The loss of the freedom to fail is a terrible symptom of a more subtle, growing threat to freedom, but it is not the main threat. Like cancer, it begins with a relatively healthy organism. It slowly creeps up; progressively grows little by little until it eventually spreads and destroys the organism as a whole. What is this cancer? It is a system of ideas that stray from the founding principles of the United States of America, i.e., individualism and capitalism.
The progressive movement, i.e., collectivism and socialism, is the most identifiable system that strays from the founding principles. How is this so? In order to understand, one must first begin by defining individualism. Individualism is the belief that an individual man exists for himself, or he is an end in and of himself, that he has certain natural, inalienable rights, i.e. life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness; and these rights belong only to individuals, they cannot be held collectively. Collectivism is the exact opposite. As capitalism is a natural consequence of freedom and individualism, socialism is a natural consequence of collectivism and tyranny.
In order to briefly explain and illustrate this concept, one symptom will be used. This symptom is the loss of the freedom to fail. The progressive movement has lead to a departure from the ideas of individualism to the ideas of collectivism. As a consequence, some individual liberties have been lost, one of them being the freedom to fail. Why is this significant? It is as Michael Goodwin states, “without failure, we cannot know what success is.” People need to be able to fail in order to know what success is. In capitalism, loss is just as important as gain. “We need the freedom to fail as part of the freedom to succeed.”1
With individualism comes personal responsibility. The loss of the freedom to fail leads to a loss of personal responsibility. If businesses, or individuals, are not allowed to fail, or do not suffer the consequences of their bad decisions and practices by being “bailed out”, they do not really learn what works and what does not work. While enabled to continue in their ways, they are at a much higher risk of repeating those same mistakes or worse. This is what is called moral hazard. As Goodwin explained, man, as an individual, has the right to the pursuit of happiness, not happiness itself. What progressives fail to understand is that to know happiness, one must also be allowed to know misery. If man does not know misery, how can he possibly know happiness? These shields, or protections, actually do far more harm than good. They are not capitalism. Both losses and gains are essential parts of individualism and capitalism.
Ultimately, the loss of the freedom to fail is merely a symptom of different ideas and movements that stray from individualism and capitalism. Progressivism is the most prominent of these. Only individualism will protect and preserve freedom.
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