As the West becomes secure in its victory, it will adopt non-Western aspects of the cultures it has defeated.

Oh, sometimes we have defeated the non-western cultures, as in the Columbian exchange, but that's not what's going on now. We are holding out choices to the world, gently, by example, using force only when we must.

We let the world choose between life and death, blessing and cursing, hoping that they may choose life. (Dt 30:19) And Santa Claus rides Indian elephants.

It is beautiful thing, really. The neo- and paleo-pagans we ground down in the Second World War believed that the way of the world was race war. The Communist God-haters we swept away after that long, twilight struggle hoped to ride non-western reaction against "Imperialism" to their own power. The savages we are presently scattering pine for an age we have surpassed almost without having noticed them.

And through it all we continue to wish them well and have ever been ready to embrace them all as neighbors as soon as they, not ourselves, have learned the necessary lessons.

A few questions for OJ:

1) Why does US foreign policy violently resist any kind of popular and democratic movements that arises in countries where there is money to be made by US companies? Why are corrupt regimes supported in places where they are convenient, and ignored in places where they are inconvenient?

2) Isn't communism another form of the end of history?

3) The Greeks thought they had something good figured out before the Romans conquered and copied their system. Are you familiar with the rhetoric of Roman political thinkers?

4) Do you think its possible for a political unit to call themselves a liberal democracy, but in practice violate their ideals in ways that make their system neither liberal nor democratic?

5) Do you see nothing to be worried about in terms of changes to the global environment? From your previous posts, I understand you feel that the earth has an unlimited carrying capacity?

6) Do you see Fukuyama, at all, as being one in a long line of thinkers who have proclaimed their system to be the best, and the last?

7) You don't see corporate America's control over both parties as an obvious threat to democracy, and the free market?

The greatest threat to democracy right now is the transfer of decision making into the hands of unaccountable private power. It's done by a lot of ways, but one of them is what they call "minimizing the state." This is kind of paradoxical for me. I don't think the federal government is a legitimate institution. I think it ought to be dismantled, in principle; just as I don't think there ought to be cages -- I don't think people ought to live in cages. On the other hand, if I'm in a cage and there's a saber tooth tiger outside, I'd be happy to keep the bars of the cage in place -- even though I think the cage is illegitimate. I think that image is not inappropriate. There are plenty of good arguments, in my opinion, against centralized government authority. On the other hand, there's a much worse danger right outside. The centralized government authority is at least to some extent under popular influence, and in principle at least under popular control. The unaccountable private power outside is under no public control. What they call minimizing the state -- transferring the decision making to unaccountable private interests -- is not helpful to human beings or to democracy or, for that matter, to the markets. In this time when we are told there is "a triumph of the market," the markets are threatened themselves, aren't they? What's developing is a kind of corporate mercantilism with huge centralized, more or less command economies, integrated with one another, closely tied to state power -- relying very heavily on state power, in fact -- and enforcing social policies and a conception of social and political order that happen to be highly beneficial to the interests of the top sectors of the population, the richest sectors.

4) Do you think its possible for a political unit to call themselves a liberal democracy, but in practice violate their ideals in ways that make their system neither liberal nor democratic?

Of course, but then they'd be replaced by an actual liberal democracy, in time.

It's not about the label, it's about actions.
Some democratic parties in various places call themselves "Communist", but they're just socialist-leaning elements in democratic societies.

5) Do you see nothing to be worried about in terms of changes to the global environment? From your previous posts, I understand you feel that the earth has an unlimited carrying capacity?

The Earth doesn't have unlimited carrying capacity, but the limit is far, FAR greater than the current population.
For instance, it wouldn't be difficult for 60 billion people to thrive and be happy, a number that may never be reached, or if so, is far in the future.

Note that almost ALL of the survival problems faced by the Earth's current population of 6 billion are due EXCLUSIVELY to political/social problems, and not to any unavoidable widespread environmental breakdown.

As for "changes to the global environment", some of them are going to have negative consequences, and some of them are going to be positive for humans, but NONE of them can currently be proven to be either caused by humans, or amenable to mitigation by human activity.

As we learn more about what's occurring, and our role in it, we can address those problems, but until then the only rational action is further observation and study.

7) You don't see corporate America's control over both parties as an obvious threat to democracy, and the free market?

If "corporate America" controls the political process, then why can't Wal~Mart, the most successful retailer EVER, get free-trade agreements to sail through Congress without opposition ?

Why is GM facing potential bankruptcy ?
Why doesn't their "control" allow them to immediately pawn off their health-care costs onto the general taxpaying public ?

Why did "Big Tobacco" have to give in to gov't extortion ?

Whither the steel tariffs ?

Corporate interests aggressively lobby politicians, but they merely have "influence", not "control" - just like every other special-interest faction.

The "free market", as it turns out, has NEVER been more free.
Consumers have had information-acquisition costs and transportation costs lowered to almost nothing, and they've used that leverage to squeeze producers until blood has come from their pores.
Pre-Wal~Mart, pre-Web searches, pre-eBay, pre-Amazon, and pre-Priceline, people shopped locally, or waited weeks for catalog purchases, were subjected to "whatever the market will bear" pricing, instead of Wal~Mart's "fixed profit margin" philosophy, and had to depend on paid travel agents to suss out the best travel deals.

Now it's far less relevant if the item that you want is across town, across the nation, or even across the world, and consumers almost always have the option of buying a low-priced used version, in good condition.

When have consumers EVER had more power ?
1931, perhaps, but this isn't a temporary phase of an economic slump, this is a PERMANENT "buyers' market".

FJ:

Thanks for the unattributed Noam Chomsky drivel.
Now spit out the Kool-Aid.

Posted by: Michael Herdegen at December 31, 2005 3:52 AM

Michael did such a great job on grog that we may move on to FJ's Chomskyite Kool-aid.

Far from being "unaccountable," private power is nothing but accountable. The very idea of markets insures this. As oj keeps telling us nothing coats as much as it used to*, and our "poor" live like emperors.

There is something in FJ's lamentation that explains the rottenness of left-wing thinking, namely, the hate-filled, sinful attitude of covetousness. The real Chomskyite Kool-aid drinker would gladly wait 10 years to pick up his Trabant, as long as he didn't have to chafe under to knowledge that the owners of the automobile industry weren't doing better than he.

Does it sound too crazy? Condider the complaint that our state power is ". . .enforcing a social and political order that happens to be highly beneficial to the interests of the top sectors of the population, the richest sectors."

That social and political order is beneficial to the top sector, of course; so also is it beneficial to every other sector.

The left complains of the "false consciousness" as being what's the matter with Kansas. Do you want to see false consciousness--behold the warped resentment that lusts for privation just so that it may not see its neighbor in plentitude.

*regarding things not costing more than they used to: I recently resumed skeet shooting, having been away from the sport for almost 30 years (I was once a rated 4-gun shooter--shot on a Marine Corps skeet team in the '70's) Guess what. Shotgun shells cost only slightly more than they did way back then. $3.80 a box over-the-counter, $3.40 if you can catch the guy at the club who buys them by the skid. What a country!

The very notion that the transfer of power back from a central state to private citizens is a fundamental threat to the Republic is perhaps the strangest thing we've been treated to here.

The Wife made me watch 20/20 last night, a special in which John Stossel debunked ten myths that everyone believes. As he pointed out, the entire world population could fit in TX at a population density lower than that of NYC; the UN even says that we now produce more food as a species than we consume; water and air are cleaner than they were and the nation more forested; and we live more comfortably than humans ever have.

fj, chomsky is a multi-millionaire, and laughs at people like you who actually buy in to his nonsense.