In Defense of Radicalism

One reads these days many cries of despair, rumblings of gloom, dark hints of the inadequacy of Reason (and reasoners), of the hopelessness of progress. At the best, one expects invocations of Orwell and Tocqueville, at the worst, of Burke and Kierkegaard, and certainly not an unashamed platitude about the possibilities of progress or the needs of enlightenment. I wonder why this has happened. There seems no good ground for despair or gloom, if we are really concerned with freedom in the world in general, and not only with a few particular liberties long familiar in Europe. There are more destructive bombs in the world, but there is not less freedom; it has only become more dangerous and disagreeable to defend it.

Throughout history, very few privileged societies have enjoyed that degree of personal freedom which is today enjoyed by large sections of the population of America, of most of Western Europe outside Spain, of Spain, of many parts of the Englishspeaking Commonwealth, and of some other countries comparably prosperous and democratic. And in many parts of the East, and of Africa, there are growing demands for greater freedom of the individual, and the means of obtaining it are coming nearer. There must always be a running change in the distribution of power within States and between States; some classes of persons lose some of their liberties, others, formerly oppressed and almost left off the pages of history, gain a freedom of choice that they never had bef...