British - Historian | April 18, 1964 -
The real point of me isn't that I'm good looking. It's that I'm clever. I've got a brain! I would rather be called a highly intelligent historian than a gorgeous pouting one.
Niall Ferguson
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The debate that I'm interested in having is with seriously smart people about how we design institutions in the 21st century that will genuinely address problems of poverty and educational underachievement.
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Ask me not, 'Are you rightwing,' but ask me 'Are you a committed believer in individual freedom, the values of the enlightenment?' Then, yeah, if being rightwing means believing Adam Smith was right, both in the 'Wealth of Nations' and the 'Theory of Moral Sentiments,' then I'm rightwing.
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If being rightwing is thinking that Karl Marx's doctrine was a catastrophe for humanity, then I'm rightwing.
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It's great to see countries like China and India lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty by essentially copying Western ways of doing things.
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Over time, the welfare state has become dysfunctional in a surprising way. But in a way it became a victim of its own success: It became so successful at prolonging life, that it becomes financially unsustainable, unless you make major changes to things like retirement ages.
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One of the main arguments that I make in my new book, 'The Great Degeneration,' is that the rule of law in the U.S. is becoming the rule of lawyers.
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I can't think of anything I would rather do with my money than buy my children the best possible education.
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I was never a very convincing social conservative, and always avoided associating myself with that part of the broader conservative movement.
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I would say I'm a 19th-century liberal, possibly even an 18th-century one.
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My fundamental tenets are concerned with freedom of the individual; the market isn't perfect, but it's the best available way of allocating resources.
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The rise of the West is, quite simply, the pre-eminent historical phenomenon of the second half of the second millennium after Christ.
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