Responses to Tyranny from America's Geniuses of Vienna

Three of the great minds of the last century, Joseph Schumpeter, Karl Popper, and Friedrich Hayek, all wrote pieces on how to respond to tyranny if it ever came to the West. The Economist has a helpful survey of their ideas.

Hayek and Popper were friends but not close to Schumpeter. The men did not co-operate. Nonetheless a division of labour emerged. Popper sought to blow up the intellectual foundations of totalitarianism and explain how to think freely. Hayek set out to demonstrate that, to be safe, economic and political power must be diffuse. Schumpeter provided a new metaphor for describing the energy of a market economy: creative destruction.

These are ideas that are well worth considering at length.