The future of freedom

When the Cold War ended in 1991, a number of prominent intellectuals postulated a whole new era of human freedom. Francis Fukuyama, for example, even went so far as to boldly declare “The end of human history.”

By “the end of history,” Fukuyama meant that the age of ideological evolution was at an end–that freedom and liberal democracy, at long last, had finally triumphed over
the “Leviathan” that was dictatorial government.

It was easy to see how Mr. Fukuyama could have arrived at such a monumental conclusion back in 1992. The Soviet Union had just collapsed. The Persian Gulf War was a magnificent, stunning, success. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989. A whole new era of peace and boundless prosperity seemed to be upon us, protected by “The New World Order.”

Then Bill Clinton got elected after America experienced a sudden recession during the Bush administration. Bill and Hillary then attempted to socialize American medicine but failed.

Calling “the end of history” firmly into question, the Clinton administration was successful in raising taxes, even retroactively, to include the recently deceased. For a while, socialism still seemed to be very much upon us. It was business–big government–as usual . . . until something quite extraordinary happened.

In 1994, for the first time in 40 years, the Republican party took control of the US Congress. Newt Gingrich was suddenly on the rise–and he quickly took control as the new House Speaker.

A new American revolution, a resurgence of liberty, seemed to be taking place. Even President Bill Clinton himself had to grudgingly concede that the “era of big government [was] now over.”

The Republican revolution, however, quickly fizzled out as the Republicans eventually retreated under tremendous public pressure and a dramatic reversal of fortune. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the leader of the revolution, was ultimately forced to step down from power and make way for Representative Bob Livingston, who was also compelled to resign in the wake of the Clinton-Lewinsky impeachment scandal.

The Republican cause of liberty suddenly seemed to be in full retreat. The religious right, for example, was discredited by the polls that vindicated Mr. Clinton. Even 700-Club founder Pat Robertson advised caution.

Meanwhile, conservatives like Bill Bennet lamented “The Death of Outrage” and the decline of American “virtue,” heretofore considered vital prerequisites for liberty and a free society.

Traditional conservatives, however, lose sight of the larger issues involved–of the bigger historical context in the light of true freedom itself. In a way, we should actually celebrate the poll-driven Congressional exoneration of the president’s sordid transgressions.

For more than anything else, the president’s exoneration represents the ultimate demise of the turn of the century mass-market morality which many Christians claim made America great. What we have here, in essence, is the decline of “the masses,” of the classic, traditional, Ford model T political consumer best exemplified by the
New Deal religion of Socialist President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

What we have here, in essence, is a healthy fragmentation of American society–a decline in the polity of the community. In other words, a fertile breeding ground for freedom, individualism, and classic enlightenment libertarianism–not big government socialism or fascism.

Barring an all-out nuclear catastrophe, I believe the future of freedom is secure . . . in the hands of increasingly autonomous individuals highly averse to Big Brother government and unaccountable independent counsels.