The New Road to Serfdom Read Free Page A

and the principles inherent therein. It means loyalty to the republican ideal: the ideal, that is, of a virtuous, independent, and freestanding citizenry. Those who reject these ideals, who eschew the principles on which the United States was founded, can fairly be described as un-American.
    I know that many people, in the United States and abroad, detest that term, seeing it as intolerant, even McCarthyite. But it is important to remember that America has generally had a civic rather than an ethnic conception of citizenship. The label “un-American” is not affixed to, say, immigrant communities or religious minorities; it is applied to those who want to turn the United States into a fundamentally different country.
    For the avoidance of doubt, the last thing I want to do is excuse McCarthyism. Senator McCarthy was a foul-mouthed bully, and many guiltless Americans suffered as a consequence of his ambitions. Nonetheless, it is worth remembering that the hunt for those guilty of un-American activities was prompted by genuine cases of Soviet espionage. High-ranking government officials had been secretly working for an enemy regime. Their aim, as they later cheerfully admitted, was wholly to transform their country, to wipe away nearly two hundred years of constitutional development and subject America to an alien ideology: communism. The term “un-American” was precisely apposite.
    In the hysteria that followed, more innocent victims than traitors were condemned. Committed democrats, who simply happened to hold left-wing views, were treated as agents of a foreign power. Indeed, the ideological persecution that accompanied the search for communist agitators was itself rather un-American, negating as it did the belief in freedom of conscience that had motivated the early colonists. But this doesn’t invalidate the notion that some positions can reasonably be classed as un-American, in that they are incompatible with the vision of the founders as upheld and developed by their successors.
    Because the essence of America is doctrinal, rather than territorial or racial, people around the world tend to take up positions for or against it. You don’t oftenhear of, say, anti-Colombianism. But anti-Americanism is the credo of those who loathe the values that were built into the bricks of the republic. Anti-Americans take many forms. They can be European intellectuals who see American capitalism as pitiless, crass, and vulgar. They can be Middle
Eastern jihadis
who fear the Americanization of their own societies. They can be Latin American
anti-yanquistas
whose hostility to U.S. foreign policy is laced with resentment against the émigrés who throw their dollars around when they return to their home pueblos. They can be apologists for African strongmen, or proponents of an autocratic “Asian way.”
    These disparate groups might disagree profoundly on what would constitute an ideal society. But they agree on what doesn’t. They dislike free markets (“greed”). They dislike unrestrained consumerism (“vulgarity”). They dislike the assumption that all societies are capable of democratic development (“Yankee imperialism”). They dislike the idea that people should be free to choose a different lifestyle from their parents’ (“coca-colonialism”). In short, they dislike liberty, and resent the country that most embodies it.
    The flip side is that there are many more around the world who admire what America stands for, who see the country as a repository of freedom, who exult in its triumphs and regret its failures.
    __________
    And, of course, there
are
failures. Like every nation on Earth, the United States can behave selfishly and hypocritically. It doesn’t always live up to the ideals of its constitution. Indeed, the premise of this chapter needs some qualification. When I wrote that most Americans had consciously chosen their nationality, I might have added that not all were in this category. Some were