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FWIW, the whole notion of natural rights is pretty young. In historical terms the whole notion of freedom is rather young.
But we who love individual rights have great reason to be optimistic, because in the big picture, the world is really converting to our viewpoint.
Economically, the advantages are just too obvious now. The whole war in the future will be over what level of mixed economy is ideal, not whether a centrally-planned economy is better than a mixed one. Amazing as it seems now, people used to wonder whether the tyrants might be right, but a century of social experimentation only led to about 100,000,000 deaths...
As far as individual liberties go, it's a harder fight, but I also believe the trend has been towards them for a long time. It's just hard to see because we are in the middle of it.
There are two really cool trends going on worldwide. One is the end of scarcity. The human race is really getting good at providing for itself AND its planet; new numbers say we are more productive AND pollute less. The other is the end of the population boom predicted in the 70s. Birth rates are declining even in the third-world.
As we find we have enough, it lowers our desperation to control in order to guarantee access to resources. Look at how the Arabic culture became tribal: it did so as a result of living in a place with few resources. Now that this is no longer a problem, in the long run people's attitudes will become less tribal, less warlike, more civil.
As we increase our capability for communication, we virtually guarantee a decline in concentration of power. Simple statements - not even actions - of people like Lott and Santorum lead to actual losses in their power. (Santorum's loss will not be losing the 2006 election, which would be very unlikely, but in being taken less seriously on the national level; he's now a "marked man" of sorts for a while. Just you watch.)
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