Arguments gave way to verities: capitalism would replace communism and bring democracy to the world. As negative freedom became common sense in the United States, one determinism replaced another. If the absence of private property had not brought freedom, then the presence of private property surely would. Since the iron laws of history would liberate everyone, there was no need to know the past—even the details of communism and fascism, the two great political alternatives of the twentieth century, could be forgotten. At the moment I chose history, it was deemed irrelevant. And yet freedom
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