Susan Stamberg reports on Martha Gellhorn, "one of the first great female war correspondents," whose marriage to Ernest Hemingway is being dramatized by HBO next week. Gellhorn had a healthy skepticism toward power:
In 1983, a British TV interviewer posed this loaded question to Gellhorn, then 75 and still gorgeous: "I.F. Stone once described governments as comprised entirely of liars and nothing they say should ever be believed." The response was a typical no-holds-barred Gellhorn opinion: "Quite right. And Tolstoy once said governments are a collection of men who do violence to the rest of us. Between Izzy Stone and Tolstoy, you've got it about right."
The title of this post is of course a chapter title from Hayek's The Road to Serfdom.