What did trust, cooperation, progressive taxation and the interventionist state bequeath to western societies in the decades following 1945? The short answer is, in varying degrees, security, prosperity, social services and greater equality. We have grown accustomed in recent years to the assertion that the price paid for these benefits--in economic inefficiency, insufficient innovation, stifled entrepreneurship, public debt and a loss of private initiative--was too high. Most of these criticisms are demonstrably false.