Admittedly, it is not easy to recognize a turning point in history when it is unfolding right before your eyes, when you are a contemporary witness of events. It is far easier to label affairs as turning points in hindsight. And that is why what is happening around the world right now—I call it the “Great Awakening,” or “The New Enlightenment”—is likely difficult for many of us to fully grasp and comprehend in its consequences.
In Argentina, Javier Milei was elected president in December 2023. As a self-declared libertarian, he promises to restore freedom and prosperity to a country that has been ruined by decades of socialism—to restore free markets and drastically fight back the state.
In the US, Donald Trump was elected the 47th president in November 2024. His promises: to bring about economic recovery, dismantle the chaos caused by globalists with their “Great Reset” agenda, shrink the “Deep State,” and fight its corruption and crimes.
In Europe, there are also, here and there (albeit more hesitantly), similar political approaches that aim to break with the old ways. Think of the Netherlands, Austria, and several Eastern European countries.
What is the core of all this? It is not, as is often claimed, about left or right, with right-wing or “right-populist” forces attempting to take control. Rather, it is about the following: Should freedom and voluntarism determine how people live together, or should coercion and violence dictate how we interact?
There are only two ways in which we humans can cooperate with each other: freedom, with its voluntary action on one side, and coercion and violence (including deception) on the other. Voluntary action means: I offer you an apple for 1 US dollar, and you buy it or reject my offer, entirely as you wish. Coercion and violence mean: I force you to buy the apple I offer, and if you refuse, I will punish you. So, voluntary action on one side, and coercion and violence on the other, there is no third way.
Against this backdrop, we can easily understand what libertarian means, what libertarianism is. Libertarianism is the consistent, logically-reasoned idea of individual freedom. It is characterized by the non-aggression principle: No one may initiate aggression or violence against other people or their property. Aggression here means the use or threat of physical violence against peaceful people and their property, or the use of deception to gain access to their labor or property.
How does libertarianism and the state (as we know it today) go together? The state is the territorial coercive monopolist with the ultimate authority over all conflicts in its territory. It also claims the right to do something that is forbidden to everyone else: collect taxes, that is, take money from people without providing a specific service in return. Such a state does not stand for freedom and voluntary action, but for coercion and violence. Furthermore, the state was not created through a voluntary agreement. Neither you nor I signed a contract, nor did our ancestors. In short, the state (as we know it today) was eventually imposed on people by others.
Maybe you’ll say: “That may all be true, but we need the state. Who else will build the roads, pay for schools, or ensure law and order?” A legitimate question. Indeed, people do desire things like roads, schools, and security—and no doubt especially the latter are essential for our peaceful coexistence. However, this doesn’t mean that these goods can only be provided by the state (let alone that they should be). That would be like watching a monkey ride a bike and concluding that only monkeys can ride bikes; it would be a logical fallacy, a non sequitur.
Logical errors are a red flag for libertarian thinkers. And so, at this point, the problem libertarianism has with the state comes to the fore: The state (as we know it today) is based, not on voluntary action, but on coercion and violence. But libertarians reject coercion and violence as principles for human interaction on logical and ethical grounds. For them, there is simply no convincing argument as to why anyone should or may rule over others—why anyone should force you to do something you do not want to do voluntarily.
Libertarians—adhering to the non-aggression principle—do not, as a matter of fact, reject law and order or the well-being of all. Rather, they reject the state (as we know it today), outright. Libertarians hold that interhuman relations must be based on the unconditional respect of the physical integrity of peoples’ private property, that all goods people desire must be provided in a free market, without any involvement of the state.
But is this realistic and practical? This is indeed a question that comes to mind when interpreting the Great Awakening as a kind of libertarian-oriented development unfolding before our eyes. It is fair to say that there are many signs that more and more people want an end to the obvious failures—economic decline, inflation, social and cultural conflicts, etc.
So far, the standard solution has always been: Vote out the old government, vote in a new one, and hope for better results. But exactly that approach has not worked in recent decades. It has made the state only larger and more overbearing, so that the state is now obviously the root cause of today’s most pressing problems.
In Argentina, people have drawn the conclusions that libertarianism recommends: Milei says he advocates for a policy of rolling back the state and creating a system of free markets. In the US, libertarian ideas are less clearly expressed, but there are signs, especially in the Trump administration’s goal to reduce the Deep State and break from the Great Reset agenda. With a delay, these impulses will likely be felt in Europe, especially if they prove to be successful in the US.
Or is it all just a big theater, another staged performance, a deception by those in power, with another inevitable disappointment to follow? I believe the answer to this pressing question largely depends on whether or not freedom of speech will be preserved—whether lost ground can be regained.
For freedom of speech is the key to enlightenment, to the Great Awakening. The German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) knew this when he wrote: “Through the mouth of two witnesses, truth is made known.” And even before Goethe, the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant of Königsberg said it in 1784: “What is required for this enlightenment is nothing more than freedom, and, indeed, the least harmful form of freedom—namely, the freedom to make public use of one’s reason in all matters.”
If freedom of speech is restored and maintained, then the chances are very high that—through public discourse—reason will overcome unreason, and truth will displace falsehood. And then, profound societal changes in the Western world will most likely take place, changes that will probably exceed what most of us can imagine—because as of today many people do not fully comprehend the scale of unreason and falsehood that has been imposed upon them by the lack of free speech and—caused by it—widespread ignorance.
Things that many today still regard as good and necessary, even indispensable, will be revealed as unacceptable, unnecessary, and some even as harmful. For instance, the state and its bureaucratic apparatus, fiat money, inflation, wars between states, state-dependent institutions—schools and universities—taxes, the EU, or the UN. The Great Awakening, the New Enlightenment, will put all of this to the test.
That is the reason why those in power right now are so keen on controlling, limiting freedom of speech, trying to restrict or effectively eliminate free speech, that is, in Kant’s words, “freedom to make public use of one’s reason in all matters.”
But if freedom of speech is preserved, the Great Awakening is likely to unfold—triggering far-reaching changes, even upheavals, in the Western world. These will be upheavals that will affect many of us in terms of how we relate to ourselves and our world—obligating us, in short, to Kant’s maxim of action: “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.”
The Great Awakening effectively amounts to the Enlightenment of the 21st century. It is nothing less than a move towards the libertarians’ ideal of individual freedom—as the libertarian-minded German poet Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) beautifully wrote:
The human being is created free, is free,
And if he were born in chains,
Do not be misled by the cries of the mob,
Not by the abuse of raging fools.
Before the slave, when he breaks the chain,
Before the free man, do not tremble.
