Brooks opines that a prevailing wind 'powering all ships' suddenly ceased to blow...
Was that wind laissez faire, LIEO?
The underlying question, which Brooks' account begs, is really whether Western civ is reducible to laissez faire, LIEO, as his account really implies? He doesn't want to get into all that.
Laissez faire has been going on since the 18th Century, (actually since the beginning of time in the forms of smuggling and piracy, under what was called mercantilism), gathered strength in the early 19th, and has dominated Western intellectual thinking and the international political and economic landscape ever since.
But no 'prevailing wind' ever powered all ships, certainly not a political military cultural civilizational or diplomatic wind.
The underlying question, which Brooks' account begs, is really whether Western civ is reducible to laissez faire, LIEO, as his account really implies? He doesn't want to get into all that.
Laissez faire has been going on since the 18th Century, (actually since the beginning of time in the forms of smuggling and piracy, under what was called mercantilism), gathered strength in the early 19th, and has dominated Western intellectual thinking and the international political and economic landscape ever since.
But no 'prevailing wind' ever powered all ships, certainly not a political military cultural civilizational or diplomatic wind.
That is only one huge problem with his account. If such a wind had long been made to blow, then why, now, should it ever have ceased? Has it really ceased?
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