You are invited to read the latest commentary from the Free Enterprise Foundation. It will make you think!

Interview with Mr. Robert E. Freer, Jr.

This particular issue of The Mercury marks the 100th article that Prof. Robert E. Freer, Jr. has contributed to the paper. As a volunteer contributor and special public policy correspondent, he has given over 700 hours of time to research and writing on issues concerning free enterprise. Even spread out over the course of roughly 4 years, that is a significant amount of time to spend on one volunteer activity. In order to learn more about the man behind the articles (and for full disclosure, my future father-in-law), I sat down with him recently to discuss how he got started writing and what drives him to continue.

By his own admission, Prof. Freer is surprised to find himself at the point where he has written so many pieces for The Mercury. What started out as one opinion piece on FICA in April of 2005 immediately became a regular feature of the paper. With several previous articles for other papers published from time to time, he found a niche here in Charleston and says that he feels compelled to write. When asked how he became an authority on the workings of government and public policy, he pointed me toward an 11 page CV detailing over 50 years of work with politics, law, and government. He started out as a Senate Page at age 13. After graduating from Princeton and then UVA law, he went on to work for the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the U.S. Department of Transportation, Kimberly-Clark Corporation as a Vice President and General Counsel, then as a partner in several private law practices where his clients were large corporations, and his work was largely Federal Agency and legislative based.

In addition to his practice of law, Mr. Freer has been deeply involved through the years in the founding of a number of different organizations, including Washington Episcopal School, a highly regarded private school in Washington, DC. Other organizations in which he was instrumental in founding include the Washington Metropolitan Area Corporate Counsels Association, The Republican National Lawyers Association, Lawyers for the Republic, the US, Cuba Business Council, and the Free Enterprise Foundation.

Free enterprise is often the main topic of his articles, and Prof. Freer explained that he was inspired to advocate for the ethical aspect of business when Enron and MCI were in the news as examples of what happens when big business does not have a foundation in ethics. “I know from my own experience that 98% of American business is absolutely ethical…As a general rule, particularly when you are talking about significant business enterprises, they can’t afford to be unethical…Some of them may not participate as much in encouraging their employees to be beacons of light in the community, as I’d like to see... But they are very ethical in terms of how they treat their customers, and how they treat their employees. I felt that there’s no one out there speaking for them.

And I felt that our liberties were at risk because there’s a symbiotic relationship between our liberties and free enterprise. You really can’t have one without the other. If you have real freedom, man is necessarily going to look for a way to realize value out of what it is he can do to earn a living because that’s what he needs in order to be able to pay for himself and his family. Man pushes society forward as he does that which he is particularly gifted to do. If you have real liberty, liberty will create the “invisible hand” that creates opportunities, businesses and the revenue that is ultimately the gross national product for the nation. I think that should be encouraged.”

The Free Enterprise Foundation, a 501 (c)(3) with the mission of “Pursuing Ethics Globally” was founded nearly six years ago in Charleston with the help of the College of Charleston, The Citadel, and MUSC. All three of these academic partners have offered strong support and resources to several conferences and speaker luncheons that the Foundation has hosted. Mr. Freer pointed out that without the support and encouragement of the Board, the Foundation would not have made it as far as it has come today. In looking toward future projects and goals, Mr. Freer mentioned an interest in hosting a series of “economic actors” who have recently participated in the meltdown of our financial sector to talk about ethics in the financial sector. He discussed an interest in spreading the message of free enterprise, our national history, and core American values to future generations through the streaming of 1930’s patriotic movies from the www.freeenterprisefoundation.org website to classrooms around the nation. “It is a philosophy of a political nature, but it’s a free enterprise philosophy…it is essentially the best traditions of our country in terms of what it is that we’re all about. That’s not politics. That’s common sense and essentially what this country is all about.”

Traditional values in a free market economy with a focus on serving the common good are strong themes that come through in Mr. Freer’s writing and through his career decisions. As he said, “I think service is really the reason that I do this. I do have an unusual background, and I view this as just something that I can do. It’s my way of contributing something that I hope people will talk about and turn into action.”

And just what sort of action would he have The Mercury readers take? Read on… “Charleston is a wonderful community which takes its roots seriously, and those roots are not just simply the beautiful buildings that we have preserved, but that whole preservationist notion regarding that which is best from the past that we extol. Well, I think we need to reinvest as well in our values, the values in our community and the values toward each other. Not only extol the buildings, but what occurred in them; that is our sacred history. Let’s basically make this a cultural revolution that we’re going to reclaim our heritage. And that’s not just simply the heritage in terms of the great things that happened, but the common notions regarding responsibility of parents to care for kids within the home, and to stick up for the values of the ten commandments. Our forefathers basically had their notions that these things were really more of a civil religion that did not necessarily determine the shape of God. If, indeed, we were going to have a society that worked, these were common sense notions that did not restrict our religious freedom.”

Copyright © 2009 by Katherine L. Bennett. All rights reserved

Katherine L. Bennett can be reached at klbennett80@gmail.com and welcomes your thoughts, feedback, and suggestions for future columns.

If you’d like to contribute an article to this collection please e-mail it for review .