shouldering their responsibilities. No set of principles, however noble, can prevent people from detesting one another, but Classical Liberalism can keep people otherwise occupied and engaged. An example from the 1960s: During the height of the civil rights struggle, Atlanta’s sort-of-but-not-really pro-integration mayor, Ivan Allen, came up with a weasel- word slogan to indicate that the local white establishment, although not fully reconciled to civil liberties and equality before the law, was willing to – as it’s called these days – move on: “Atlanta, a City Too Busy To Hate.” We would hate – but we’re just so busy ! Under the aegis of Classical Liberalism, Earth thrived. Global per capita GDP went, in inflation-adjusted dollars, from $3,900 in 1950 to $17,300 in 2017. Thank you, civil liberties, free speech, property rights, rule of law, representative democracy, and free enterprise and free trade. As the tenets of Classical Liberalism spread, the governmental practice of oppression seemed to be fading. In 1945, only the lucky few could be called citizens of a free country. Today, 39% of the world’s population has political freedom, another 24% has partial freedom, and 74% of the world’s 195 nations are at least free enough to give Classical Liberalism a try. So says Freedom House, the nonpartisan advocacy organization for democracy, which is so nonpartisan that it was founded in 1941
by defeated presidential candidate Wendell Willkie and Eleanor Roosevelt. (Such, at one time, were the powers of faith in Classical Liberalism... Imagine, today, an advocacy organization founded by Hillary Clinton and Melania Trump). Classical Liberalism has had a good run. Now it’s about to get run over... by a bus full of stupid “post-capitalist” political trends – the new socialism, the new nationalism, the new trade-war mercantilism, and the new social media platforms that drive this bus. Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Donald Trump, and the countless candidates running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination are all on board. So are the Brexiteers and so, for that matter, are the maniacally micro-regulating bureaucrats of the EU that the Brexiteers want to leave. Wave goodbye to Classical Liberalism. Or you could just wave at the camera you’re facing on your phone or computer. Too late to put a sticky note over it. Your civil liberties are already gone, swiped left. Neither a click falls on a keypad nor a finger taps a touch screen without the Internet seeing. You are a fly caught in the World Wide Web. Classical Liberalism gets eaten by a Surveillance State. Civil liberties – and the free will needed to exercise them – are impossible when someone knows everything about you. And someone does... Probably it’s just that twerp in a T-shirt Mark Zuckerberg, who has got your every word, worry, action, attraction, emotion, motion, and notion stored in the Cloud. But
American Consequences
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