Persisting

For many of us, who believe in the free movement of people, goods, capital, and ideas, who thus despair of political developments in 2016, and who thus worry about 2017 as, inter alia, the Trump Presidency begins, this writer recommends a read of the leading, year-end essay in The Economist's Holiday Double Issue, "The year of living dangerously". It's an antidote for despair. Moreover, it's an incentive to persist with liberal thought.

Here are some highlights of the essay:

- 2016 was a year of setbacks, not just regarding Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, but also regarding the implosion of Syria, left to its suffering, and regarding globalization, as it became a slur, replaced with nationalism and authoritarianism;

- It's no time to write the epitaph for liberalism; indeed, its claim to be the best way to offer dignity and continue to bring about prosperity and equity, as it did in the 19th century when relentless technological change threatened, and as it has since especially in the developing world, needs emphasis;

- illiberalism is popular; one hears it in calls to "take back control", from the mouths of autocrats promising to hold back and even reverse the cosmopolitan tide;

-rather than ruling via warfare, strife and bullying, governments should go on pursuing trade and treaties;

-today, more than ever, liberalism must offer an answer for the pessimists who believe wealth does not spread itself, new technologies only serve to destroy jobs, and other cultures are menacing. Liberals must advance new policies within the framework that technology and social needs will open up.

- Brexit and the Trump presidency will prove costly and harmful. But there is an undeniable demand for change, which is precisely what liberals, with their capacity exhibited over two centuries for reinvention through innovation, are poised to harness.