So much of liberalism in its classical sense is taken for granted in the west today and even disrespected. We take freedom for granted, and because of this we don't understand how incredibly vulnerable it is.
Interpretation
The quote highlights how people often overlook the value and fragility of freedom in the context of liberalism.
Niall Ferguson's quote emphasizes that in the West, many individuals take the principles of classical liberalism and the freedoms it provides for granted. This complacency leads to a lack of awareness regarding the vulnerabilities and challenges that threaten those freedoms, pushing society towards a dangerous disregard for the very ideals that have fostered progress and prosperity.
In practice
In a speech about democracy, one might quote Ferguson to remind listeners of the need to protect their freedoms.
It's all very well for us to sit here in the west with our high incomes and cushy lives, and say it's immoral to violate the sovereignty of another state. But if the effect of that is to bring people in that country economic and political freedom, to raise their standard of living, to increase their life expectancy, then don't rule it out.
If the financial system has a defect, it is that it reflects and magnifies what we human beings are like. Money amplifies our tendency to overreact, to swing from exuberance when things are going well to deep depression when they go wrong. Booms and busts are products, at root, of our emotional volatility.
Civilisation is partly about restraining the male of the species from engaging in the violence of the hunter-gatherer period. But it doesn't take an awful lot to unleash it.
For 500 years the West patented six killer applications that set it apart. The first to download them was Japan. Over the last century, one Asian country after another has downloaded these killer apps- competition, modern science, the rule of law and private property rights, modern medicine, the consumer society and the work ethic. Those six things are the secret sauce of Western civilization.
The West may collapse very suddenly. Complex civilizations do that, because they operate, most of the time, on the edge of chaos.
Over time, the welfare state has become dysfunctional in a surprising way. But in a way it became a victim of its own success: It became so successful at prolonging life, that it becomes financially unsustainable, unless you make major changes to things like retirement ages.
You are born with a character; it is given, a gift, as the old stories say, from the guardians upon your birth...Each person enters the world called.
Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face. As soon as one is aware of being somebody, to be watched and listened to with extra interest, input ceases, and the performer goes blind and deaf in his over-animation. One can either see or be seen.
Denunciations of the manipulativeness of advertisers can unfortunately all too easily be turned on their heads into denunciations of the gullibility of consumers. Both are forms of scapegoating, neither accomplishes anything.
There is a kind of courtesy in skepticism. It would be an offense against polite conventions to press our doubts too far.
Jealousy is the greatest of all evils, and the one that arouses the least pity in the person who causes it.
Incompetence is a better explanation than conspiracy in most human activity.
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