W e are entering a new year, the true third millennium. Unfortunately, the prospects for liberty do not burn bright. The presidential election was a grand disappointment. George W. Bush seems only a bit less enthusiastic about using state power than does Al Gore. Yet one should not view this campaign in isolation.
Human history is largely one of tyranny.
The history of the last couple thousand years has been largely one of combatting tyranny. History has seen mostly war and slavery, dictatorship and serfdom. But there have always been those struggling for the right of free men and women to live in community with one another. Progress was often slow and always difficult. But religious toleration, free speech, democracy, emancipation, and free markets gradually came.