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Keeping Free Enterprise in Business

We at Harding University certainly did not invent

free, private enterprise. Our challenge has been to

develop positive, non-partisan, objective, responsible

ways to increase an awareness of the system in which

each person is

''free"to

be anything he wants if he has

the

"enterprise"

to do it.

Our goal, therefore, is to help each citizen to put a

polish on his amateur status as an economist because

in a very real sense he is his own personal economist.

Improve the understanding, and better attitudes will

be a healthy byproduct. Through the Belden Center,

we can tell our constituency that because of capitalism

they are something special, that they have a chance to

succeed or fail, that man is an individual, that he has

dignity and freedom of choice.

Across the land, and thanks to the pioneering efforts

of the Belden Center, citizenship training and private

enterprise education are experiencing a renaissance.

Our educational philosophy has been to recognize the

merits of free, private enterprise and to evaluate the

business community in the perspective of its

achievements as well as shortcomings.

If the American incentive system continues to

survive and flourish, it would certainly be due to a

greater sense of objectivity among our opinion leaders,

the reasoned arguments of business leaders, the

unbiased research of economists, and the more

responsible actions of educators and students.

Responsible advocacy economics can sell, through

principled examples, the belief that, historically, free,

private enterprise has all the good arguments on its

side. There is no alternative to capitalism that credibly

promises wealth and liberty. Every good product or

service needs a sales force in the field.

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