I was published today at Liberty Unbound with an article on the Arab Spring, democracy, mass movements, and the dangerous romanticism with which the West often views political protests in the developing world.

In the article, I argue that protests in Egypt, Libya, Turkey, Bulgaria, Brazil, India, and elsewhere should not automatically be understood as movements for liberty. More often, they are driven by contradictory motives, herd instincts, entitlement, and the belief that democracy can somehow create prosperity from nothing. Democracy has given the state moral legitimacy and made it part of society’s mental DNA. The result is an expanding, increasingly brittle state, even as people become more dependent on it.

Read the archived article at Liberty Unbound via the Wayback Machine →