riding up a high mountain pass or through a beautiful canyon and inhaling the thin mountain air and loving life. When I'm on the bike, it's like time atands still and the world temporarily falls silent as the only sound I can hear is the sound of my own breathing and the whir of my tires on the pavement. At that moment, the world is perfect. That's it. That's why I do it. It's something I will do until the day I die.

PS. Yeah, I also ride so I can eat anything I want. For example, I ate an entire box of chocolate dipped strawberry creamies today....no guilt, friends. No guilt!!

Rough Race

I raced in the Boise Half Ironman last weekend. The forecast was for scattered thunderstorms, but it looked like it was going to be a beautiful day until the starting gun fired. The water was marginally choppy as the wind started to blow across Lucky Peak Reservoir. Made it through the swim no problem, but the rain really started coming down on the bike. At one point, I thought it was hail because the rain was coming down so hard it was painful. Easily the most miserable and probably slowest bike split I've ever had...(I take that back. The bike at the Ironman in Hawaii was much more miserable. ) My brother, Brian, was also racing that day, and he posted a faster bike split than me. Off the bike, my running shoes and socks in T2 were already soaking wet. At the run turnaround, Brian was only about 1/2 mile behind me, which motivated me to speed it up. At the end, I posted a time of 5:35, just 12 minutes ahead of Brian. Overall, the race was a mild disappointment for me, but that's relative because any day I get to race is a great day. Looking forward to the Utah Half Ironman in August.

UTAH!

Since I've been out of school for my 3 week break before summer term starts, I've had the chance to get some good hard training in. Last Wednesday, I did the south mountain loop in which I ride south past the new Draper Temple, up and over the blistering Traverse Ridge road down into Utah County and back past point of the mountain on the frontage road into Salt Lake. It was a 2 1/2 hour ride with a brutal head wind the entire way back. I was pretty spent by the end of the ride when I flatted 4 blocks from my house. Since I was so close, I just decided to walk barefoot the rest of the way, leaving my shoes clipped to my pedals (it's extremely awkward to walk on concrete in bike shoes). No more than 30 seconds after I started walking, a nice couple pulled up next to me in a minivan and asked if I needed a ride. I thanked them and told them I was only a couple blocks from my house. After they drove off, I got to thinking what a great place Utah is. I've ridden my bike all over the world and the United States, and I can safely say that the people of Utah are the most caring and compassionate people I've ever been around. There have been times when I've been stranded in the middle of nowhere after flatting on my bike, and there is always someone willing to lend a hand. One such time was a few years ago on the west side of Utah lake. I flatted and couldn't get my flat fixed, so I started walking. Within minutes, a couple guys drove by in their pickup and offered to give me a ride all the way back to Provo. I have never experienced a kinder, more caring population in any other state of this great union. While I'm not a native of Utah, and home still means Nevada to me, I love this state and the people in it. So here's to Utah! The state with the best economy in the nation, lowest unemployment, most stable real estate market, and most charitable people on God's green earth. I couldn't be more grateful for the great people of this great state.

A Little Common Sense

A Patriots Manifesto

I attended one of 2 tea parties held today in Salt Lake. There were at least 500 people there protesting the Bush-Obama push toward socialism. There were about 2 dozen passionate speakers of all ages and backgrounds at the event. I stand here today to proclaim that I reject the reckless spending of Washington! I reject the inflation of our currency! I reject confiscatory taxes! I reject the federal government taking control of private enterprise and financial institutions! I reject the redistribution of wealth! I reject the fairness doctrine! I reject cap and trade legislation and "global warming" hysteria! I reject Obama's claim that we are merely a nation of citizens and not a Christian or Jewish nation. I reject socialism and central planning! Now is the time to stand up and be counted. Stand up for liberty and economic freedom over socialism and tyranny. Stand up for a strong national defense. Stand up for strong borders. Stand up for strong American and family values! Now is the time to stand up for these things. If we wait too long, there will come a day when we speak fondly of the days before socialism and government control. Call your congressman, read the Federalist papers, read Thomas Paine, and share the principals of economic liberty with your friends. It's time to put government back on the side of the people.

An Ironman's Manifesto

I was reading last month's issue of Inside Triathlon Magazine, The Ironman Issue. The Manifesto by TJ Murphy epitomizes what I've been unable (maybe unwilling?) to express to those who have been questioning my sanity since I started Ironman racing 7 years ago. Perhaps it's a "pearls before swine" thing which has prevented me from being able to adequately express to those who ask between gulps of 32 oz sodas and reruns of "The Bachelor" why I do it.


"One steaming summer day in Iowa a long time ago-I had just finished high school-I was running a six miler at a pretty good clip. The sun was burning me up, but as midwestern athletes can tell you, if you've adapted to hot, sticky weather, running in it is a tremendous feeling. If you haven't adapted, you suffer like a dog, but at the time I was over the hump of acclimating and loving every step.

I recall the run because while I was ascending a short hill, two friends of mine, neither one of them athletes, passed by in a car and screamed hellos. I waved back and continued on. Later they expressed their astonishment at my smiling while I must have been in pain. They lived with the assumption that exercise was agony. That someone could run, bike or swim for long periods of time and enjoy it was, to them, an unfathomable mystery.

Such assumptions are common from those outside the world of endurance athletics. Often I've listened to people as young as 20 or 30 explain how they could never complete a triathlon, a long bike ride or even the shortest of running races. With a mindset like this screwed into place, it can be a waste of time to tell stories about 70-something triathletes finishing Ironmans in less than 13 hours, or 60 year old triathletes recording Ironman times less than 10 hours, or all the other myth-busting triumphs over the myriad boundaries long assumed to be grim realities of aging and life.

Triathlon has become a place to escape the trap set by society that largely counts on turning people into television addicts and super consumers. Even in the TV broadcast of the Olympics, you sense the message directed at the citizenry, that being an athlete is off limits; you might as well give up and lose yourself in a Quarter Pounder. Let the Olympians fly in the rarified air; commoners should stick to pushing limits on credit cards and waistlines. For those of us clinging to it, triathlon is more than a sport. It's a refuge where we can cast aside labels and breathe in the fitness lifestyle. It's our sacred underground where everyone is welcome regardless of age, talent or background."

Amen TJ Murphy!

My Passion Play

Who was I kidding? You can take the athlete out of the Ironman, but you can never take the Ironman out of the athlete. 4 months ago, I decided to hang up racing for a while and concentrate on grad school. After 1 semester, I've realized that I'm not cut out for this sedentary lifestyle. Grad school is still my priority, but no matter how much I try to ignore it, Ironman is in my soul forever. For me it's more than a race. It's a metaphor for life - the eternal struggle between spirit and body. Subjecting the body to the will and awesome power of the spirit to accomplish something great. The desire to be proven herewith. It's transcendent. It's spiritual. Set against the backdrop of life, it is my passion play.

May the question never be posed again: Why?

What's wrong with the world today?

This is seriously the coolest thing I've ever seen

Happy Birthday, Karate Kid

I am dedicating this post to the hero of my childhood, Ralph Macchio - The Karate Kid. Today is his birthday. Happy Birthday, kid. Mr. Miyagi and I are thinking of you today and smiling....

Mraz, Mindy and Me

Hanging with Jason Mraz.

Capitalism and Freedom vs. Socialism and Bondage

As we have seen a resurgence in the argument for socialism in this presidential campaign, I thought I would posts excerpts from the late Milton Friedman's 1962 treatise, "Capitalism and Freedom".

"The preservation of freedom is the protective reason for limiting and decentralizing governmental power. But there is also a constructive reason. The great advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science or literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government. Columbus did not set out to seek a new route to China in response to a majority directive of a parliament, though he was partly financed by an absolute monarch. Newton and Leibnitz; Einstein and Bohr; Shakespeare, Milton, Pasternak; Whitney, McCormick, Edison, and Ford; Jane Addams, Florence Nightingale, and Albert Schweitzer; no one of these opened new frontiers in human knowledge and understanding, in literature, in technical possibilities, or in the relief of human misery in response to governmental directives. Their achievements were the product of individual genius, of strongly held minority views, of a social climate permitting variety and diversity."

(From the 2002 preface)"The climate of opinion received a further boost in the same direction when the Berlin wall fell in 1989 and the Soviet Union collapsed in 1992. That brought to a dramatic end an experiment of some seventy years between two alternative ways of organizing an economy; top-down versus bottom-up; central planning and control versus private markets; more colloquially, socialism versus capitalism. The result of that experiment had been foreshadowed by a number of similar experiments on a smaller scale; Hong Kong and Taiwan versus mainland China; West Germany versus East Germany; South Korea versus North Korea; But it took the drama of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union to make it part of conventional wisdom, so that it is now taken for granted that central planning is indeed The Road to Serfdom, as Friedrich A. Hayek titled his brilliant 1944 polemic."