[jlavine]

Your characterization better fits someone like Thomas Friedman, not Pinker. Pinker absolutely acknowledges the many problems of the current system and the need to devise solutions to these problems. His argument is that things have, on the whole, been improving, we've solved big problems in the past, and we can solve current problems so long as we hold with Enlightenment and humanist / liberal values and put the effort in. He's arguing against those who want to throw away liberalism and replace it with some form of mystical authoritarianism, whether that be socialist, fascist, or whatever. And there are many such people, who take the benefits brought from liberalism for granted and would throw them all away for some romantic wishful thinking. His argument reminds me of essays written by Albert Camus defending liberalism against fascism during WWII and against the communism that was en vogue in France after the war among Sartre and others that Stalin referred to as his "useful idiots".

By liberalism here, I mean the original (and only sensible) meaning of a system of individual freedom in social, religious, and economic spheres, equality before the law, and democratic representation, not the New Left's utter misappropriation of the term to represent tribal resentment and mob justice.