To America, From a Worried European Friend

Analysis

To America, From a Worried European Friend

To America, From a Worried European Friend

By Daniel Schwammenthal

The Wall Street Journal

28 July 2020

 

History and evolutionary biology teach us that the normal course of human affairs is tribalism, oppression and poverty. The emergence of liberal democracies isn’t the inevitable endpoint of supposedly linear Western progress but an aberration—and a rather fragile one at that.

This is why the rising illiberalism in the U.S. is so troubling. Activists who seem to understand George Orwell’s “1984” not as a warning but as a manual see free speech—the lifeblood of democracy and human betterment—as a fascist tool of oppression. Other classical liberal ideals—a colorblind society, rational discourse, the scientific method—suffer the same fate.

 

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/to-america-from-a-worried-european-friend-1...