Decline and Fall: The USA's Freedom Ranking
"Occasionally I entertained the hope that my writings would bear practical fruit and show the way for policy. Constantly I have been looking for evidence of a change in ideology. But I have never allowed myself to be deceived. I have come to realize that my theories explain the degeneration of a great civilization; they do not prevent it. I set out to be a reformer, but only became the historian of decline." -- Ludwig von Mises, Notes and Recollections (1940)
Mises wrote this in a private manuscript just after arriving in the United States. Until mid-1940, he had been living in in Switzerland, a refugee from Nazi-occupied Austria. He and his wife then made a run for it -- across France, just ahead of the invading German army, to Spain; then to Lisbon; and finally to the United States.
He had no job. He was 59 years old. He was starting over as a stranger in a strange land -- a land, as he recognized, that put great value on youth. He had good reason to be pessimistic.
His time in the United States led to a true second stage in his career. He taught from 1946 to 1966 at New York University. He was to gain new generations of followers here. He has had far more influence since 1940 than he had before 1940. He died in October 1973. The next year, a true renaissance of Mises studies began, culminating when his one-time disciple, F. A. Hayek, co-shared the Nobel Prize in economics -- the only time that an Austrian School economist has ever won it.
I begin with his statement because of my belief that it is always darkest before the dawn.
ON THE MAKING OF LISTS
There are several indexes of liberty published by conservative and libertarian research organizations. They use different criteria. They weigh these criteria differently. There is a mixture of subjective and objective criteria. But there are similar findings.
Here is a grim finding: on none of them is the United States at the top. Yet in 1770, the USA would probably have been #1 or #2.
We know which nation was the major competitor: Switzerland. Switzerland remains in the top five on the various indexes. Switzerland has been the world's operational model of liberty for at least three centuries.
Something has gone wrong in the United States over the last 240 years. But what? It has not gone equally wrong in Switzerland. Why not?
Here are two rankings. These are part of the Human Freedom Index jointly produced by Canada's libertarian Fraser Institute and the Cato Institute. The first ranks total freedom. The second ranks personal freedom.
On personal freedom, the USA is not on the top ten list.
Consider a different index: the Heritage Foundation's index of economic liberty. Here is the top of the list as of 2016.
1. Hong Kong
2. Singapore
3. New Zealand
4. Switzerland
5. Australia
6. Canada
7. Chile
8. Ireland
9. Estonia
10. United Kingdom
11. United States
12. Denmark
13. Lithuania
14. Taiwan
15. Mauritius
Notice that Hong Kong is #1 on two lists, but #18 on the third: personal liberty. Hong Kong is an island with its roots in Britain's common law tradition. Yet politically, it is under Communist China.
New Zealand is way up there. So is Canada. So is Australia.
In 1775, we launched a revolution against Great Britain. Yet a Chinese-speaking colony of Great Britain is at the top of two lists.
Americans are taught to revere the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. Obviously, they did not protect us.
REVERSING THE DECLINE
We might expect that Cato and Heritage would each offer a high school textbook in American history that marks the American system's downward march. They don't. I offer an assessment in my American history course for the Ron Paul Curriculum. I also provide 180 video lessons. But I have not written an American textbook, nor do I plan to. I have other projects that are higher on my bucket list.
When American organizations that produce such lists offer nothing that traces the pathway downward, their donors are left with no guidance. There should be textbooks, study guides, free YouTube courses, and interactive charts. These organizations take in millions of dollars per year. Where is the output that justifies this?
A course on the decline of the American Republic is just the beginning. Where is the textbook and course on Hong Kong? On New Zealand? On Switzerland? On Finland? On Denmark? What did they do right? What can we learn from each case study?
"MAKE PLANS, NOT LISTS"
I was recruited into the American Right by the anti-Communist Australian physician Fred Schwarz back in 1956. In 1961, libertarian economist F. A. "Baldy" Harper took me under his wing. I joined the senior staff of Leonard Read's Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) in the early 1970's, for which I wrote over 50 articles, 1967-1996. I have written over 60 books, including a 31-volume set, An Economic Commentary on the Bible. I have written about 14,000 articles, including 1,500 articles for Lew Rockwell's site. In short, I have been on the inside for a long time. Here is my assessment.
Taking annual surveys of liberty and then publishing hierarchical lists of performance, without offering explanations and suggestions for reversing a downward trend, are not a complete waste of time, but they are not very useful activities, either. They raise an obvious question: "How did this happen?" This in turn raises a second question: "Is there an underlying historical pattern in both the the rise and decline?" To refuse to ask these two questions in public, and also to refuse to then to begin to answer them, is a silent admission of failure.
There is a third question: "What is a plausible strategy for reversing the downward trend?" This question also is not asked in public by Right-wing think tanks, let alone answered.
This is the state of the American Right today. It can produce lists that reveal the decline of liberty in America, but offers no coherent explanations -- not for high school students, college students, graduate students, voters, politicians, or businessmen.
What is the point of producing annual tables of decline if you do not offer a comprehensive program for ascent?
It is not good enough to chart the historical decline of liberty in America. What is desperately needed is this: (1) an analysis of the causes of this decline and (2) a preliminary program for a reversal: a comprehensive, integrated, multi-step strategy. This would involve cooperation with other organizations: the intellectual division of labor.
Such a program does not exist. I don't know of any attempts to produce it.
In 1845, Karl Marx wrote eleven brief theses on Ludwig Feuerbach. Almost no one remembers Feurerbach, an atheistic German theologian. But Marxists remember Marx's eleventh thesis: "Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it." He was unknowingly paraphrasing the Apostle James.
"But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves" (James 1:22).
It is time to stop deceiving ourselves. It is time to begin to prepare for the Great Default: when the welfare states of the world go belly-up. They will not be able to deliver on the promises made by generations of politicians.
That is when we will need to have a replacement program, with people in place who have had local political experience. That is when we will need replacement educational programs, replacement charities, and replacement agendas.
CONCLUSION
The correct reform program is replacement, not capture. The goal should not be to get our hands on the levers of political power. The goal is to disconnect these levers from the engines of progress: creative individuals and voluntary institutions.
There is an old political slogan: "You can't beat something with nothing." This principle applies to every area of life. To begin with political reform puts the coercive cart before the productive horse. It has things backward.
I want to hear about your program for national political reform after I see how your program has worked in your county and your state. First things first.
Start small. Start locally. See what works. Extend what works.
An agenda that does not include the Great Default is an agenda that starts at the top. That is where most political revolutions begin. They always make things worse.
Bottom line: When Washington's checks bounce, the reformers had better be ready to step in to replace Washington.
One more time: the correct goal is replacement, not capture.