No we haven't.

Take a look around at the intolerance and violence in the world and you'll recognize the truth contained in the quote from the French philosopher Alfonse Karr;- 'the more things change, the more they stay the same'.

We like to think that we have become more sophisticated and tolerant as a species, but we haven't.

Civilization became more liberal through history for the same reason that religions moved in history from requiring sacrifices to lots of angry gods to instead just loving on behalf of a single loving god... Love wins. And love wins because people vote with their feet. They promote societies where more and more people can get along and grow and thrive, and they burn the societies that from time to time burn them for no good reason.

Conservative Christians who think someday modern societies will all march in bootstep with hardcore Chrisitian ideology forget that the whole reason Christianity succeeded was because it wasn't just a bunch of dicks in power telling the masses you better do this or that or we're going to smite you. Love won then and love will win in the present.

And in terms of liberalism, it is inherent that the people staring down their oppressors get lumped in with the liberals and the people doing all the oppressing are lumped in with the conservatives. You can't be uptight about how other people are and not be a conservative. And you can't be on the fringe just trying to survive and not be a liberal.

The short answer is that the development of free market capitalism is the greatest driver of increases in freedom because it is the greatest driver of the creation of wealth. The prosperity that results from freer markets acts as a reward (per operant conditioning) to encourage the general continuation and development of free market capitalism.

The long answer is that some of the question depends on what exactly we mean by liberal and how strict we are about continuously.

If we think of liberal primarily (not exclusively) in terms of economic freedom and opportunity to exercise it, and continuously in terms of a broad trend over time, then what we end up seeing is the effects of the free market.

The movement from absolutist rulers (who essentially own everything) and theocracies (which place strict demands and restrictions on economic behavior) toward freer access to markets, and more freedom regarding behavior in those markets.

Over time, those places that allowed more freedom to make and sell, tended to prosper as a result of creating wealth, rather that invading a neighbor (for example) or oppressing a populace, and simply hijacking their wealth. More importantly, the more wealth individuals were able to keep out of the hands of the chief, monarch, state, or priests, the more they had to reinvest. This gradually developed into capitalism, which was a major step forward into personal freedom.

Obviously, cleptocratic regimes and institutions slow the process (or throw it into reverse) as does heavy taxation.

The stimulus-behavior-reward loop tends to encourage societies to generally move toward free(r) market capitalism, because that is how nations and people are able to prosper. The reason many parts of the world are so poor in contrast with others is that they have shorter capitalist histories and have less developed free market institutions. Prosperity is both an effect, and then a cause of economic freedom in the local economy, and correlates with the degree to which people can keep their profits from the grasp of the state.

Sure there have been major steps backward, such as Communist China, and the Soviet Union, but these devolved ultimately to permit more economic freedom, and as they have done so, the people and their nations as a whole have prospered.

At the same time we can contrast the development of free market capitalism with monarchial systems such as Saudi Arabia, where the majority of the wealth is owned by the monarch. Despite the citizenry being paid stipends by the government, the people have very little freedom to do with it what they want because of the interference of Islamic law. This stifles the economic development.

We see a stark contrast between Saudi Arabia between both Dubai in the UAE, and Qatar. In both, the religious limits are less strict, and as a result, these places prosper, and build wealth among a much larger base than just the royalty.

Again, the prosperity-freedom feedback loop encourages more and more freedom in the region because the freer the markets, the richer the nation.

You're talking about classical liberalism, which is different from the liberal democratic party who in general actually hold several positions antithetical to classical liberalism. Also, the American right wing are more classically liberal than the left on several issues; freedom of speech, gun ownership, laissez faire economics, individualism, libertarianism etc.

A liberal will become a conservative in 20 years without changing a single view!

Hello S,

Over time, people are becoming more educated. In the main, educated people become liberal.

excon