An excellent essay from Janet Daley at The Telegraph.
Read the whole thing.
"When exactly did the West stop referring to itself as the “Free World”?"
"Presumably, it roughly coincided with the end of the Cold War. When that
clear division between a totalitarian Eastern bloc, with its command economy
and closed society, and the Atlantic model of individual liberty, gave way
to a much messier and more ambiguous global picture — that must have
been when the certainty of our commitment was lost. Perhaps because freedom
does not seem under such imminent existential threat, nations that would
once not have dreamt of trifling with its basic principles are taking
cavalier risks."
Then, an observation about the "un-free" Western world:
"But mostly, it is the dangers of a newly unstable world that are held
responsible for this complacency about un-freedom. Paradoxically, we must
now emulate the illiberal intrusion of the tyrannies we defeated a
generation ago in order to protect ourselves from the nihilistic threats
that have emerged to replace the old, more predictable danger that they
presented."
"Maybe you are prepared to buy this."
