Mr. Bush has shown that the Republican establishment, variously frightened, paralyzed, or rendered incapable of rational judgment by political correctness, can be every bit as damaging to the cause of freedom as the cultural Marxists are
"We know that the desire for freedom is not confined to, or owned by, any culture; it is the inborn hope of our humanity." (NPR, Oct. 19, 2017) So said former president George W. Bush in his recent criticism of fellow Republican, President Trump. The idea that, by their very nature, all human beings desire freedom is an unquestioned premise of modern liberalism. It underlay Mr. Bush's efforts at nation-building in Iraq, and it has underlain a century and a half of U.S. immigration policy. And it is false.
According to Freedom House, 40 per cent of the world's population today is free, while 60 per cent is only partly free or unfree. The Index of Economic Freedom, published by the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal, shows a map of the world in which economic freedom is confined to a just handful of countries, mostly in the English-speaking world and northern Europe. Freedom is the exception in the world today, as it has been throughout human history.