"And yet ... it moves". Some good news for a change.

The advance of capitalist liberal democracy has been slow and uneven, with plenty of setbacks. Countries emerging from extreme backwardness, or smothered under decades of communism, cannot follow the same path as the USA, which was born in very favorable circumstance, did.

But you can't beat the rule of law, the free market, and government by consent, as a way of getting to the Good Society. And mankind is moving in that direction ... albeit not as fast as some of us would like.

Here's a couple of pieces of good news:

Vietnam ... the masses are stirring. Just a taste of what is to come.
Ethiopia ... they can't rule in the old way.

Even Saudi Arabia has new ruler who is trying to drag them forward. Iran will crack at some point. All of these events are due to deep-going internal changes, as a new, world-knowledgeable, generation replaces their elders.

The Old Order looks invulnerable, until it falls to pieces.

 

Imagine 30-50 million more poor in America and 65% living on food stamps.

That, is what liberals try to achieve.

 

??????

 

The thing is, we know how to end poverty: market economy, rule of law -- you don't even need liberal democracy so long as you have the first two, and you don't even have to have the first two in full flower, so long as you have some approximation to them.

The problem is how to coax, push, pull, shove, bribe, coerce, threaten, reward ... the countries that don't have these institutions yet, into getting them. They are natural outcomes of large middle class, but it's hard to get a large middle class without them. Sometimes enlightened despots will take the gamble: if you want a strong army you need good engineers, which means you've got to educate people, which gives you a middle class that may not be so keen on your regime. It's a dilemma, but some of them choose to take the gamble, others not.

Nonetheless, that's the way the world is heading, very slowly and unevenly.

 

Vietnam is not a closed society

And knowledge of the outside world is always bad news for communist autocrats

 

The Left shouts over and over: "Capitalism doesn't work!!!" And there are undoubtedly all kinds of problems and injustices and things that need fixing in free societies. But what seems to happen is that conservatives start sort-of believing what the Left is saying, and seeing socialism as an advancing monolith crushing all before it.

Not true. The Soviet Union seemed invulnerable -- almost no one predicted its collapse -- until it happened. In 1965 you couldn't imagine China being anything but a madhouse of howling brainwashed Red Guards -- worse than North Korea today -- and the Nixon started the process of recognition, the Chinese leadership saw what socialism had done to their country and ... within a few years, peasants were tending their own farms and five hundred million people were lifted out of poverty within a decade.

The Cuban leadership sits on top of a stagnant economy, with a population that knows that much better is possible. They -- the Party leaders -- don't know what to do. A smart American attitude to Cuba would see it transformed, peacefully, within a decade.

Time is on our side. All these stupid one-man-rule regimes, theocracies, one-party states ... are sliding down the waste chute. By the end of the century they'll only exist in the history books and bored school kids who have to study these books won't really believe that such regimes ever existed.

 

The left worshiped the soviet union and were heart broken when it died

 

Well ... some did, and were. Lots didn't, in fact. I would say that, actually, most people in the US who called themselves socialists didn't worship or even admire the Soviet Union, and were glad when it collapsed. I'm speaking from extensive personal experience here.

You know, I get really irritated when airheaded college-boy lefties tell me I'm a Nazi, that all Republicans are secret Nazis, etc. It shows that they are not only stupid and ignorant, but that they are personally dishonest, or at least so careless about the truth that it's the equivalent of being dishonest.

Our side must not imitate them in this.