I must admit to getting a bit of a chuckle out of Arnold Kling’s opening salvo in Stuck on 1968:
Most people who were liberals in 1968 still are. Liberals. In 1968.
Kling notes that “the Conventional Wisdom among well-educated liberals in 1968 included the following”:
- Anti-Communism was a greater menace than Communism.
- The planet could not possibly support the population increases that would take place by the end of the twentieth century.
- Conservatives stood in the way of progress for minorities.
- Government programs were the best way to lift people out of poverty.
- What underdeveloped countries needed were large capital investments, financed by foreign aid from the rich countries.
- Inflation was a cost-push phenomenon, requiring government intervention in wage and price setting.
Further, “he degree of confidence in these beliefs was so strong that liberals in 1968 came to the overriding conclusion that”:
- Anyone who is not a liberal must be incorrigibly stupid
Of course, “since 1968, we have seen”:
- a mass exodus from Communist Vietnam (the boat people)
- a large exodus from Cuba (the Mariel boat lift)
- the collapse of Soviet Communism, revealing that the system did much broader and deeper damage than most people realized
- an unmistakably large gap between North Korea and South Korea in terms of material well-being and personal freedom
Kling was a young liberal in 1968. He’s not now. Young. Or liberal.