The Reagan Consensus and History -
It is too easy, for we who lived through the Reagan Consensus' arrival and entrenchment or have always lived in accord with it, to believe that it is some sort of political and economic comet that just arrived to blaze in our skies and never left our orbit. Because most of us were not alive when there was a pre-Reagan Consensus or certainly were not adults, we have come to believe, whether friend or enemy of it, that the Reagan Consensus was a sudden development that came almost out of the blue.
The first hint that this is wrong is the fact that there was a previous Consensus that, in itself due to its more deleterious effects, helped bring on the Reagan one. Second, in turn, we then have to look at the broader sweep of history to see how inaccurate this "current events" driven narrative is. When we do this, we also see both how durable the Reagan Consensus is and that, in fact, it is part of a trend that began centuries ago and, despite many sometimes catastrophic bumps. moves majestically on its way.
In other words, the Reagan Consensus is nothing more than the most recent and decisive victory of the move towards human freedom, knowledge and prosperity that is often said to have started in what we usually refer to as the Age of Enlightenment. But indeed, the cultural and legal foundations for this overall consensus started much earlier.
The legal documents that were part of what I call the Human Consensus we are familiar with: the Magna Carta, the Florentine Constitution, the Bills of Rights, the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution and so on. What is often forgotten is that the documents also underpinned the growth of human prosperity by anchoring freedom for mankind. For example, the most important and enduring contribution of the French Revolution to this Consensus was not the often adulterated Rights of Man but the property rights given to the middle class of France. However, some will also argue that the Human Consensus began on the Cross but that it took almost 1800 years for us to listen.
This unleashing of Humanity was also of course supported by the writings of countless thinkers in the most influential nations, including Hume, Smith, Voltaire, Descartes, Goethe, Locke, Jefferson and Erasmus, all cleaving in one way or the other to the humanism that is central to the Human Consensus. The result of this, in tandem with the coming of the industrial revolution and the social progress that came in its wake both powered by innovation, was that the human being, who had been working for barely $100 per year in all history before 1800 usually under the jackboot of a brutal tyranny, saw their income soar to $18381 by 2019 or increased almost 184 times in just over two centuries. Meanwhile, there were two countries that could be bravely called "democracies" in 1800. There are now 74 which are rated by the Democracy Index as at worst "flawed" democracies. As well, the cornucopia that has flowed from this dual advance has lowered the Misery Index considerably by reducing poverty, disease, pollution, illiteracy and starvation drastically everywhere even compared to the 1980's levels of these scourges.
Again, it is easy to miss the human progress forest for the tyranny and war trees, particularly if you are on the Left. The 20th Century saw the coming of the bloodiest wars and the most brutal and total tyrannies in history. However they, for the most part (and China still may finally slip from its last human vestiges of tyranny due to the prosperity its people have imbibed from their experimentations with the market and property rights) were defeated in those bloody wars or (in the case of Vietnam, for example) adopted the ways of the Human Consensus economically after the war was over.
But, it is also easy for those on the Right to imagine that Reagan and his acolytes somehow descended (no doubt in a plane piloted by Goldwater while reading the National Review) from the Political and Economical philosophical heavens and wrought all the change and groundbreaking consensus by their lonesome. Even before the Berlin Wall fell and the USSR abolished itself, for example, 22 nations became democracies while Reagan was POTUS. On top of this, most of the key reforms inaugurated by him and others were introduced in barely 20 years from the deregulations of the late 70's to the tax cuts and balanced budgets of the late 90's. What seemed like an ironclad consensus as to how the World would be organized, how trade and international finance would operate and what roles the state should perform in an economy were turned on their head and shattered in the space of one generation. And, as mentioned in previous chapters, the core underpinnings of the new consensus have not (yet) been seriously threatened.
The reality is that we must view the latest Consensus as simply the most recent albeit the most intense and dramatic installment of the Human Consensus, that is, that the Human Being should reign over their affairs first only guided by the Rule of Law and Logic. When we do that, we make two edifying conclusions. One - the Reagan Consensus, far from being a phenomenon of our times, is part of a Great Movement of literally billions of people, millions of entrepreneurs, thousands of thinkers and statespeople going back to Christ. It burst forward in the Middle Ages, birthed the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment and finally truly launched for all practical intents and purposes in 1800. It fought to fly and soar through the Industrial Revolution, the World Wars and the great totalitarianisms. Now we live amidst its glorious jubilee of triumphant fireworks from the 1970's forward and still going on today. The birth pangs and fits and starts of this Movement can be frustrating, such as when we see on the wonderfully unexpected eruption of democracy in Belarus but the almost ignored suppression of it in Hong Kong. One tax is cut here, one tax is raised there. A market we thought would always be controlled is deregulated here, another proves absurdly immune to reform there.
But, the key, the Northern Star, that leads us to the second conclusion, that this Consensus will take, is clear when we see that it is but a part of the not inexorable or inevitable but generally victorious movement in favour of people liberating people. Reagan was right to warn us that the freedom built up over centuries can be lost by one generation. However, if we are vigilant, patient and imaginative, we will have had the privilege and benefit of building upon and reinforcing not only the Reagan Consensus but the Human Consensus.
Next, I will suggest ways that we can contribute to the Consensus.
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