Articles

"Seattle Surprise"

The WTO protests caught free-traders off guard. They shouldn't have.

Reason , February 2000

When protesters descended on Seattle in the tens of thousands, blocking World Trade Organization delegates and ordinary citizens from going about their business and, in some high-profile cases, wrecking "corporate" stores, the mainstream media and political establishment finally woke up to an ideological movement that has been building for at least a decade. International trade is no longer just a matter of interest-group politics. It has become a highly charged symbol of markets in general and, even more broadly, of the cultural dynamism that they unleash