The history of the West is largely a history of liberty. Antigone,Jesus, the emergence of pluralism and independent cities, theMagna Carta, the Renaissance, Martin Luther, the Enlightenment,the American Revolution, the repeal of the Corn Laws, the abolitionof slavery, all mark continued progress toward the liberation of theindividual from the coercive power of the state.
The 19th century seemed the culmination of that progress, a timewhen, according to the Nation in 1900, "Freed from the vexatiousmeddling of governments, men devoted themselves to their naturaltask, the bettering of their condition, with the wonderful resultswhich surround us." But at the end of that great century of peace,progress, and industrial revolution in Europe, when the triumphof liberty seemed almost complete, many liberals saw the ancienregime returning in a new guise. Herbert Spencer warned of "thecorning slavery," and the Nation worried that "before [statism] isagain repudiated there must be international struggles on a terrificscale. " The liberals' fears were realized; the 20th century has beena century of war and statism on an unprecedented scale. Totalitarianideologies gave the state a legitimacy it had lost, and technologyenabled governments to practice mass murder. Great Britain andthe United States were spared the horrors of Nazism and communism,but some of the same nationalist, technocratic, and statistimpulses lay behind the growth of the welfare-warfare state inthose countries.