This is thinking in public, a program dedicated to intelligent conversation about

front-line theological and cultural issues with the people who are shaping them.

I'm Albert Moula, your host and president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville,

Kentucky.

Ian Murray serves as the Vice President of Strategy and Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise

Institute, which is a public think tank devoted to economic issues.

Born in the United Kingdom, Mr. Murray earned his master of business administration from the University of London, and then a Master of Arts from Oxford University.

He began his career as a public servant in the UK, working for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her successor John Major. Since coming to the United States, Mr. the Financial Times and National Review.

He's the author of three books, his most recent book,

The Socialist Temptation, is the topic of our conversation today.

Ian Murray, welcome to thinking in public.

It's a delight to be with you today. Your book is

really important. I think it's the best one-volume work in the current

literature explaining socialism is a contemporary temptation and threat, but I want to back up just a little bit and say that

arguably the rise of socialism in an organized political intellectually understandable form is one of the

surprises of the last to say 20 years that shouldn't have been a surprise?

I think that's very much the case.

I come from that generation that the thought would be defeated socialism,

certainly in Britain,

that you had somewhat different threats over here.

But we thought we'd beaten it.

And when the Berlin Wall came down in 1990, that was the end we thought.

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