Reports of the demise of #liberalism are greatly exaggerated

Los Angeles, 1952. Photo by J R Eyerman/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty

Critics...all seem to agree that liberalism can no longer solve our deep social, cultural, political and economic problems, and that it has become 'unsustainable'.

Not coincidentally, all of these critics are living, writing and publishing in liberal countries. 

The many deaths of liberalism

More than a century of death notices have not diminished the achievements and the necessity of liberalism

Daniel H Cole is professor of law and public and environmental affairs at Indiana University in Bloomington. He is a founding member of both the Midwest Law and Economics Association and the Society for Environmental Law and Economics. He is the author of seven books.

Aurelian Craiutu is professor of political science and adjunct professor of American studies at Indiana University in Bloomington. His most recent book is Faces of Moderation: The Art of Balance in an Age of Extremes (2016). He lives in Bloomington.

Modern democratic governments are founded on liberal principles meant to create the basis of a fair and just society. Liberalism emerged as a reaction against absolute power, in favour of individual autonomy protected by freedom of conscience and the rule of law. As the political theorist Judith Shklar put it in Political Thought and Political Thinkers (1998): 'Liberalism's deepest grounding is … in the conviction of the earliest defenders of toleration, born in horror, that cruelty is an absolute evil, an offence against God or humanity.' That is why liberal principles include, among others, limited government under the rule of law, with individual rights enforceable against the government. 

Liberal societies have not always lived up to these principles, which in some respects are always aspirational. But it cannot be denied that political societies based on liberal principles have been more successful, on almost any measure, than regimes that are more authoritarian, communitarian or sectarian.

So why do we read so often today that liberalism is in crisis, failing or already dead?

Niall Ferguson @NFergus on the state of Western Civilization in Conversation with @JohnAndersonAO

Don't miss this excellent interview with Niall Ferguson by Former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia John Anderson on the state of Western Civilisation, its history and current trajectory, the evils of Totalitarianism, the takeover of Western universities & colleges by the Left, Social Media and much more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Re0Mu8Tq4fE&feature=share

Let's Defend Capitalism

Capitalism vs. Communism

The answer to Communism, in brief, is Capitalism. And once we understand this, the problems of "ideological strategy" which we have been confusedly debating begin to melt away.

This essay from 1953 by Henry Hazlitt, Let's Defend Capitalism, A Freeman Pamphlet, 1953, reprinted from the Freeman (February 23, 1953), is as true today as when it was published 65 years ago.

The State Department, Voice of America, and Western governments generally, "set up "Democracy" as the antithesis of Communism, partly because they are confused enough to believe it is, and partly because they have neither the will nor the courage to defend Capitalism.

It is in large part because of the connotations built into the smear word "Capitalism" that, while millions are willing to die for Communist delusions, nobody has been willing to die for Capitalism — certainly not under that name. But Capitalism is merely the Marxist epithet for the system of the free market, for competitive private enterprise, for the system under which each is permitted to earn and keep the product of his labor — in brief, for economic freedom.

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The answer to Communism, in brief, is Capitalism. And once we understand this, the problems of "ideological strategy" which we have been confusedly debating begin to melt away. We do not have to discuss whether we have been "merely talking to ourselves" or not. The very question is based on a false analogy — the analogy of the lawsuit, of "our side" versus "their side." This analogy unconsciously swallows the Marxist theory of a real clash of interest between economic "classes" — employers versus workers or rich versus poor. But once we recognize that the system of Capitalism is the only workable one, the only one that promotes the interest of both employers and workers, while it provides the maximum of opportunity for the poor to conquer their poverty, then the real distinction is between those who understand the system and those who do not. A man who is known to understand a problem is never merely talking to himself; all those who sincerely wish to understand it can be counted on to listen.

Another problem which melts away is whether we should confine ourselves to combating Communism, because it is a conspiracy and a military menace, or whether we can disregard Communism, on the ground that it has been sufficiently exposed, and concentrate on combating socialist measures because there is so much more real likelihood of their being adopted at home.

The solution is simple. There is only one right answer to the sum of 2 and 2, and an infinite number of wrong answers. Once we have shown that 2 and 2 make 4, we do not have to provide separate proof that every other answer is wrong. Communism is just one wrong answer to the basic social problem — though the worst and most dangerous. Socialism (which proposes the same basic economic measures as Communism) is merely another wrong answer, in the long run only a little less bad and a little less dangerous. "Planning," price control, inflation, Keynesianism, are still other wrong answers. As in arithmetic, there are an infinite number of such wrong answers. But once we have found the right answer, we can explain what is wrong with the other solutions from that basis.

Read the whole piece online here: https://mises.org/library/lets-defend-capitalism