Freedom

BLOG, APRIL 4, 2008
There is no doubt in my mind that the Americans could never get out of the business of making sure, or at least trying, that we come finally to the end of a long history in which most people in the world were under the boot of one thug or dictator or another. When the US gets out of the business of trying to bring that long, sorry history to an end, it’s lights out for civilization as we know it and the Dark Ages that Mr. Arcand so blandly predicts will indeed come true.
When one dictator or another has had his boot on the neck of the ordinary people, it is the US’s job, and it always should be, to get that boot off. If there is any time it falters in doing so, it’s a waste of time and space and just a matter of making money.
I say it again that there may be some times that doing that won’t be in the interests of the US, sometimes even against them, but most times being in the business of freeing humans will be in all our interests in the short and long terms.
We should think in the long time, like the Chinese do, but we should never give up on the impulse of democracy because the US has managed to become the most powerful, richest, most progressive country in the world. I don’t see evidence from history, either recent or otherwise, to suggest that the US’s greatest strength won’t continue to be freedom and trying to bring freedom to others.
No matter how much the Chinese plan in advance on how to compromise or hinder the power of the US, they won’t be able to undermine the power of ideas. These ideas are more meaningful than a free trade agreement, a division of troops, a new rocket or missile or a 50 year plan of diplomacy. As long as China insists on keeping its people in chains, it will always be at a disadvantage, not just politically but socially, culturally, economically, technologically and educationally. It is inevitable.
For instance, a simple example is the university. How will China ever catch up with the US in the matters of education when it doesn’t allow its people to think freely? What is written and said on the university campus must flow without government regulation. All the greatest scientific advancements, technological advancements and the greatest products have come from the freest countries and societies. The greatest economies have always grown from free societies. Those rules of history and culture will never be changed by China, Al-Quaeda, the EU or anyone else who vies to take over the leadership of the world.
The paradox is that these countries and formations won’t be able to take over the leadership of the world unless they adopt the basic values that the US pursues, especially in freedom, independence and liberty. Above all, they must have the rule of law.
You can’t have democracy without free markets, and vice versa, and the rule of law. They cannot work without each other.
So if we say democracy is the worst of political systems, we know it’s the best. And if we say free markets are flawed, sometimes deeply so, and hard to control, we realize they are the best of the worst economic systems. All the rest oppress and take choice away from people. The hypocrisy of those who say we can’t have free markets until all the companies are smaller, more competitive or otherwise should be ignored. It is simply prevarication and delay. Trying to change the laws of free choice we have seen proven over and over again, both in terms of human affairs and economics, is trying to stop the sunrise.
FDR said we do these things, like the New Deal, not because we try to destroy or change capitalism, but because it has not been tried as a solution. Deciding the free market it wrong because one bank collapses or shrinks or one year we have less economic output than we had the year before is like saying democracy isn’t working in Zimbabwe so we should get rid of it everywhere.
Fear and hysteria should not overcome our senses and force us back to the fallacies we used in the past and that cause trillions of dollars of loss and millions of deaths and billions of slaves. We should find out how to continue to prefect and improve the system of liberty, free markets and the rule of law that have served the most successful societies so well in the past.