Fighting authoritarian totalitarianism in whatever form

.@nfergus: "Ask yourself how effectively we in the West have responded to the rise of militant Islam...I fear we have done no better than our grandfathers did when the virus spreading around the world was Bolshevism." The cautionary tale of the Bolsheviks: https://t.co/Iss64Rvqkq pic.twitter.com/jNytVpvuTs

— Hoover Institution (@HooverInst) December 11, 2017

Prompts the following thoughts.

The Classical Liberalism package of scientific method, human universalism, natural rights, rule of law, consent of the governed, market economies, etc. has been incredibly successful. Plunging poverty, doubling and tripling of life-spans, improved morbidity, etc. The only real criticism is that not all improvements are equally distributed to everyone. Everyone improves, just not at the same rate.

The competing philosophies over the past century have been Marxism, Communism, Socialism, Fascism, Maoism, and Islamism. They are all centralized authoritarian totalitarian systems. Each promises to make everyone both better (which classical liberalism has already achieved) and more equal. Everyone of these totalitarian systems has failed and failed tragically. They are unable to achieve the welfare improvements of classical liberalism and they fail to bring about equality.

But time and again we are tempted to try them. We want to meld totalitarian authoritarianism onto classical liberalism without acknowledging that they are inherently contradictory of one another. You cannot have both simultaneously.

If it were a little controlled experiment here or there, that would be one thing. Fields tests are great. The challenge is that totalitarian systems always are claimed to have failed because they were insufficiently totalitarian. But once you have implemented the whole totalitarian system, and it fails to deliver the benefits of the classical liberal package it is virtually impossible to rekindle the trust and supporting cultural values that enable classical liberalism to work.

We should be way beyond this nonsense. The null hypothesis should always be - Go with the classical liberalism package. Whatever the promise of the totalitarian system, examine it closely and see how the select improvement might be achieved within the classical liberal model without the totalitarian mechanisms. If the desired improvement can only be delivered through a totalitarian mechanism, then forgo the desired improvement, otherwise you kill the goose.

The goal is not determining how to fight Marxism or Socialism or Islamism. The goal is to craft a strategy to fight authoritarian totalitarianism whatever form it takes.