In his new book, You Don’t Own Me: Individualism and the Culture of Liberty, Cato Adjunct Scholar Timothy Sandefur explores how the idea of individual freedom has shaped not only politics and economics but also the arts—from pop music to poetry, from Star Trek to the blues, and from Western novels to architecture. An excerpt is published below. To order a copy, click here.

INTRODUCTION

The walls of Soviet communism were already crumbling in June 1989 when the people of Poland began electing delegates to their national legislature. Everybody knew how important this vote would be. Not only did it mark the first free elections in Soviet history, but the trade union Solidarity—which over the previous decade had become the country’s primary force for political reform—was campaigning on a platform of liberalization: a freer economy, freer speech, and more political self-determination. Hoping to thwart Solidarity’s efforts, communist chieftains in Moscow had set an abbreviated schedule for the election, in expectation that the union would be unable to get out the vote in time. They had also initiated a propaganda campaign that depicted Solidarity as a force of chaos and disruption. Solidarity’s candidates, they claimed, were anti-social. Individualists. Disrupters. Cowboys.

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