The most influential political thinker of the 21st century was born in the waning hours of the 19th, exactly 100 years ago today. Friedrich August von Hayek was the latest of late bloomers.
It’s a reminder of socialism’s lingering prestige that people still refer to the tyranny that ruled Germany as “fascism” and the tyranny that ruled Russia as “Stalinism.”
Almost twenty years ago, an American friend of mine was drinking a lonely beer in a bar in Cairo. At the next table were a group of English-speaking travellers.