The early 1920s epitomized economic growth and employment opportunity. Good things in themselves, but especially so when “progressive” thinking at the end of the Great War argued that if nations wound down their “warfare-state” programs of government interventions, price controls, and deficit spending, a period of massive unemployment would ensue as soldiers returned from the front and public expenditures shrank.

Anything but happened, especially in America, where the laissez-faire Warren G. Harding replaced the Big State of Woodrow Wilson. One reaction of this was to put the lie to the statist sympathies of one Herbert Croly. An early progressive, Croly, later a founder of “The New Republic,” was the author in 1906 of, “The Promise of American Life.” One of its prescriptions was to marry the power of the state to realize human fulfillment.

Or the idea of using “Hamiltonian means to achieve Jeffersonian ends.” Only disciples of the strong central government ideas of Alexander Hamilton could cheer this prospect. Who can deny the benefits of meeting your full potential? Yet the means to achieve it were antithetical to limited-government Jeffersonians: redistributive taxes, social welfare programs, and the requisite “big state” to make it all happen.

Now comes Britain’s exit from the European Union. It holds out the promise of something different, or something that hasn’t been tried in recent years. Its promise is independence. Ostensibly, the objective is for the United Kingdom to exit the European Union. That, though, is but the beginning The promise goes, and will need to go, beyond simply leaving one arena of over-government. Don’t Britons deserve a “full Brexit”?

“Hell, yeah!” Brexiteers will proclaim. And Boris Johnson, iconoclast, bon vivant, and Brexit cheerleader-in-chief, is just the man to do it. He can adapt Croly’s phraseology to fit the new Brexit paradigm. He can “make Britain great again,” not by using the levers of State power but by listing the dead hand of government from the economy and unleashing human potential.

Such as deregulating, not only onerous EU laws that are barriers to trade but also regulations by domestic “crony capitalists” that deter innovative rivals from competing for consumers. Or removing “minimum wage” laws that penalize its intended beneficiaries, when employers can’t afford to give the young or unskilled the opportunities to gain necessary experience to climb the ladder of economic and social success.

Progressives, like all socialists, confuse government intervention with the voluntary actions of free citizens. They believe that if the State doesn’t take control of creating employment, there is little likelihood that the private sector will create new jobs. Such were the roots of Labor’s election manifesto pledge to “renationalize” key UK industries. Britons alive to the possibilities of Brexit knew better. They had not forgotten the lessons of Thatcherism, about the dynamism and accountability of free markets.

Even if Jeremy Corbyn refused to heed the lessons of history. Frédéric Bastiat surmised that “every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all.” Such thinking is inimical to the innovation that is key for economic growth and future prosperity. It was one reason why Lord Matt Ridley, author of The Rational Optimist, is a Brexit supporter.

“Hostility to innovation in the European Commission and Parliament,” he asserts, “is the biggest reason I voted Leave in 2016.”

For the EU presents more barriers than bridges to promoting entrepreneurial skill. Its regulatory regime requires alignment measures that hinder more creativity than it fosters. Croly is clearly part of the mindset of Brussels mandarins, but shouldn’t Jefferson be the guide to inspire Brexit? Why, after all, would Britain want to remain hampered by a sclerotic state organization hostile to true free enterprise?

Boris Johnson would be wise to treat ongoing trade negotiations skeptically, never giving up his goal of a “clean break” and bilateral trade deals. President Trump is “yugely” optimistic about signing a free trade agreement with the UK. As are Canada and a host of other countries of the Commonwealth. Time to heed Lord Ridley’s advice to forsake seeking “a magic way to create innovation” and “focus on removing things that stop it.”