And they take aim at the WTO because they see it as the handmaiden of globalization. We shall never convince such zealots of the case for economic liberalism. But we must not allow the zealots and self-serving privileged people to discredit liberalism among the wider public. We need to make the case for freedom, economic, political, and social, again and again. I think the most important lesson of the past 50 years is that we must embrace the outside world, not shun it.
Openness is good.
Just compare the protectionist nightmare of the 1930s with the long boom in America and Europe in the 1950s and 1960s as trade barriers fell. But the benefits of openness are not only economic. Whatever its flaws, no one seriously doubts that Europe is better off with the European Union than without it. Sceptics need only look at the bloody wars in the Balkans. Fifty years ago, all of Europe was like that.