There is an interesting article in Newsweek suggesting capitalism is on the march in more minds than you might think.
In France, books approved by the Education Ministry promote statist policies and voodoo economics. “Economic growth imposes a way of life that fosters stress, nervous depression, circulatory disease and even cancer,” reports “20th-Century History,” a popular high-school text published by Hatier. Another suggests Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were dangerous free-market extremists whose reforms plunged their countries into chaos and despair. Such blatant disinformation sheds new light on the debate over why it is that Europeans lag so far behind Americans in rates of entrepreneurship and job creation.
[…]
a recent poll by the IPOS Institute finds the market economy’s approval rating rising to 59 percent among Germans under 30, with only 32 percent saying the state needs to play a bigger role. Ten years ago, the figures were reversed. “The values shift is already underway,” says Bürklin. It’s about time.
Indeed it is about time. The absurdities and contradictions of the statist world view is our biggest ally and gradually more people do figure out better theories for understanding reality regardless of what they are taught.
I remember reading about an emerging intellectual movement in France a few decades ago called “The New Philosophers”.
What was their startling, newly discovered approach? It appears they were all excited about the idea that individuals could live without controls on everything they did, and that economies worked better when people were allowed to make decisions for economic, instead of political, reasons.
I just read an article about the transformation of political thinking in Vietnam, as old hard line socialists in the Politburo are replaced by younger members more amenable to market reforms. Similar to Russia, or China, or India, or any number of other “conversions” to supposedly more open systems around the world.
When you live in a culture that tells you, repeatedly, that it is the best thing, the most humane, the most egalitarian, the most compassionate, the most everything that there ever was, but when you look around you see only the opposite, only the failed promises that never seem to come true, then it isn’t too great a leap to start questioning what you’ve been told.
We went through that in the US, and still are in the throes of an agonizing self appraisel. Some people seem to forget that much of the society I grew up with has been altered significantly, for better and for worse, every bit as drastically as the countries now reconsidering the “truths” they had held as gospel.
The critical issue in every case is: Are the reforms based on an actual belief in individual liberty and the rights of human beings to live their lives as they see fit, or are they cautious attempts to get some of the goodies of freer, more open societies, without giving up too much control?
The youth in Europe and other parts of the world can see that the malarkey they’ve been fed doesn’t work.
Have they, and will they, be exposed to any truly open debate about potential choices for a free society, or will it all be just another case of watered down, dumbed down “we can have our cake, and eat it, too”?
People all over the world were dissatisfied in the 1930’s also, and we know how well that worked out.
It begins: “A spectre has been exorcised from Europe…”
As a french, I can testify that this case of a biased textbook in far from being the only one. Teachers in schools use the same propaganda. I still think that most of french youths want more state intervention and despise what they call either neo- or ultra-liberalism (in the sense classical liberal). Or, at least, they lack a cultural framework that would allow them to think more critically. Luckily I’ve been brought up with Von Mises, Bastiat and Von Hayek in my early university years, thanks to my father. But I’m still cautious when I’m talking politics with french people, because as soon as you try to convince them they get angry and insult you. I’ve been called a nazi once…
Once people call you a nazi you know you’ve made an impression on them, however thick they may be!
I hope it is true that more young people in Germany are starting to see through the antifreedom propaganda of the education system and the media.
I hope this resistance spreads to Britain and the United States.
EU are not alone, it seems. Also Japan [The Times]