My science and journalism have been focusing more and more on the rising threats to liberalism. And this sadly monolingual gringa has gradually become more familiar with the experiments in liberalism and its opposites in Latin America. As an economist and historian, yet also a professor of philosophy and of literature, I believe in the power of ideas. It’s why I write, to persuade you to defend liberty from Mother and Father State.
The book collects some 100 little essays originally published in Portuguese in Folha de São Paulo. Each week I sought in about 400 words to advocate for what I call “essential liberalism”—the radical 18th-century idea that humans, left to venture, to “have a go” in the British idiom, improve their lives and immensely improve the world around them. How “immensely”? Since 1776 a fully three thousand percent explosion of the average real income per person in the world. Nothing earlier came remotely close. It was caused not by the usual suspects of investment or exploitation, but by liberty inspiring a flowering of human creativity—in the arts and sciences, and in the economy. Though Brazilians and many other Latin Americans are uneasily aware that their economies lag some, and sometimes a lot, the Great Enrichment is nonetheless evident everywhere from the Border to Tierra del Fuego, from Santiago in Chile to Recife in Brazil.
The Latin Lag can be overcome. Brazil, like much of Latin America, needs essential liberalism to do it.
LIBERDADE
100 Conversation Starters on Liberalism, Latin America, and Brazil
By Deirdre Nansen McCloskey
What does liberty mean in the modern world?
In Liberdade—the Portuguese for freedom or liberty—the acclaimed economist and historian Deirdre McCloskey curates over 100 of her thought-provoking mini-essays on politics, economics, and society—written originally for the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo. With her signature wit and intellectual rigor, McCloskey challenges conventional wisdom and defends the old but still radical idea that humans flourish under liberty, and not under coercion by the state.
From the failures of socialism and nationalism and the recent revivals of national socialism to the triumphs of liberated markets and personal autonomy, the essays offer sharp insights into the debates shaping Brazil, Latin America, the Anglosphere, and the world—all of them threatened nowadays by authoritarianism.
Whether discussing economic fallacies, political myths, or the ethical foundations of liberalism, Liberdade is a brilliant conversation-starter about how humans flourish.
Buy the Book
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Liberdade-Conversations-Starters-Liberalism-America/dp/B0FR66V12J/
My Website: https://www.deirdremccloskey.com/liberdade