In the "For What It's Worth" column, aside from family ties, associates, and clients who have influenced the direction of this writer's thinking, there have been four individuals whose steadfast adherence to first principles in their pronouncements and actions make their lives worth remembering.

Václav Havel

Playwright and statesman Václav Havel's life, intellectual and political achievements as an anti-communist in an Eastern European, Soviet-dominated setting, needs no further elaboration. Like Orwell, Havel could not tolerate devious, pompous, superficial politicians. He had the satisfaction of helping bring down the totalitarian Czechoslovakian regime that for so long repressed his inner desire to expose the hypocrisy of the society in which he found himself. And like Orwell, he was a man of action; as political activist, politician, and through his writings he challenged his compatriots to break out and resist the entrenched political class of his era.

Christopher Hitchens

Still controversial in the eyes of many, Christopher Hitchens made his mark in journalism as a raconteur, polemicist, and ferocious debater, often espousing contrary and unpopular views amongst his more devout and liberal opponents. The Economist termed him ". . . scourge of hypocrites and windbags everywhere." An essayist of the first order, he was comfortable discussing religion, politics, and mortality. He confronted terminal cancer, and in his usual, very open manner allowed his readers to join in his losing battle through a series of articles describing his struggle. Throughout his last 18 months, in what must have been an excruciatingly difficult internal personal debate he continually challenged himself to remain true to his lifelong-held beliefs and personal code of conduct.

George Orwell

George Orwell, whose novel 1984, read as part of a college Humanities course some 60 years ago, in many ways opened the mind to how the struggle between the governed and those who would govern might play out. For evidence of why 1984, written in the mid-1940's, was/is relevant to this day, one only need to observe photos of the "grief-stricken," fearful faces of North Korean "mourners" lamenting the loss of their "Dear One," or understand the regimented lives of today's mainland Chinese. These fascist, xenophobic, isolated societies are as close to Orwell's fictional totalitarian vision as can be found in the world today, and his other seminal work, Animal Farm, completes the picture. Orwell, of course, didn't just tilt at windmills. As a journalist, his beliefs were always front and center. During the late 1930's, he fought on the side of the Anti-Fascists in the Spanish Civil War and was badly wounded. As Christopher Hitchens's book, Orwell Matters, makes clear, a man of principle and action, Orwell's life was uniquely important. Today, 1984 is once again one of the top selling books on the Amazon fiction list, having sold more than forty million copies since initial publication.

Jack Bogle

As discussed further in the Postscript, the fourth individual who, in the opinion of the writer, has made a significant difference for the individual investor and in our profession, was Jack Bogle. A survivor by anyone's definition, he in the Orwellian, Havel, Hitchens traditions confronted major health issues (one of the earliest recipients of a transplanted heart that lasted some 23 years). Influenced by Paul Samuelson's findings, in the early 1970s he confronted the "I can beat the market" conventional wisdom and found it lacking. He called the proponents of active portfolio management to task, and implemented practical solutions enabling individual investors to prevail in a hostile, difficult-to-win environment. His message has never been welcomed by the entrenched institutional interests and purveyors of most active portfolio management services and products. In many ways, we was and remains the conscience of our profession by his insistence on transparency, accountability, and attention to costs. Jack dramatized the fiduciary nature and stewardship responsibilities inherent in the portfolio management profession. Unfortunately, Jack Bogle died in 2019.

The common thread throughout the lives of these four people, of course, is that the individual matters, and a life lived openly and continually examined under the spotlight of one's first principles, is a life worth living. One also has the suspicion that all four, if asked their preference, would have come down on the side of free-market economics.

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