A time to reflect on scholar Walter E. Williams

Walter Edward Williams, one of the world's greatest champions of personal and economic liberty, was born 88 years ago this Sunday. His life and ideas will never be forgotten.

Born in Philadelphia on March 31, 1936, and raised in the Richard Allen housing projects, Williams never allowed himself to be a victim of his circumstances.

Williams believed in the value of hard work and the fundamental promise of America, despite the challenges particularly facing Black Americans in his early life.

After being drafted into the military, Williams penned a letter to President John F. Kennedy in 1963 calling out the rampant racism of the times and in the military itself.

“Should Negroes be relieved of their service obligation or continue defending and dying for empty promises of freedom and equality?” he wrote. “Or should we demand human rights as our Founding Fathers did at the risk of being called extremists? … I contend that we relieve ourselves of oppression in a manner that is in keeping with the great heritage of our nation.”

Williams devoted the more than half century that followed that letter pushing America to live up to the standards of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

After receiving his bachelor's degree in economics at California State University, Los Angeles and ultimately his doctorate in economics from the UCLA, Williams went on to become a longtime professor of economics at George Mason University. He taught there until his death on Dec. 1, 2020.

His first book, “The State Against Blacks,” published in 1982, is as relevant as ever.

In it, he presents his case that, although racial discrimination and bigotry certainly exist, “it is the `rules of the game' that account for many of the economic handicaps faced by Blacks. The rules of the game are the many federal, state and local laws that regulate economic activity.”

Overregulation by the government, including laws like occupational and business licensing, zoning regulations and the minimum wage, Williams argued, “systematically discriminate against the employment and advancement of people who are outsiders, latecomers and poor in resources.”

The solution to these systematic barriers, Williams concludes, was to repeal such “antipeople” laws and unleash the power of the market to maximize opportunities for all people.

Although it is fashionable among younger people to condemn and demonize capitalism, Williams understood that capitalism is the greatest means for liberating people from poverty known to man.

“Prior to capitalism, the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man,” he said.

“Capitalism made it possible to become wealthy by serving your fellow man.”

At the core of Williams' views of the world is the notion of self-ownership, the principle that every individual owns themselves.

“I am my private property, and you are yours,” he wrote. Illegitimate, coercive and involuntary intrusions on individuals, he argued, are fundamentally immoral. Whether it's a criminal assaulting you physically or the state dictating what you can or can't do with our own life, Williams always put the dignity and integrity of the individual first and foremost.

If those on the left and right dreaming up their own respective ways to use government to control others could do the same.

There will only be one Walter E. Williams. His ideas must endure for the sake of liberty.

A version of this editorial was published in December 2020.