Two Cheers for Capitalism
We are clearly heading toward another great debate about the nature of capitalism. Contemporary capitalism’s critics are becoming both bolder and more intellectually rigorous. Protests and discussions are sprouting up all over the place.
For example, this week I was attending the Aspen Action Forum, a gathering of young business and NGO leaders selected because of their work for social change. My friend and Times colleague Anand Giridharadas delivered a courageous and provocative keynote address that ruffled some feathers, earned a standing ovation and has had people talking ever since.
Anand argued that a rough etiquette has developed among those who work in and raise money for nonprofits. The rich are to be praised for the good they do with their philanthropy, but they are never to be challenged for the harm they do in their businesses. “Capitalism’s rough edges must be sanded and its surplus fruit shared, but the underlying system must NEVER be questioned,” he said.
Anand suggested that in these days of growing income inequality, this approach is no longer good enough. “Sometimes I wonder,” he said, “whether these various forms of giving back have become to our era what the papal indulgence was to the Middle Ages: a relatively inexpensive way of getting oneself seemingly on the right side of justice, without having to alter the fundamentals of one’s life.”
The winners of our age, he continued, may be helping society with their foundations, but in their business enterprises, the main occupation of their life, they are doing serious harm. First they are using political and financial muscle to enact policies that help them “stack up, protect and bequeath the money.”
Second, they offload risks and volatility onto workers. Uber’s owners have a lot of security but they deny any responsibility for their workers’ “lives, health, desire for career growth.”
Third, the owners of capital are increasingly remote from their communities. “In the old days, if a company C.E.O. suddenly dumped the defined-benefits pension, you knew who to go see to complain. Today it may be an unseen private equity fund that lobbies for the change.” The virtualization of ownership insulates the privileged from the “devastating consequences” of their decisions.
Anand’s speech struck me as deeply patriotic in its passion and concern. He didn’t offer a policy agenda to address these deep structural problems, but his description of them implied that government would have to get much more heavily involved in corporate governance and private-sector investment decisions than ever before.
Indeed, progressive economists are already walking down this path. Hillary Clinton’s new tax plan is based on the assumption that government officials are smart enough to tell investors how they should time their investments. Her corporate governance proposals are based on the idea that federal officials know better than executives how they should run their own companies. There will be much more of this in years to come.
This strikes me as a departure from recent progressivism. In the recent past progressives have argued for a little redistribution to fund human capital development: early childhood education, child and family leave, better community colleges.
But the next wave of thinking implies that it is not enough to simply give people access to capitalism and provide them with a safety net. The underlying system has to be reconfigured.
This is a bigger debate.
People like me will argue that it’s a wrong turn. First, government planners are not smart enough to plan complex systems in this way. The beauty of capitalism is that it takes a dim view of human reason. No group of experts is smart enough to allocate the resources of society well. Capitalism sets up a system of discovery as different people compete and adapt in accordance with market signals. If you try to get technocratic planners organizing investment markets or internal business governance, you will wind up with perversities and rigidities that will make everything worse.
Second, the attempt to tame the market will end up stultifying it. Everybody knows that capitalism’s creative destruction can be rough. But over the last few decades, a ragged version of global capitalism in places ranging from China to Nigeria has brought about the greatest reduction in poverty in human history. America’s fluid style of capitalism attracts driven and talented immigrants and creates vast waves of technological innovation. This dynamism is always in danger of being stultified by planners who think they can tame it and by governing elites who want to rig it. We should not take it for granted.
The coming debate about capitalism will be between those who want to restructure the underlying system and those who want to help people take advantage of its rough intensity. It will be between people who think you need strong government to defeat oligarchy and those who think you need open competition.
This will be fun.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/31/opini ... 05309&_r=0
******
Does Capitalism Need to Be Tamed?
Readers react to a David Brooks column opposing too much government interference in the market.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/04/opini ... 05309&_r=0
FORMS OF GOVERNANCE
Incurable American Excess
A few years ago, Americans and Europeans were asked in a Pew Global Attitudes survey what was more important: “freedom to pursue life’s goals without state interference,” or “state guarantees that nobody is in need.” In the United States, 58 percent chose freedom and only 35 percent a state pledge to eradicate neediness. In Britain, the response was the opposite: 55 percent opted for state guarantees and just 38 percent for freedom. On the European Continent — in Germany, France and Spain — those considering state protection as more important than freedom from state interference rose to 62 percent.
This finding gets to the heart of trans-Atlantic differences. Americans, who dwell in a vast country, sparsely populated by European standards, are hardwired to the notion of individual self-reliance. Europeans, with two 20th-century experiences of cataclysmic societal fracture, are bound to the idea of social solidarity as prudent safeguard and guarantor of human decency. The French see the state as a noble idea and embodiment of citizens’ rights. Americans tend to see the state as a predator on those rights. The French ennoble the dutiful public servant. Americans ennoble the disruptive entrepreneur.
To return from Europe to the United States, as I did recently, is to be struck by the crumbling infrastructure, the paucity of public spaces, the conspicuous waste (of food and energy above all), the dirtiness of cities and the acuteness of their poverty. It is also to be overwhelmed by the volume and vital clamor of American life, the challenging interaction, the bracing intermingling of Americans of all stripes, the strident individualism. Europe is more organized, America more alive. Europe purrs; even its hardship seems somehow muted. America revs. The differences can feel violent.
In his intriguing new book, “The United States of Excess,” Robert Paarlberg, a political scientist, cites the 2011 Pew survey as he grapples with these divergent cultures. His focus is on American overconsumption of fuel and food. Why, he asks, is the United States an “outlier” in greenhouse gas emissions and obesity, and what, if anything, will it do about it? Per capita carbon dioxide emissions in the United States are about twice those of the other wealthy nations of the 34-member Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. American obesity (just over a third of American adults are now obese) is running at about twice the European average and six times the Japanese.
Paarlberg argues persuasively that these American phenomena are linked. He finds their causes in demographic, cultural and political factors. A resource-rich, spacious nation, mistrustful of government authority, persuaded that responsibility is individual rather than collective, optimistic about the capacity of science and technology to resolve any problem, and living in a polarized political system paralyzed by its “multiple veto points,” tends toward “a scrambling form of adaptation” rather than “effective mitigation.”
Americans, in their majority, don’t want to increase taxes on fossil fuels or tax sugar-sweetened drinks because they see such measures as a regressive encroachment on individual freedoms — to drive an automobile and consume what you want. They won’t go the German route of promoting renewables like solar and wind power by guaranteeing higher fixed prices for those who generate it because higher electricity costs would result. Whether it comes to food or fuel, they don’t want measures where “voting-age adults are being coerced into a lifestyle change.”
Individualism trumps all — and innovation, it is somehow believed, will save the country from individualism’s ravages. Paarlberg notes that: “Americans eat alone while at work, alone while commuting to work in the car, alone at the food court while shopping, alone at home while watching TV, and alone in front of the refrigerator both before and after normal mealtime.”
But if all that eating continues to generate obesity — as it will — Americans tend to put their faith in “improved bariatric surgeries, and new blockbuster diet drugs” that “will be challenges welcomed by America’s innovative and responsive private market institutions.” Rather than cut back, they prefer to consume more — whether fuel or food — and then find ways to offset excess.
With the strong policy measures needed to control excess consumption — taxes, regulations and mandates — blocked, political leaders are “tempted to shift more resources and psychological energy toward the second-best path of adaptation,” Paarlberg writes: Easier, and potentially more profitable, to develop drought-resistant farm crops or improve coastal protection systems than tackle global warming by cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
His conclusions are pessimistic. The world should not expect America to change. Its response to overconsumption is inadequate. On global warming, the country adapts but does not confront, content “to protect itself, and itself alone.” On obesity, it shuns the kind of coordinated policy action that will help the less fortunate, particularly disadvantaged minorities.
The question, of course, is whether America’s virtues — its creative churn, vitality and energy — are intrinsic to these vices. My own pessimistic conclusion is that they probably are.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/07/opini ... pe=article
[/b]
A few years ago, Americans and Europeans were asked in a Pew Global Attitudes survey what was more important: “freedom to pursue life’s goals without state interference,” or “state guarantees that nobody is in need.” In the United States, 58 percent chose freedom and only 35 percent a state pledge to eradicate neediness. In Britain, the response was the opposite: 55 percent opted for state guarantees and just 38 percent for freedom. On the European Continent — in Germany, France and Spain — those considering state protection as more important than freedom from state interference rose to 62 percent.
This finding gets to the heart of trans-Atlantic differences. Americans, who dwell in a vast country, sparsely populated by European standards, are hardwired to the notion of individual self-reliance. Europeans, with two 20th-century experiences of cataclysmic societal fracture, are bound to the idea of social solidarity as prudent safeguard and guarantor of human decency. The French see the state as a noble idea and embodiment of citizens’ rights. Americans tend to see the state as a predator on those rights. The French ennoble the dutiful public servant. Americans ennoble the disruptive entrepreneur.
To return from Europe to the United States, as I did recently, is to be struck by the crumbling infrastructure, the paucity of public spaces, the conspicuous waste (of food and energy above all), the dirtiness of cities and the acuteness of their poverty. It is also to be overwhelmed by the volume and vital clamor of American life, the challenging interaction, the bracing intermingling of Americans of all stripes, the strident individualism. Europe is more organized, America more alive. Europe purrs; even its hardship seems somehow muted. America revs. The differences can feel violent.
In his intriguing new book, “The United States of Excess,” Robert Paarlberg, a political scientist, cites the 2011 Pew survey as he grapples with these divergent cultures. His focus is on American overconsumption of fuel and food. Why, he asks, is the United States an “outlier” in greenhouse gas emissions and obesity, and what, if anything, will it do about it? Per capita carbon dioxide emissions in the United States are about twice those of the other wealthy nations of the 34-member Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. American obesity (just over a third of American adults are now obese) is running at about twice the European average and six times the Japanese.
Paarlberg argues persuasively that these American phenomena are linked. He finds their causes in demographic, cultural and political factors. A resource-rich, spacious nation, mistrustful of government authority, persuaded that responsibility is individual rather than collective, optimistic about the capacity of science and technology to resolve any problem, and living in a polarized political system paralyzed by its “multiple veto points,” tends toward “a scrambling form of adaptation” rather than “effective mitigation.”
Americans, in their majority, don’t want to increase taxes on fossil fuels or tax sugar-sweetened drinks because they see such measures as a regressive encroachment on individual freedoms — to drive an automobile and consume what you want. They won’t go the German route of promoting renewables like solar and wind power by guaranteeing higher fixed prices for those who generate it because higher electricity costs would result. Whether it comes to food or fuel, they don’t want measures where “voting-age adults are being coerced into a lifestyle change.”
Individualism trumps all — and innovation, it is somehow believed, will save the country from individualism’s ravages. Paarlberg notes that: “Americans eat alone while at work, alone while commuting to work in the car, alone at the food court while shopping, alone at home while watching TV, and alone in front of the refrigerator both before and after normal mealtime.”
But if all that eating continues to generate obesity — as it will — Americans tend to put their faith in “improved bariatric surgeries, and new blockbuster diet drugs” that “will be challenges welcomed by America’s innovative and responsive private market institutions.” Rather than cut back, they prefer to consume more — whether fuel or food — and then find ways to offset excess.
With the strong policy measures needed to control excess consumption — taxes, regulations and mandates — blocked, political leaders are “tempted to shift more resources and psychological energy toward the second-best path of adaptation,” Paarlberg writes: Easier, and potentially more profitable, to develop drought-resistant farm crops or improve coastal protection systems than tackle global warming by cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
His conclusions are pessimistic. The world should not expect America to change. Its response to overconsumption is inadequate. On global warming, the country adapts but does not confront, content “to protect itself, and itself alone.” On obesity, it shuns the kind of coordinated policy action that will help the less fortunate, particularly disadvantaged minorities.
The question, of course, is whether America’s virtues — its creative churn, vitality and energy — are intrinsic to these vices. My own pessimistic conclusion is that they probably are.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/07/opini ... pe=article
[/b]
In the Age of ISIS, Can We Still Have ‘Just Wars’?
This interview, the seventh in a series on political topics, discusses philosophical issues concerning the morality of war. My interviewee is Cecile Fabre, professor of political philosophy at the University of Oxford. She is the author of “Cosmopolitan War.” — Gary Gutting
GARY GUTTING: Many readers will be familiar with the so-called just war theory, with most people seeing, for example, World War II as a just war on the Allied side and an unjust war on the Axis side. To what extent do you think this traditional theory is relevant to wars and other sorts of military interventions in the 21st century?
CECILE FABRE: It is relevant, with some modifications. For example, the traditional theory holds that a just war must be in the defense of the homeland whereas most theorists now argue that defending civilian populations from gross abuses at the hands of their regime, or of factions within their country, is also a just cause. Similarly, it’s now widely held that not only sovereign states have a right to wage war but also those rebelling against (for example) a colonial regime, a foreign occupier or their own grossly abusive government. This is important, because most contemporary wars are civil wars. I agree with both these modifications.
More....
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/20 ... wars/?_r=0
This interview, the seventh in a series on political topics, discusses philosophical issues concerning the morality of war. My interviewee is Cecile Fabre, professor of political philosophy at the University of Oxford. She is the author of “Cosmopolitan War.” — Gary Gutting
GARY GUTTING: Many readers will be familiar with the so-called just war theory, with most people seeing, for example, World War II as a just war on the Allied side and an unjust war on the Axis side. To what extent do you think this traditional theory is relevant to wars and other sorts of military interventions in the 21st century?
CECILE FABRE: It is relevant, with some modifications. For example, the traditional theory holds that a just war must be in the defense of the homeland whereas most theorists now argue that defending civilian populations from gross abuses at the hands of their regime, or of factions within their country, is also a just cause. Similarly, it’s now widely held that not only sovereign states have a right to wage war but also those rebelling against (for example) a colonial regime, a foreign occupier or their own grossly abusive government. This is important, because most contemporary wars are civil wars. I agree with both these modifications.
More....
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/20 ... wars/?_r=0
Walls, Borders, a Dome and Refugees
After Donald Trump proposed building a high wall all along the U.S.-Mexico border, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, not to be out-trumped, basically said, I see your wall and raise you one, stating that it was “legitimate” to consider building a wall along the 5,525-mile U.S.-Canada border as well.
Well, I see both your walls — and raise you a dome.
That’s right. I think we shouldn’t just put high walls on both borders, but also a retractable dome over the whole country and, for good measure, let’s mine our harbors, too — as Lindsey Graham jokingly suggested, criticizing his wall-obsessed fellow Republican presidential contenders.
I know, Walker’s proposal is crazy. But, alas, the fears that he and Trump are playing on with this wall theme are not crazy: Some very big tectonic plates are moving, and people feel it under their feet. The world is being redivided into regions of “order” and “disorder,” and for the first time in a long time, we don’t have an answer for all the people flocking to get out of the world of disorder and into the world of order.
But being surrounded by two oceans and friendly democracies in Mexico and Canada, the U.S. is actually less affected by this new era. (The net migration flow from Mexico to the U.S. is now zero.) In fact, we should keep enhancing our economic integration with both our neighbors in ways that can make all three nations more stable and thriving.
It is why, when it comes to our borders, I favor only high walls with big gates — yes, control the borders but with more efficient gates that enhance investment, common standards, trade, tourism and economic opportunity in all three countries. Nothing would make us more secure. When it comes to our neighbors, Trump and Walker are making Americans both afraid and dumb, purely for political gain.
But if either man were running for office in Europe today, his position on walls everywhere would be getting a big hearing, as masses of refugees from the African and Middle Eastern worlds of disorder try to walk, swim, sail, drive, bus and rail their way into Europe’s world of order.
And this is just the beginning. That is because the three largest forces on the planet — Mother Nature (climate change, biodiversity loss and population growth in developing countries), Moore’s law (the steady doubling in the power of microchips and, more broadly, of technology) and the market (globalization tying the world ever more tightly together) — are all in simultaneous, rapid acceleration.
This combination is stressing strong countries and blowing up weak ones. And the ones disintegrating first are those that are the most artificial: their borders are mostly straight lines that correspond to no ethnic, tribal or religious realities and their leaders, rather than creating citizens with equal rights, wasted the last 60 years by plundering their national resources. So when their iron fists come off (in Libya and Iraq with our help), there is nothing to hold these unnatural polygons together.
Since World War II, U.S. foreign policy has focused on integrating more countries into a democratic, free-market world community built on the rule of law while seeking to deter those states that resist from destabilizing the rest. This is what we know how to do.
But, argues Michael Mandelbaum, author of the forthcoming “Mission Failure: America and the World in the Post-Cold War Era”: “There is nothing in our experience that has prepared us for what is going on now: the meltdown of an increasing number of states all at the same time in a globalized world. And what if China starts failing in a globalized world?"
Historically we’ve counted on empires, like the Ottomans, colonial powers, like Britain and France, and autocratic strongmen, such as kings and colonels, to hold artificial states together and provide order in these regions. But we’re now in a post-imperial, post-colonial and, soon, I believe, post-authoritarian world, in which no one will be able to control these disorderly regions with an iron fist while the world of order goes about its business as best it can with occasional reminders of the nasty disarray on its frontiers.
Your heart aches for the Syrian refugees flocking to Europe. And Germany’s generosity in absorbing so many is amazing. We have a special obligation to Libyan and Iraqi refugees. But, with so many countries melting down, just absorbing more and more refugees is not sustainable.
If we’re honest, we have only two ways to halt this refugee flood, and we don’t want to choose either: build a wall and isolate these regions of disorder, or occupy them with boots on the ground, crush the bad guys and build a new order based on real citizenship, a vast project that would take two generations. We fool ourselves that there is a sustainable, easy third way: just keep taking more refugees or create “no-fly zones” here or there.
Will the ends, will the means. And right now no one wants to will the means, because all you win is a bill. So the world of disorder keeps spilling over into the world of order. And beware: The market, Mother Nature and Moore’s law are just revving their engines. You haven’t seen this play before, which is why we have some hard new thinking and hard choices ahead.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/09/opini ... 05309&_r=0
After Donald Trump proposed building a high wall all along the U.S.-Mexico border, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, not to be out-trumped, basically said, I see your wall and raise you one, stating that it was “legitimate” to consider building a wall along the 5,525-mile U.S.-Canada border as well.
Well, I see both your walls — and raise you a dome.
That’s right. I think we shouldn’t just put high walls on both borders, but also a retractable dome over the whole country and, for good measure, let’s mine our harbors, too — as Lindsey Graham jokingly suggested, criticizing his wall-obsessed fellow Republican presidential contenders.
I know, Walker’s proposal is crazy. But, alas, the fears that he and Trump are playing on with this wall theme are not crazy: Some very big tectonic plates are moving, and people feel it under their feet. The world is being redivided into regions of “order” and “disorder,” and for the first time in a long time, we don’t have an answer for all the people flocking to get out of the world of disorder and into the world of order.
But being surrounded by two oceans and friendly democracies in Mexico and Canada, the U.S. is actually less affected by this new era. (The net migration flow from Mexico to the U.S. is now zero.) In fact, we should keep enhancing our economic integration with both our neighbors in ways that can make all three nations more stable and thriving.
It is why, when it comes to our borders, I favor only high walls with big gates — yes, control the borders but with more efficient gates that enhance investment, common standards, trade, tourism and economic opportunity in all three countries. Nothing would make us more secure. When it comes to our neighbors, Trump and Walker are making Americans both afraid and dumb, purely for political gain.
But if either man were running for office in Europe today, his position on walls everywhere would be getting a big hearing, as masses of refugees from the African and Middle Eastern worlds of disorder try to walk, swim, sail, drive, bus and rail their way into Europe’s world of order.
And this is just the beginning. That is because the three largest forces on the planet — Mother Nature (climate change, biodiversity loss and population growth in developing countries), Moore’s law (the steady doubling in the power of microchips and, more broadly, of technology) and the market (globalization tying the world ever more tightly together) — are all in simultaneous, rapid acceleration.
This combination is stressing strong countries and blowing up weak ones. And the ones disintegrating first are those that are the most artificial: their borders are mostly straight lines that correspond to no ethnic, tribal or religious realities and their leaders, rather than creating citizens with equal rights, wasted the last 60 years by plundering their national resources. So when their iron fists come off (in Libya and Iraq with our help), there is nothing to hold these unnatural polygons together.
Since World War II, U.S. foreign policy has focused on integrating more countries into a democratic, free-market world community built on the rule of law while seeking to deter those states that resist from destabilizing the rest. This is what we know how to do.
But, argues Michael Mandelbaum, author of the forthcoming “Mission Failure: America and the World in the Post-Cold War Era”: “There is nothing in our experience that has prepared us for what is going on now: the meltdown of an increasing number of states all at the same time in a globalized world. And what if China starts failing in a globalized world?"
Historically we’ve counted on empires, like the Ottomans, colonial powers, like Britain and France, and autocratic strongmen, such as kings and colonels, to hold artificial states together and provide order in these regions. But we’re now in a post-imperial, post-colonial and, soon, I believe, post-authoritarian world, in which no one will be able to control these disorderly regions with an iron fist while the world of order goes about its business as best it can with occasional reminders of the nasty disarray on its frontiers.
Your heart aches for the Syrian refugees flocking to Europe. And Germany’s generosity in absorbing so many is amazing. We have a special obligation to Libyan and Iraqi refugees. But, with so many countries melting down, just absorbing more and more refugees is not sustainable.
If we’re honest, we have only two ways to halt this refugee flood, and we don’t want to choose either: build a wall and isolate these regions of disorder, or occupy them with boots on the ground, crush the bad guys and build a new order based on real citizenship, a vast project that would take two generations. We fool ourselves that there is a sustainable, easy third way: just keep taking more refugees or create “no-fly zones” here or there.
Will the ends, will the means. And right now no one wants to will the means, because all you win is a bill. So the world of disorder keeps spilling over into the world of order. And beware: The market, Mother Nature and Moore’s law are just revving their engines. You haven’t seen this play before, which is why we have some hard new thinking and hard choices ahead.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/09/opini ... 05309&_r=0
Are Western Values Losing Their Sway?
London — THE West is suddenly suffused with self-doubt.
Centuries of superiority and global influence appeared to reach a new summit with the collapse of the Soviet Union, as the countries, values and civilization of the West appeared to have won the dark, difficult battle with Communism.
That victory seemed especially sweet after the turn of China toward capitalism, which many thought presaged a slow evolution to middle-class demands for individual rights and transparent justice — toward a form of democracy. But is the embrace of Western values inevitable? Are Western values, essentially Judeo-Christian ones, truly universal?
The history of the last decade is a bracing antidote to such easy thinking. The rise of authoritarian capitalism has been a blow to assumptions, made popular by Francis Fukuyama, that liberal democracy has proved to be the most reliable and lasting political system.
With the collapse of Communism, “what we may be witnessing,” Mr. Fukuyama wrote hopefully in 1989, “is the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”
But couple the tightening of Chinese authoritarianism with Russia’s turn toward revanchism and dictatorship, and then add the rise of radical Islam, and the grand victory of Western liberalism can seem hollow, its values under threat even within its own societies.
The recent flood of migrants and Syrian asylum seekers were welcomed in much of Europe, especially Germany and Austria. But it also prompted criticism from a number of less prosperous European countries, a backlash from the far right and new anxieties about the growing influence of Islam, and radical Islamists, in Europe.
“Nineteen-eighty-nine was perceived as the victory of universalism, the end of history, but for all the others in the world it wasn’t a post-Cold War world but a post-colonial one,” said Ivan Krastev, director of the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Bulgaria, and a contributing opinion writer for The Times.
It seemed to many in Asia and Africa to be the end of Western ideological supremacy, given that liberalism and Communism are both Western creations with universal ambitions. After all, Mr. Krastev noted, “both liberalism and Communism were dominated and shaped by the West — but who is the legitimate son of the Enlightenment and who is the bastard one?”
Many of the emerging powerhouses of globalization, like Brazil, are interested in democracy and the rule of law, but not in the preachments of the West, which they regard as laced with hypocrisy.
Even Russia argues both for exceptionalism (“the third Rome”) and for its own more perfect representation of Western civilization, claiming that the West is self-interested, decadent and hypocritical, defending universal values but freely ignoring them when it pleases.
The fight over values is not limited to democracy. “We think the world is divided by individualism and democracy, but it’s the sexual divide,” Mr. Krastev said — with radical disagreements over the proper place of women and the rights of homosexuals.
In its rejection of Western liberal values of sexual equality and choice, conservative Russia finds common cause with many in Africa and with the religious teachings of Islam, the Vatican, fundamentalist Protestants and Orthodox Jews.
Extreme interpretations of religion, especially in areas of great instability and insecurity, can be a comforting or inspiring response to the confusions of modern life, and can soon become an enemy to religious freedom and tolerance for others, notes Robert Cooper. A British diplomat who helped build a European foreign policy in Brussels, he defined the problem of failed and postmodern states in his book “The Breaking of Nations.”
A quick look at anthropology shows us that “what we consider universal values are not so universal,” he said.
For instance, “We talk about democracy as a universal value,” Mr. Cooper said, “but when was it exactly that women in Italy got the vote? And blacks in the American South? So we have pretty shallow standards for this.” (In Italy it was 1945; one could argue that voting was not unrestricted in the United States until 1965.)
Given the choice, “nearly everyone in the world would like to live in our societies, because they can live better and don’t have to lie all the time,” he said. “So perhaps it’s wrong to talk of universal values. But the society they deliver is universally attractive.”
China is often cited as a counterexample to the universality of democracy and human rights. But what distinguishes China is its disinterest in spreading its model to the rest of the world.
Western universalism was real, if rivalrous. The Soviet Union tried to spread revolution and Communism, France had its “Declaration of the Rights of Man” and the United States its self-image as “the city upon a hill.” But China engages with the world in its own interest, divorced from moral aims, with little desire to proselytize.
The Chinese vision is not universalist but mercantilist, and Beijing is interested less in remaking the world than in protecting itself from vulnerabilities of globalization, including the chaotic freedoms of the Internet. China, like Russia now, pushes back against Western aspirations and efforts to reshape the world in its own image.
There is much confusion about democracy in any case, argued Jacques Barzun, the cultural historian, in 1986. “A permanent feature of American opinion and action in foreign policy is the wish, the hope, that other nations might turn from the error of their ways and become democracies,” he wrote. But democracies differ, he said, and asked: “What is it exactly that we want others to copy?”
The essence of democracy, he said, is popular sovereignty, implying political and social equality. Easier said than done, given the tendency of governments and elites to presume they speak for the inarticulate masses.
Democracy cannot be imposed, but accrues, he suggested, dependent on “a cluster of disparate elements and conditions.” It “cannot be fashioned out of whatever people happen to be around in a given region; it cannot be promoted from outside by strangers; and it may still be impossible when attempted from inside by determined natives.”
That is a caution echoed recently by William J. Burns, head of the Carnegie Endowment and a former deputy secretary of state. The debate, he argues, is really about the meaning of individual rights in non-Western states, even those considered democracies, and the “authenticity” of inherited values.
“Our own preachiness and lecturing tendencies sometimes get in the way, but there is a core to more open democratic systems that has an enduring appeal,” he said. That core is “the broad notion of human rights, that people have the right to participate in political and economic decisions that matter to them, and the rule of law to institutionalize those rights.”
The result “doesn’t have to look like Washington, which may be for the good,” Mr. Burns said. “But a respect for law and pluralism creates more flexible societies, because otherwise it’s hard to hold together multiethnic, multireligious societies.”
That’s what the Arab world will be wrestling with for a long time as old state systems crumble, he added.
These pressures are visible in Western societies, too. “Even in what are seemingly modern societies we see the tension, the core appeal of nationalism,” he said, as well as the attraction of religious radicalism to minorities who feel shut out of the mainstream of identity politics.
Yet democracies in whatever form seem more capable of coping with shifting pressures than authoritarian governments. History does not move laterally but in many different directions at once, Mr. Burns said. “Stability is not a static phenomenon.”
Steven Erlanger is the London bureau chief of The New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/sunda ... 05309&_r=0
London — THE West is suddenly suffused with self-doubt.
Centuries of superiority and global influence appeared to reach a new summit with the collapse of the Soviet Union, as the countries, values and civilization of the West appeared to have won the dark, difficult battle with Communism.
That victory seemed especially sweet after the turn of China toward capitalism, which many thought presaged a slow evolution to middle-class demands for individual rights and transparent justice — toward a form of democracy. But is the embrace of Western values inevitable? Are Western values, essentially Judeo-Christian ones, truly universal?
The history of the last decade is a bracing antidote to such easy thinking. The rise of authoritarian capitalism has been a blow to assumptions, made popular by Francis Fukuyama, that liberal democracy has proved to be the most reliable and lasting political system.
With the collapse of Communism, “what we may be witnessing,” Mr. Fukuyama wrote hopefully in 1989, “is the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”
But couple the tightening of Chinese authoritarianism with Russia’s turn toward revanchism and dictatorship, and then add the rise of radical Islam, and the grand victory of Western liberalism can seem hollow, its values under threat even within its own societies.
The recent flood of migrants and Syrian asylum seekers were welcomed in much of Europe, especially Germany and Austria. But it also prompted criticism from a number of less prosperous European countries, a backlash from the far right and new anxieties about the growing influence of Islam, and radical Islamists, in Europe.
“Nineteen-eighty-nine was perceived as the victory of universalism, the end of history, but for all the others in the world it wasn’t a post-Cold War world but a post-colonial one,” said Ivan Krastev, director of the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Bulgaria, and a contributing opinion writer for The Times.
It seemed to many in Asia and Africa to be the end of Western ideological supremacy, given that liberalism and Communism are both Western creations with universal ambitions. After all, Mr. Krastev noted, “both liberalism and Communism were dominated and shaped by the West — but who is the legitimate son of the Enlightenment and who is the bastard one?”
Many of the emerging powerhouses of globalization, like Brazil, are interested in democracy and the rule of law, but not in the preachments of the West, which they regard as laced with hypocrisy.
Even Russia argues both for exceptionalism (“the third Rome”) and for its own more perfect representation of Western civilization, claiming that the West is self-interested, decadent and hypocritical, defending universal values but freely ignoring them when it pleases.
The fight over values is not limited to democracy. “We think the world is divided by individualism and democracy, but it’s the sexual divide,” Mr. Krastev said — with radical disagreements over the proper place of women and the rights of homosexuals.
In its rejection of Western liberal values of sexual equality and choice, conservative Russia finds common cause with many in Africa and with the religious teachings of Islam, the Vatican, fundamentalist Protestants and Orthodox Jews.
Extreme interpretations of religion, especially in areas of great instability and insecurity, can be a comforting or inspiring response to the confusions of modern life, and can soon become an enemy to religious freedom and tolerance for others, notes Robert Cooper. A British diplomat who helped build a European foreign policy in Brussels, he defined the problem of failed and postmodern states in his book “The Breaking of Nations.”
A quick look at anthropology shows us that “what we consider universal values are not so universal,” he said.
For instance, “We talk about democracy as a universal value,” Mr. Cooper said, “but when was it exactly that women in Italy got the vote? And blacks in the American South? So we have pretty shallow standards for this.” (In Italy it was 1945; one could argue that voting was not unrestricted in the United States until 1965.)
Given the choice, “nearly everyone in the world would like to live in our societies, because they can live better and don’t have to lie all the time,” he said. “So perhaps it’s wrong to talk of universal values. But the society they deliver is universally attractive.”
China is often cited as a counterexample to the universality of democracy and human rights. But what distinguishes China is its disinterest in spreading its model to the rest of the world.
Western universalism was real, if rivalrous. The Soviet Union tried to spread revolution and Communism, France had its “Declaration of the Rights of Man” and the United States its self-image as “the city upon a hill.” But China engages with the world in its own interest, divorced from moral aims, with little desire to proselytize.
The Chinese vision is not universalist but mercantilist, and Beijing is interested less in remaking the world than in protecting itself from vulnerabilities of globalization, including the chaotic freedoms of the Internet. China, like Russia now, pushes back against Western aspirations and efforts to reshape the world in its own image.
There is much confusion about democracy in any case, argued Jacques Barzun, the cultural historian, in 1986. “A permanent feature of American opinion and action in foreign policy is the wish, the hope, that other nations might turn from the error of their ways and become democracies,” he wrote. But democracies differ, he said, and asked: “What is it exactly that we want others to copy?”
The essence of democracy, he said, is popular sovereignty, implying political and social equality. Easier said than done, given the tendency of governments and elites to presume they speak for the inarticulate masses.
Democracy cannot be imposed, but accrues, he suggested, dependent on “a cluster of disparate elements and conditions.” It “cannot be fashioned out of whatever people happen to be around in a given region; it cannot be promoted from outside by strangers; and it may still be impossible when attempted from inside by determined natives.”
That is a caution echoed recently by William J. Burns, head of the Carnegie Endowment and a former deputy secretary of state. The debate, he argues, is really about the meaning of individual rights in non-Western states, even those considered democracies, and the “authenticity” of inherited values.
“Our own preachiness and lecturing tendencies sometimes get in the way, but there is a core to more open democratic systems that has an enduring appeal,” he said. That core is “the broad notion of human rights, that people have the right to participate in political and economic decisions that matter to them, and the rule of law to institutionalize those rights.”
The result “doesn’t have to look like Washington, which may be for the good,” Mr. Burns said. “But a respect for law and pluralism creates more flexible societies, because otherwise it’s hard to hold together multiethnic, multireligious societies.”
That’s what the Arab world will be wrestling with for a long time as old state systems crumble, he added.
These pressures are visible in Western societies, too. “Even in what are seemingly modern societies we see the tension, the core appeal of nationalism,” he said, as well as the attraction of religious radicalism to minorities who feel shut out of the mainstream of identity politics.
Yet democracies in whatever form seem more capable of coping with shifting pressures than authoritarian governments. History does not move laterally but in many different directions at once, Mr. Burns said. “Stability is not a static phenomenon.”
Steven Erlanger is the London bureau chief of The New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/sunda ... 05309&_r=0
Timeline: Democracy in Recession
In 1974, Portugal’s Carnation Revolution, which overthrew the country's almost half-century dictatorship, inaugurated the “third wave” of global democratization. The “first wave” began with the American and French revolutions, and 29 countries became democracies in the period up to 1922. That number shrank to 12 with the rise of Communism, Fascism and Nazism. The “second wave” arrived at the end of World War II, when decolonization brought democracy to countries like India and Sri Lanka, and ebbed with events like the military coups in Bolivia and Brazil in 1964, and Argentina in 1966. In the thirty years following the Carnation Revolution, democracy expanded around the world like never before. But around 2006 it came to a halt. Though the total number of democracies has not sharply declined, space for civil society is shrinking. Freedom and democracy are in recession. This timeline charts the spread, regression, and sometimes even collapse, of democracy in the last 40 years.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015 ... d=45305309
******
Across the Globe, a Growing Disillusionment With Democracy
Signs of democratic dysfunction are everywhere, from Athens to Ankara, Brussels to Brasília. In the United States, the federal government has shut down 12 times in the last 35 years. According to the political scientists Christopher Hare and Keith T. Poole, the two main American political parties are more polarized now than they have been at any time since the Civil War. Meanwhile, a Gallup tracking poll shows that trust in the presidency and in the Supreme Court stands at historic lows — while faith in Congress has plummeted so far that it is now in the single digits.
Some citizens of democracies have become so unhappy with their institutions that — according to disturbing new studies of public opinion around the world — they may be tempted to dispense with partisan politics altogether. Would it not be better to let the president make decisions without having to worry about Congress — or to entrust key decisions to unelected experts like the Federal Reserve and the Pentagon?
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/15/opini ... d=45305309
In 1974, Portugal’s Carnation Revolution, which overthrew the country's almost half-century dictatorship, inaugurated the “third wave” of global democratization. The “first wave” began with the American and French revolutions, and 29 countries became democracies in the period up to 1922. That number shrank to 12 with the rise of Communism, Fascism and Nazism. The “second wave” arrived at the end of World War II, when decolonization brought democracy to countries like India and Sri Lanka, and ebbed with events like the military coups in Bolivia and Brazil in 1964, and Argentina in 1966. In the thirty years following the Carnation Revolution, democracy expanded around the world like never before. But around 2006 it came to a halt. Though the total number of democracies has not sharply declined, space for civil society is shrinking. Freedom and democracy are in recession. This timeline charts the spread, regression, and sometimes even collapse, of democracy in the last 40 years.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015 ... d=45305309
******
Across the Globe, a Growing Disillusionment With Democracy
Signs of democratic dysfunction are everywhere, from Athens to Ankara, Brussels to Brasília. In the United States, the federal government has shut down 12 times in the last 35 years. According to the political scientists Christopher Hare and Keith T. Poole, the two main American political parties are more polarized now than they have been at any time since the Civil War. Meanwhile, a Gallup tracking poll shows that trust in the presidency and in the Supreme Court stands at historic lows — while faith in Congress has plummeted so far that it is now in the single digits.
Some citizens of democracies have become so unhappy with their institutions that — according to disturbing new studies of public opinion around the world — they may be tempted to dispense with partisan politics altogether. Would it not be better to let the president make decisions without having to worry about Congress — or to entrust key decisions to unelected experts like the Federal Reserve and the Pentagon?
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/15/opini ... d=45305309
The Power of Precise Predictions
IS there a solution to this country’s polarized politics?
Consider the debate over the nuclear deal with Iran, which was one of the nastiest foreign policy fights in recent memory. There was apocalyptic rhetoric, multimillion-dollar lobbying on both sides and a near-party-line Senate vote. But in another respect, the dispute was hardly unique: Like all policy debates, it was, at its core, a contest between competing predictions.
Opponents of the deal predicted that the agreement would not prevent Iran from getting the bomb, would put Israel at greater risk and would further destabilize the region. The deal’s supporters forecast that it would stop (or at least delay) Iran from fielding a nuclear weapon, would increase security for the United States and Israel and would underscore American leadership.
The problem with such predictions is that it is difficult to square them with objective reality. Why? Because few of them are specific enough to be testable. Key terms are left vague and undefined. (What exactly does “underscore leadership” mean?) Hedge words like “might” or “could” are deployed freely. And forecasts frequently fail to include precise dates or time frames. Even the most emphatic declarations — like former Vice President Dick Cheney’s prediction that the deal “will lead to a nuclear-armed Iran” — can be too open-ended to disconfirm.
There is a familiar psychological mechanism at work here. One of us, Professor Tetlock, has been running lab studies since the early 1980s that show that if people expect that others will evaluate the accuracy of their judgments — that is, if people feel they will be held accountable for their views — then they tend to avoid cognitive pitfalls such as overconfidence and the failure to update beliefs in response to new evidence. Professor Tetlock and the psychologist Jennifer Lerner have demonstrated that accountability has this effect because it encourages people to pre-emptively think of ways in which they might be wrong — before others do it for them.
But when people make non-falsifiable predictions, they feel less accountable. After all, if a prediction can never be disproved, then it poses no reputational risk. That lack of accountability, in turn, encourages overconfidence and even more extreme predictions.
The solution is straightforward: Replace vague forecasts with testable predictions. Will the International Atomic Energy Agency report in December that Iran has adequately resolved concerns about the potential military dimensions of its nuclear program? Will Iran export or dilute its quantities of low-enriched uranium in excess of 300 kilograms by the deal’s “implementation day” early next year? Within the next six months, will any disputes over I.A.E.A. access to Iranian sites be referred to the Joint Commission for resolution?
Such questions don’t precisely get at what we want to know — namely, will the deal make the United States and its allies safer? — but they are testable and relevant to the question of the Iranian threat. Most important, they introduce accountability into forecasting. And that, it turns out, can depolarize debate.
In recent years, Professor Tetlock and collaborators have observed this depolarizing effect when conducting forecasting “tournaments” designed to identify what separates good forecasters from the rest of us. In these tournaments, run at the behest of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (which supports research relevant to intelligence agencies), thousands of forecasters competed to answer roughly 500 questions on various national security topics, from the movement of Syrian refugees to the stability of the eurozone.
The tournaments identified a small group of people, the top 2 percent, who generated forecasts that, when averaged, beat the average of the crowd by well over 50 percent in each of the tournament’s four years. How did they do it? Like the rest of us, these “superforecasters” have political views, often strong ones. But they learned to seriously consider the possibility that they might be wrong.
What made such learning possible was the presence of accountability in the tournament: Forecasters were able see their competitors’ predictions, and that transparency reduced overconfidence and the instinct to make bold, ideologically driven predictions. If you can’t hide behind weasel words like “could” or “might,” you start constructing your predictions carefully. This makes sense: Modest forecasts are more likely to be correct than bold ones — and no one wants to look stupid.
This suggests a way to improve real-world discussion. Suppose, during the next ideologically charged policy debate, that we held a public forecasting tournament in which representatives from both sides had to make concrete predictions. (We are currently sponsoring such a tournament on the Iran deal.) Based on what we have seen in previous tournaments, this exercise would decrease the distance between the two camps. And because it would be possible to determine a “winner,” it would help us learn whether the conservative or liberal assessment of the issue was more accurate.
Either way, we would begin to emerge from our dark age of political polarization.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/opini ... ef=opinion
IS there a solution to this country’s polarized politics?
Consider the debate over the nuclear deal with Iran, which was one of the nastiest foreign policy fights in recent memory. There was apocalyptic rhetoric, multimillion-dollar lobbying on both sides and a near-party-line Senate vote. But in another respect, the dispute was hardly unique: Like all policy debates, it was, at its core, a contest between competing predictions.
Opponents of the deal predicted that the agreement would not prevent Iran from getting the bomb, would put Israel at greater risk and would further destabilize the region. The deal’s supporters forecast that it would stop (or at least delay) Iran from fielding a nuclear weapon, would increase security for the United States and Israel and would underscore American leadership.
The problem with such predictions is that it is difficult to square them with objective reality. Why? Because few of them are specific enough to be testable. Key terms are left vague and undefined. (What exactly does “underscore leadership” mean?) Hedge words like “might” or “could” are deployed freely. And forecasts frequently fail to include precise dates or time frames. Even the most emphatic declarations — like former Vice President Dick Cheney’s prediction that the deal “will lead to a nuclear-armed Iran” — can be too open-ended to disconfirm.
There is a familiar psychological mechanism at work here. One of us, Professor Tetlock, has been running lab studies since the early 1980s that show that if people expect that others will evaluate the accuracy of their judgments — that is, if people feel they will be held accountable for their views — then they tend to avoid cognitive pitfalls such as overconfidence and the failure to update beliefs in response to new evidence. Professor Tetlock and the psychologist Jennifer Lerner have demonstrated that accountability has this effect because it encourages people to pre-emptively think of ways in which they might be wrong — before others do it for them.
But when people make non-falsifiable predictions, they feel less accountable. After all, if a prediction can never be disproved, then it poses no reputational risk. That lack of accountability, in turn, encourages overconfidence and even more extreme predictions.
The solution is straightforward: Replace vague forecasts with testable predictions. Will the International Atomic Energy Agency report in December that Iran has adequately resolved concerns about the potential military dimensions of its nuclear program? Will Iran export or dilute its quantities of low-enriched uranium in excess of 300 kilograms by the deal’s “implementation day” early next year? Within the next six months, will any disputes over I.A.E.A. access to Iranian sites be referred to the Joint Commission for resolution?
Such questions don’t precisely get at what we want to know — namely, will the deal make the United States and its allies safer? — but they are testable and relevant to the question of the Iranian threat. Most important, they introduce accountability into forecasting. And that, it turns out, can depolarize debate.
In recent years, Professor Tetlock and collaborators have observed this depolarizing effect when conducting forecasting “tournaments” designed to identify what separates good forecasters from the rest of us. In these tournaments, run at the behest of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (which supports research relevant to intelligence agencies), thousands of forecasters competed to answer roughly 500 questions on various national security topics, from the movement of Syrian refugees to the stability of the eurozone.
The tournaments identified a small group of people, the top 2 percent, who generated forecasts that, when averaged, beat the average of the crowd by well over 50 percent in each of the tournament’s four years. How did they do it? Like the rest of us, these “superforecasters” have political views, often strong ones. But they learned to seriously consider the possibility that they might be wrong.
What made such learning possible was the presence of accountability in the tournament: Forecasters were able see their competitors’ predictions, and that transparency reduced overconfidence and the instinct to make bold, ideologically driven predictions. If you can’t hide behind weasel words like “could” or “might,” you start constructing your predictions carefully. This makes sense: Modest forecasts are more likely to be correct than bold ones — and no one wants to look stupid.
This suggests a way to improve real-world discussion. Suppose, during the next ideologically charged policy debate, that we held a public forecasting tournament in which representatives from both sides had to make concrete predictions. (We are currently sponsoring such a tournament on the Iran deal.) Based on what we have seen in previous tournaments, this exercise would decrease the distance between the two camps. And because it would be possible to determine a “winner,” it would help us learn whether the conservative or liberal assessment of the issue was more accurate.
Either way, we would begin to emerge from our dark age of political polarization.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/opini ... ef=opinion
Is Vladimir Putin Trying to Teach the West a Lesson in Syria?
Excerpt:
"The situation in Syria may have an element of realpolitik to it, but it is also about two worldviews. Indeed, the differences between Mr. Putin and Mr. Obama can be boiled down to opposing theories about the sources of the current global instability. America sees global instability primarily as the result of authoritarians’ desperate attempts to preserve a doomed status quo, while Moscow blames Washington’s obsession with democracy.
If the Soviets appealed to proletarians of the world to unite, the Kremlin today appeals to governments of the world to unite — all kind of governments. History is indeed “irony on the move.” Russia, the successor of the revolutionary Soviet Union, has given up on the power of the people."
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/08/opini ... 05309&_r=0
Excerpt:
"The situation in Syria may have an element of realpolitik to it, but it is also about two worldviews. Indeed, the differences between Mr. Putin and Mr. Obama can be boiled down to opposing theories about the sources of the current global instability. America sees global instability primarily as the result of authoritarians’ desperate attempts to preserve a doomed status quo, while Moscow blames Washington’s obsession with democracy.
If the Soviets appealed to proletarians of the world to unite, the Kremlin today appeals to governments of the world to unite — all kind of governments. History is indeed “irony on the move.” Russia, the successor of the revolutionary Soviet Union, has given up on the power of the people."
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/08/opini ... 05309&_r=0
Magna Carta Exhibition in China Is Abruptly Moved From University
HONG KONG — China’s leaders have long behaved as if nothing could daunt them. But an 800-year-old document written in Latin on sheepskin may have them running scared.
Magna Carta — the Great Charter — is on tour this year, celebrating eight centuries since it was issued in 1215 by King John of England. It is regarded as one of the world’s most important documents because of language guaranteeing individual rights and holding the ruler subject to the law.
One of the few surviving 13th-century copies of the document was to go on display this week from Tuesday through Thursday at a museum at Renmin University of China in Beijing, the British Embassy said last week on its WeChat account. But then the exhibit was abruptly moved to the British ambassador’s residence, with few tickets available to the public and no explanation given. (The document is also set to go on display at the United States Consulate in Guangzhou and at a museum in Shanghai, the embassy said.)
It is not clear why the public showing was moved off the Renmin University campus. But Magna Carta is widely considered a cornerstone for constitutional government in Britain and the United States, and such a system is inimical to China’s leaders, who view “constitutionalism” as a threat to Communist Party rule.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/world ... world/asia
HONG KONG — China’s leaders have long behaved as if nothing could daunt them. But an 800-year-old document written in Latin on sheepskin may have them running scared.
Magna Carta — the Great Charter — is on tour this year, celebrating eight centuries since it was issued in 1215 by King John of England. It is regarded as one of the world’s most important documents because of language guaranteeing individual rights and holding the ruler subject to the law.
One of the few surviving 13th-century copies of the document was to go on display this week from Tuesday through Thursday at a museum at Renmin University of China in Beijing, the British Embassy said last week on its WeChat account. But then the exhibit was abruptly moved to the British ambassador’s residence, with few tickets available to the public and no explanation given. (The document is also set to go on display at the United States Consulate in Guangzhou and at a museum in Shanghai, the embassy said.)
It is not clear why the public showing was moved off the Renmin University campus. But Magna Carta is widely considered a cornerstone for constitutional government in Britain and the United States, and such a system is inimical to China’s leaders, who view “constitutionalism” as a threat to Communist Party rule.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/world ... world/asia
Enter the Age of the Outsiders
As every schoolchild knows, the gravitational pull of the sun helps hold the planets in their orbits. Gravity from the center lends coherence to the whole solar system.
I mention this because that’s how our political and social systems used to work, but no longer do. In each sphere of life there used to be a few big suns radiating conviction and meaning. The other bodies in orbit were defined by their resistance or attraction to that pull.
But now many of the big suns in our world today lack conviction, while the distant factions at the margins of society are full of passionate intensity. Now the gravitational pull is coming from the edges, in sphere after sphere. Each central establishment, weakened by its own hollowness of meaning, is being ripped apart by the gravitational pull from the fringes.
The same phenomenon can be seen in many areas, but it’s easiest to illustrate in the sphere of politics, both global and domestic.
In the 1990s, the central political institutions radiated confidence, derived from an assumed vision of the post-Cold War world. History would be a slow march toward democratic capitalism. Nations would be bound in peaceful associations like the European Union. The United States would oversee a basic international order.
This vision was materialistic and individualistic. Nations should pursue economic growth and a decent distribution of wealth. If you give individuals access to education and opportunity, they will pursue affluence and personal happiness. They will grow more temperate and “reasonable.”
Since 2000, this vision of the post-Cold War world has received blow after blow. Some of these blows were self-inflicted. Democracy, especially in the United States, has grown dysfunctional. Mass stupidity and greed led to a financial collapse and deprived capitalism of its moral swagger.
But the deeper problem was spiritual. Many people around the world rejected democratic capitalism’s vision of a secular life built around materialism and individual happiness. They sought more intense forms of meaning. Some of them sought meaning in the fanaticisms of sect, tribe, nation, or some stronger and more brutal ideology. In case after case, “reasonableness” has been trampled by behavior and creed that is stronger, darker and less temperate.
A group of well-educated men blew up the World Trade Center. Fanatics flock to the Middle East to behead strangers and apostates. China’s growing affluence hasn’t led to sweetening, but in many areas to nationalistic belligerence. Iran is still committed to its radical eschatology. Russia is led by a cold-eyed thug with a semi-theological vision of his nation’s destiny. He seeks every chance to undermine the world order.
The establishments of the West have not responded to these challenges by doubling down on their vision, by countering fanaticism with gusto. On the contrary, they’ve lost faith in their own capacities of understanding and action. Sensing a loss of confidence in the center, strong-willed people on the edges step forward to take control.
This happens in loud ways in the domestic sphere. The uncertain Republican establishment cannot govern its own marginal members, while those on the edge burn with conviction. Jeb Bush looks wan but Donald Trump radiates confidence.
The Democratic establishment no longer determines party positions; it is pulled along by formerly marginal players like Bernie Sanders.
But the big loss of central confidence is in global governance. The United States is no longer willing to occupy the commanding heights and oversee global order. In region after region, those who are weak in strength but strong in conviction are able to have their way. Vladimir Putin in Crimea, Ukraine and the Middle East. Bashar al-Assad crosses red lines in Syria. The Islamic State spreads in Syria and Iraq. Iranian proxy armies roam the region.
Republicans blame Obama for hesitant and halting policies, but it’s not clear the foreign policy and defense apparatus believes anymore in its own abilities to establish order, or that the American public has any confidence in U.S. effectiveness as a global actor.
Where is this all heading? Maybe those on the fringes of politics really will take over. Say hello to President Ted Cruz. Writing in The American Interest, Joshua Mitchell of Georgetown argues that we are heading toward an “Age of Exhaustion.” Losing confidence in the post-Cold War vision, people will be content to play with their private gadgets and will lose interest in greater striving.
I only have space to add here that the primary problem is mental and spiritual. Some leader has to be able to digest the lessons of the last 15 years and offer a revised charismatic and persuasive sense of America’s historic mission. This mission, both nationalist and universal, would be less individualistic than the gospel of the 1990s, and more realistic about depravity and the way barbarism can spread. It would offer a goal more profound than material comfort.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/20/opini ... d=71987722
As every schoolchild knows, the gravitational pull of the sun helps hold the planets in their orbits. Gravity from the center lends coherence to the whole solar system.
I mention this because that’s how our political and social systems used to work, but no longer do. In each sphere of life there used to be a few big suns radiating conviction and meaning. The other bodies in orbit were defined by their resistance or attraction to that pull.
But now many of the big suns in our world today lack conviction, while the distant factions at the margins of society are full of passionate intensity. Now the gravitational pull is coming from the edges, in sphere after sphere. Each central establishment, weakened by its own hollowness of meaning, is being ripped apart by the gravitational pull from the fringes.
The same phenomenon can be seen in many areas, but it’s easiest to illustrate in the sphere of politics, both global and domestic.
In the 1990s, the central political institutions radiated confidence, derived from an assumed vision of the post-Cold War world. History would be a slow march toward democratic capitalism. Nations would be bound in peaceful associations like the European Union. The United States would oversee a basic international order.
This vision was materialistic and individualistic. Nations should pursue economic growth and a decent distribution of wealth. If you give individuals access to education and opportunity, they will pursue affluence and personal happiness. They will grow more temperate and “reasonable.”
Since 2000, this vision of the post-Cold War world has received blow after blow. Some of these blows were self-inflicted. Democracy, especially in the United States, has grown dysfunctional. Mass stupidity and greed led to a financial collapse and deprived capitalism of its moral swagger.
But the deeper problem was spiritual. Many people around the world rejected democratic capitalism’s vision of a secular life built around materialism and individual happiness. They sought more intense forms of meaning. Some of them sought meaning in the fanaticisms of sect, tribe, nation, or some stronger and more brutal ideology. In case after case, “reasonableness” has been trampled by behavior and creed that is stronger, darker and less temperate.
A group of well-educated men blew up the World Trade Center. Fanatics flock to the Middle East to behead strangers and apostates. China’s growing affluence hasn’t led to sweetening, but in many areas to nationalistic belligerence. Iran is still committed to its radical eschatology. Russia is led by a cold-eyed thug with a semi-theological vision of his nation’s destiny. He seeks every chance to undermine the world order.
The establishments of the West have not responded to these challenges by doubling down on their vision, by countering fanaticism with gusto. On the contrary, they’ve lost faith in their own capacities of understanding and action. Sensing a loss of confidence in the center, strong-willed people on the edges step forward to take control.
This happens in loud ways in the domestic sphere. The uncertain Republican establishment cannot govern its own marginal members, while those on the edge burn with conviction. Jeb Bush looks wan but Donald Trump radiates confidence.
The Democratic establishment no longer determines party positions; it is pulled along by formerly marginal players like Bernie Sanders.
But the big loss of central confidence is in global governance. The United States is no longer willing to occupy the commanding heights and oversee global order. In region after region, those who are weak in strength but strong in conviction are able to have their way. Vladimir Putin in Crimea, Ukraine and the Middle East. Bashar al-Assad crosses red lines in Syria. The Islamic State spreads in Syria and Iraq. Iranian proxy armies roam the region.
Republicans blame Obama for hesitant and halting policies, but it’s not clear the foreign policy and defense apparatus believes anymore in its own abilities to establish order, or that the American public has any confidence in U.S. effectiveness as a global actor.
Where is this all heading? Maybe those on the fringes of politics really will take over. Say hello to President Ted Cruz. Writing in The American Interest, Joshua Mitchell of Georgetown argues that we are heading toward an “Age of Exhaustion.” Losing confidence in the post-Cold War vision, people will be content to play with their private gadgets and will lose interest in greater striving.
I only have space to add here that the primary problem is mental and spiritual. Some leader has to be able to digest the lessons of the last 15 years and offer a revised charismatic and persuasive sense of America’s historic mission. This mission, both nationalist and universal, would be less individualistic than the gospel of the 1990s, and more realistic about depravity and the way barbarism can spread. It would offer a goal more profound than material comfort.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/20/opini ... d=71987722
Europe Is Spying on You
STRASBOURG, France — When Edward Snowden disclosed details of America’s huge surveillance program two years ago, many in Europe thought that the response would be increased transparency and stronger oversight of security services. European countries, however, are moving in the opposite direction. Instead of more public scrutiny, we are getting more snooping.
Pushed to respond to the atrocious attacks in Paris and Copenhagen and by the threats posed by the Islamic State to Europe’s internal security, several countries are amending their counterterrorism legislation to grant more intrusive powers to security services, especially in terms of mass electronic surveillance.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/28/opini ... d=45305309
STRASBOURG, France — When Edward Snowden disclosed details of America’s huge surveillance program two years ago, many in Europe thought that the response would be increased transparency and stronger oversight of security services. European countries, however, are moving in the opposite direction. Instead of more public scrutiny, we are getting more snooping.
Pushed to respond to the atrocious attacks in Paris and Copenhagen and by the threats posed by the Islamic State to Europe’s internal security, several countries are amending their counterterrorism legislation to grant more intrusive powers to security services, especially in terms of mass electronic surveillance.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/28/opini ... d=45305309
Smart African Politics: Candidates Debating Under a Tree
Political debates are good even when they’re bad. Even when candidates are cringe-worthy, they’re cringe-worthy in public view. And voters learn about all the candidates, not just new ones. In the United States, for example, Hillary Clinton has been center stage in political life for 24 years. Donald Trump is the very definition of “overexposed.” Still, the debates tell us new things about them — their positions, temperament, grace under pressure (or lack thereof), charisma and political skill.
How much more could voters benefit from debates in countries where they know next to nothing about the candidates?
Identity politics are everywhere. Instead of voting for candidates because they are competent or honest, or voting for those with congenial views on important issues, people often reflexively support the politician who shares their religion, ethnicity, race, tribe, clan or geography.
But identity politics are strongest precisely where they can do the most damage. In countries divided by ethnic hatreds or fears, this kind of voting worsens the tensions that can lead to violence. It gives politicians no motive to be effective or upright, because they know that these qualities don’t matter to voters. On the contrary, corruption and patronage can help them keep a majority group’s support.
We assume that this is unchangeable. To some degree, it surely is. But what if this kind of voting is in part a response to the fact that voters know nothing else about their candidates? They don’t know candidates’ backgrounds, experience or education, much less their record or policy positions. So they vote on what they know: he or she is “my” candidate.
Debates can help voters get the information they need.
More...
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/20 ... ef=opinion
Political debates are good even when they’re bad. Even when candidates are cringe-worthy, they’re cringe-worthy in public view. And voters learn about all the candidates, not just new ones. In the United States, for example, Hillary Clinton has been center stage in political life for 24 years. Donald Trump is the very definition of “overexposed.” Still, the debates tell us new things about them — their positions, temperament, grace under pressure (or lack thereof), charisma and political skill.
How much more could voters benefit from debates in countries where they know next to nothing about the candidates?
Identity politics are everywhere. Instead of voting for candidates because they are competent or honest, or voting for those with congenial views on important issues, people often reflexively support the politician who shares their religion, ethnicity, race, tribe, clan or geography.
But identity politics are strongest precisely where they can do the most damage. In countries divided by ethnic hatreds or fears, this kind of voting worsens the tensions that can lead to violence. It gives politicians no motive to be effective or upright, because they know that these qualities don’t matter to voters. On the contrary, corruption and patronage can help them keep a majority group’s support.
We assume that this is unchangeable. To some degree, it surely is. But what if this kind of voting is in part a response to the fact that voters know nothing else about their candidates? They don’t know candidates’ backgrounds, experience or education, much less their record or policy positions. So they vote on what they know: he or she is “my” candidate.
Debates can help voters get the information they need.
More...
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/20 ... ef=opinion
Dark Clouds Over the Internet
LEXINGTON, Ky. — The Internet is routinely described as borderless, and that is often how it feels. Tweet a photo or post a comment, and it is instantly viewable in nearly every country in the world. But a global Internet unbounded by territorial limits is pure fantasy.
Down where the cables lie and the servers spin, territory still matters.
Take user data. While 90 percent of the Internet’s users are outside the United States, the web is dominated by American firms. As a result, a great deal of non-American data is held on American servers. This was tolerable when trust in the United States was high. But after Edward J. Snowden peeled back the curtain on the National Security Agency’s Internet surveillance efforts, that trust withered.
In response, other nations are increasingly exercising their territorial control over the Internet, often in ways that mimic America’s worst practices.
Earlier this month, the British Home Secretary introduced a bill known as the Snoopers’ Charter that would broadly expand the government’s ability to collect user data — from authorizing the police to hack into phones and computers, to mandating that Internet companies decrypt encrypted communications. The bill goes too far and privacy advocates are right to oppose it.
But governments do have legitimate reasons to seek user data beyond their territorial reach, and privacy advocates ignore that need at their peril.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/01/opini ... d=71987722
******
The Green Tech Solution
I’ve been confused about this Paris climate conference and how the world should move forward to ameliorate climate change, so I séanced up my hero Alexander Hamilton to see what he thought. I was sad to be reminded that he doesn’t actually talk in hip-hop, but he still had some interesting things to say.
First, he was struck by the fact that on this issue the G.O.P. has come to resemble a Soviet dictatorship — a vast majority of Republican politicians can’t publicly say what they know about the truth of climate change because they’re afraid the thought police will knock on their door and drag them off to an AM radio interrogation.
This week’s Paris conference, I observed, seems like a giant Weight Watchers meeting. A bunch of national leaders get together and make some resolutions to cut their carbon emissions over the next few decades. You hope some sort of peer pressure will kick in and they will actually follow through.
I’m afraid Hamilton snorted.
The co-author of the Federalist papers is the opposite of naïve about human nature. He said the conference is nothing like a Weight Watchers meeting. Unlike weight loss, the pain in reducing carbon emissions is individual but the good is only achieved collectively.
You’re asking people to impose costs on themselves today for some future benefit they will never see. You’re asking developing countries to forswear growth now to compensate for a legacy of pollution from richer countries that they didn’t benefit from. You’re asking richer countries that are facing severe economic strain to pay hundreds of billions of dollars in “reparations” to India and such places that can go on and burn mountains of coal and take away American jobs. And you’re asking for all this top-down coercion to last a century, without any enforcement mechanism. Are the Chinese really going to police a local coal plant efficiently?
This is perfectly designed to ensure cheating. Already, the Chinese government made a grandiose climate change announcement but then was forced to admit that its country was burning 17 percent more coal than it had previously disclosed. The cheating will create a cycle of resentment that will dissolve any sense of common purpose.
I countered by pointing out that policy makers have come up with some clever ways to make carbon reductions more efficient, like cap and trade, permit trading and carbon taxing.
The former Treasury secretary pointed out that these ideas are good in theory but haven’t worked in reality. Cap and trade has not worked out so well in Europe. Over all, the Europeans have spent $280 billion on climate change with very little measurable impact on global temperatures. And as for carbon taxes, even if the U.S. imposed one on itself, it would have virtually no effect on the global climate.
Hamilton steered me to an article by James Manzi and Peter Wehner in his favorite magazine, National Affairs. The authors point out that according to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the expected economic costs of unaddressed global warming over the next century are likely to be about 3 percent of world gross domestic product. This is a big, gradual problem, but not the sort of cataclysmic immediate threat that’s likely to lead people to suspend their immediate self-interest.
Look at what you’re already doing, he countered. The U.S. has the fastest rate of reduction of CO2 emissions of any major nation on earth, back to pre-1996 levels.
That’s in part because of fracking. Natural gas is replacing coal, and natural gas emits about half as much carbon dioxide.
The larger lesson is that innovation is the key. Green energy will beat dirty energy only when it makes technical and economic sense.
Hamilton reminded me that he often used government money to stoke innovation. Manzi and Wehner suggest that one of our great national science labs could work on geoengineering problems to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Another could investigate cogeneration and small-scale energy reduction systems. We could increase funding on battery and smart-grid research. If we move to mainly solar power, we’ll need much more efficient national transmission methods. Maybe there’s a partial answer in increased vegetation.
Hamilton pointed out that when America was just a bunch of scraggly colonies, he was already envisioning it as a great world power. He used government to incite, arouse, energize and stir up great enterprise. The global warming problem can be addressed, ineffectively, by global communiqués. Or, with the right government boost, it presents an opportunity to arouse and incite entrepreneurs, innovators and investors and foment a new technological revolution.
Sometimes like your country you got to be young, scrappy and hungry and not throw away your shot.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/01/opini ... d=71987722
LEXINGTON, Ky. — The Internet is routinely described as borderless, and that is often how it feels. Tweet a photo or post a comment, and it is instantly viewable in nearly every country in the world. But a global Internet unbounded by territorial limits is pure fantasy.
Down where the cables lie and the servers spin, territory still matters.
Take user data. While 90 percent of the Internet’s users are outside the United States, the web is dominated by American firms. As a result, a great deal of non-American data is held on American servers. This was tolerable when trust in the United States was high. But after Edward J. Snowden peeled back the curtain on the National Security Agency’s Internet surveillance efforts, that trust withered.
In response, other nations are increasingly exercising their territorial control over the Internet, often in ways that mimic America’s worst practices.
Earlier this month, the British Home Secretary introduced a bill known as the Snoopers’ Charter that would broadly expand the government’s ability to collect user data — from authorizing the police to hack into phones and computers, to mandating that Internet companies decrypt encrypted communications. The bill goes too far and privacy advocates are right to oppose it.
But governments do have legitimate reasons to seek user data beyond their territorial reach, and privacy advocates ignore that need at their peril.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/01/opini ... d=71987722
******
The Green Tech Solution
I’ve been confused about this Paris climate conference and how the world should move forward to ameliorate climate change, so I séanced up my hero Alexander Hamilton to see what he thought. I was sad to be reminded that he doesn’t actually talk in hip-hop, but he still had some interesting things to say.
First, he was struck by the fact that on this issue the G.O.P. has come to resemble a Soviet dictatorship — a vast majority of Republican politicians can’t publicly say what they know about the truth of climate change because they’re afraid the thought police will knock on their door and drag them off to an AM radio interrogation.
This week’s Paris conference, I observed, seems like a giant Weight Watchers meeting. A bunch of national leaders get together and make some resolutions to cut their carbon emissions over the next few decades. You hope some sort of peer pressure will kick in and they will actually follow through.
I’m afraid Hamilton snorted.
The co-author of the Federalist papers is the opposite of naïve about human nature. He said the conference is nothing like a Weight Watchers meeting. Unlike weight loss, the pain in reducing carbon emissions is individual but the good is only achieved collectively.
You’re asking people to impose costs on themselves today for some future benefit they will never see. You’re asking developing countries to forswear growth now to compensate for a legacy of pollution from richer countries that they didn’t benefit from. You’re asking richer countries that are facing severe economic strain to pay hundreds of billions of dollars in “reparations” to India and such places that can go on and burn mountains of coal and take away American jobs. And you’re asking for all this top-down coercion to last a century, without any enforcement mechanism. Are the Chinese really going to police a local coal plant efficiently?
This is perfectly designed to ensure cheating. Already, the Chinese government made a grandiose climate change announcement but then was forced to admit that its country was burning 17 percent more coal than it had previously disclosed. The cheating will create a cycle of resentment that will dissolve any sense of common purpose.
I countered by pointing out that policy makers have come up with some clever ways to make carbon reductions more efficient, like cap and trade, permit trading and carbon taxing.
The former Treasury secretary pointed out that these ideas are good in theory but haven’t worked in reality. Cap and trade has not worked out so well in Europe. Over all, the Europeans have spent $280 billion on climate change with very little measurable impact on global temperatures. And as for carbon taxes, even if the U.S. imposed one on itself, it would have virtually no effect on the global climate.
Hamilton steered me to an article by James Manzi and Peter Wehner in his favorite magazine, National Affairs. The authors point out that according to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the expected economic costs of unaddressed global warming over the next century are likely to be about 3 percent of world gross domestic product. This is a big, gradual problem, but not the sort of cataclysmic immediate threat that’s likely to lead people to suspend their immediate self-interest.
Look at what you’re already doing, he countered. The U.S. has the fastest rate of reduction of CO2 emissions of any major nation on earth, back to pre-1996 levels.
That’s in part because of fracking. Natural gas is replacing coal, and natural gas emits about half as much carbon dioxide.
The larger lesson is that innovation is the key. Green energy will beat dirty energy only when it makes technical and economic sense.
Hamilton reminded me that he often used government money to stoke innovation. Manzi and Wehner suggest that one of our great national science labs could work on geoengineering problems to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Another could investigate cogeneration and small-scale energy reduction systems. We could increase funding on battery and smart-grid research. If we move to mainly solar power, we’ll need much more efficient national transmission methods. Maybe there’s a partial answer in increased vegetation.
Hamilton pointed out that when America was just a bunch of scraggly colonies, he was already envisioning it as a great world power. He used government to incite, arouse, energize and stir up great enterprise. The global warming problem can be addressed, ineffectively, by global communiqués. Or, with the right government boost, it presents an opportunity to arouse and incite entrepreneurs, innovators and investors and foment a new technological revolution.
Sometimes like your country you got to be young, scrappy and hungry and not throw away your shot.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/01/opini ... d=71987722
Cognitive Therapy for the Country
ARE you feeling anxious and afraid? Little wonder. Our world has been convulsed in the past three weeks by horrifying acts of terrorism and murder: first, Paris, then Planned Parenthood and, finally, the slaughter on Wednesday of 14 people at a social services center in San Bernardino, Calif., by a married couple who appear to have been inspired by Islamist extremists.
The message of these attacks is powerful: You are not safe anywhere.
That, after all, is the whole point of terrorism: to subvert our sense of the normal, to make us afraid of improbable dangers and invite us, in our fear, to overreact in ways that are destructive to our lifestyle and that will not make us any safer.
We really can’t help it. For better or worse, humans are hard-wired to detect unpredictable and novel events, like surprising rewards and terrifying punishments. They grab our attention and take precedence over the ordinary — and safe — aspects of our surroundings to which we’ve become habituated. We evolved this way over millions of years, in part, to help us identify and learn about new and valuable resources and dangers in our environment. Even if a particular danger is improbable, we can’t afford to ignore it.
But that doesn’t mean that we should check our brain at the door once we’ve been traumatized and let ourselves be ruled by our emotions.
Unfortunately, that is exactly what some of our presidential candidates have done in recent weeks. Donald J. Trump would deport all illegal immigrants, and Ben Carson would monitor mosques. Since a vast majority of immigrants and Muslims are neither terrorists nor criminals, these are laughably irrational proposals that would do nothing to diminish danger.
More...
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/12/06/op ... .html?_r=0
ARE you feeling anxious and afraid? Little wonder. Our world has been convulsed in the past three weeks by horrifying acts of terrorism and murder: first, Paris, then Planned Parenthood and, finally, the slaughter on Wednesday of 14 people at a social services center in San Bernardino, Calif., by a married couple who appear to have been inspired by Islamist extremists.
The message of these attacks is powerful: You are not safe anywhere.
That, after all, is the whole point of terrorism: to subvert our sense of the normal, to make us afraid of improbable dangers and invite us, in our fear, to overreact in ways that are destructive to our lifestyle and that will not make us any safer.
We really can’t help it. For better or worse, humans are hard-wired to detect unpredictable and novel events, like surprising rewards and terrifying punishments. They grab our attention and take precedence over the ordinary — and safe — aspects of our surroundings to which we’ve become habituated. We evolved this way over millions of years, in part, to help us identify and learn about new and valuable resources and dangers in our environment. Even if a particular danger is improbable, we can’t afford to ignore it.
But that doesn’t mean that we should check our brain at the door once we’ve been traumatized and let ourselves be ruled by our emotions.
Unfortunately, that is exactly what some of our presidential candidates have done in recent weeks. Donald J. Trump would deport all illegal immigrants, and Ben Carson would monitor mosques. Since a vast majority of immigrants and Muslims are neither terrorists nor criminals, these are laughably irrational proposals that would do nothing to diminish danger.
More...
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/12/06/op ... .html?_r=0
Cracks in the Liberal Order
IN the twenty-five years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the architecture of liberal modernity has looked relatively stable. Not flawless or wonderful or ideal, to be sure; not free of discontents and decadence. But it’s been hard to imagine the basic liberal democratic capitalist order cracking up, let alone envision what might take its place.
Through the dot-com bust, 9/11, the Iraq war, and the financial crisis, it was striking how consensus held, how elites kept circulating, how quickly populist movements collapsed or were co-opted, how Washington and Brussels consolidated power even when their projects failed. No new ideological movement, whether radical or reactionary, emerged to offer the alternative to liberalism that fascism and Marxism and throne-and-altar traditionalism once supplied. And no external adversary, whether Putinist or Islamist or Chinese, seemed to offer a better way than ours.
Here in the dying days of 2015, though, something seems to have shifted. For the first time in a generation, the theme of this year was the liberal order’s vulnerability, not its resilience. 2015 was a memento mori moment for our institutions — a year of cracks in the system, of crumbling firewalls, of reminders that all orders pass away.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/27/opini ... d=71987722
IN the twenty-five years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the architecture of liberal modernity has looked relatively stable. Not flawless or wonderful or ideal, to be sure; not free of discontents and decadence. But it’s been hard to imagine the basic liberal democratic capitalist order cracking up, let alone envision what might take its place.
Through the dot-com bust, 9/11, the Iraq war, and the financial crisis, it was striking how consensus held, how elites kept circulating, how quickly populist movements collapsed or were co-opted, how Washington and Brussels consolidated power even when their projects failed. No new ideological movement, whether radical or reactionary, emerged to offer the alternative to liberalism that fascism and Marxism and throne-and-altar traditionalism once supplied. And no external adversary, whether Putinist or Islamist or Chinese, seemed to offer a better way than ours.
Here in the dying days of 2015, though, something seems to have shifted. For the first time in a generation, the theme of this year was the liberal order’s vulnerability, not its resilience. 2015 was a memento mori moment for our institutions — a year of cracks in the system, of crumbling firewalls, of reminders that all orders pass away.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/27/opini ... d=71987722
The Age of Small Terror
On New Year’s Eve some friends and family members had a drink at a bar in Tel Aviv. The next day a gunman shot up the place, killing two people and wounding at least five. When I heard about the shooting I was horrified, of course, but there was no special emotion caused by the proximity 16 hours before.
These days, we all live at risk of random terror, whether we are in Paris, San Bernardino, Boston or Fort Hood. Many of us have had brushes with these sorts of attacks. It’s partly randomness that determines whether you happen to be in the wrong spot at the wrong time.
But there is something important about the accumulation of these random killing sprees — the way it affects the social psychology and the culture we all inhabit. We are living in the age of small terror.
In Israel, there’s the wave of stabbings. In this country we have shooting sprees in schools and in theaters. In cities there are police killings. In other places there are suicide bombings. This violence is the daily diet of the global news channels.
Many of the attacks have religious or political overtones. But there’s always a psychological element, too. Some young adults have separated from their parents but they have not developed an independent self of their own. In order to escape the terror of their own formlessness or insignificance, a few commit to some fanatical belief system. They perform some horrific act they believe will give their life shape, meaning and glory. Creeds like radical Islam offer the illusion that murder and self-annihilation is the noblest form of sacrifice.
These self-motivated attacks have become a worldwide social contagion. These diverse acts of small terror have combined to create a general state of anxiety.
Fear is an emotion directed at a specific threat, but anxiety is an unfocused corrosive uneasiness. In the age of small terror this anxiety induces a sense that the basic systems of authority are not working, that those in charge are not keeping people safe.
People are more likely to have a background sense that life is nastier and more precarious — red in tooth and claw. They pull in the tribal walls and distrust the outsider. This anxiety makes everybody a little less humane.
In country after country this anxiety is challenging the liberal order. I mean philosophic Enlightenment liberalism, not partisan liberalism. It’s the basic belief in open society, free speech, egalitarianism and meliorism (gradual progress). It’s a belief that through reasoned conversation values cohere and fanaticism recedes. It’s the belief that people of all creeds merit tolerance and respect.
These liberal assumptions have been challenged from the top for years — by dictators. But now they are challenged from the bottom, by populist anti-liberals who support the National Front in France, UKIP in Britain, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Vladimir Putin in Russia and, in some guises, Donald Trump in the U.S.
The surge of anti-liberalism has meant one of the most important political fissures is now between those who support an open society and those who support a closed society. Back in the 1990s, openness and the withering of borders was all the rage, but now parts of the left embrace closed trade policies and parts of the right embrace closed cultural and migration policies.
Anti-liberalism has been most noticeable on the right. Classically liberal conservatives are in retreat, as voters look for strongmen who will close borders and stultify the demographic and social fabric. It’s too soon to tell if the Republican Party will have fewer evangelical voters this year, but the tenor of debate has certainly been less Christian — less charitable, less hospitable to the stranger.
It’s up to us who believe in open society to wage an intellectual counterattack. This can’t be done be repeating 1990s bromides about free choice and the natural harmony among peoples. You can’t beat moral fanaticism with weak tea moral relativism.
You can only beat it with commitment pluralism. People are only fulfilled when they make deep moral commitments. The danger comes when they are fanatically and monopolistically committed to only one thing.
The pluralist is committed to a philosophy or faith, but also to an ethnicity and also to a city, and also to a job and also to diverse interests and fascinating foreign cultures. These different commitments balance and moderate one another. A life in diverse worlds with diverse people weaves together into one humane, multifaceted existence. The rigidity of one belief system is forced to confront the messiness of work relationships or a neighborhood association.
The anxiety caused by small terror can produce nasty mental habits. Mental resilience becomes as important as physical resilience. That means remaking the case for open society, open cultures and a basic commitment to moral pluralism. Openness is worth the occasional horror fanatics cause.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/05/opini ... d=71987722
On New Year’s Eve some friends and family members had a drink at a bar in Tel Aviv. The next day a gunman shot up the place, killing two people and wounding at least five. When I heard about the shooting I was horrified, of course, but there was no special emotion caused by the proximity 16 hours before.
These days, we all live at risk of random terror, whether we are in Paris, San Bernardino, Boston or Fort Hood. Many of us have had brushes with these sorts of attacks. It’s partly randomness that determines whether you happen to be in the wrong spot at the wrong time.
But there is something important about the accumulation of these random killing sprees — the way it affects the social psychology and the culture we all inhabit. We are living in the age of small terror.
In Israel, there’s the wave of stabbings. In this country we have shooting sprees in schools and in theaters. In cities there are police killings. In other places there are suicide bombings. This violence is the daily diet of the global news channels.
Many of the attacks have religious or political overtones. But there’s always a psychological element, too. Some young adults have separated from their parents but they have not developed an independent self of their own. In order to escape the terror of their own formlessness or insignificance, a few commit to some fanatical belief system. They perform some horrific act they believe will give their life shape, meaning and glory. Creeds like radical Islam offer the illusion that murder and self-annihilation is the noblest form of sacrifice.
These self-motivated attacks have become a worldwide social contagion. These diverse acts of small terror have combined to create a general state of anxiety.
Fear is an emotion directed at a specific threat, but anxiety is an unfocused corrosive uneasiness. In the age of small terror this anxiety induces a sense that the basic systems of authority are not working, that those in charge are not keeping people safe.
People are more likely to have a background sense that life is nastier and more precarious — red in tooth and claw. They pull in the tribal walls and distrust the outsider. This anxiety makes everybody a little less humane.
In country after country this anxiety is challenging the liberal order. I mean philosophic Enlightenment liberalism, not partisan liberalism. It’s the basic belief in open society, free speech, egalitarianism and meliorism (gradual progress). It’s a belief that through reasoned conversation values cohere and fanaticism recedes. It’s the belief that people of all creeds merit tolerance and respect.
These liberal assumptions have been challenged from the top for years — by dictators. But now they are challenged from the bottom, by populist anti-liberals who support the National Front in France, UKIP in Britain, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Vladimir Putin in Russia and, in some guises, Donald Trump in the U.S.
The surge of anti-liberalism has meant one of the most important political fissures is now between those who support an open society and those who support a closed society. Back in the 1990s, openness and the withering of borders was all the rage, but now parts of the left embrace closed trade policies and parts of the right embrace closed cultural and migration policies.
Anti-liberalism has been most noticeable on the right. Classically liberal conservatives are in retreat, as voters look for strongmen who will close borders and stultify the demographic and social fabric. It’s too soon to tell if the Republican Party will have fewer evangelical voters this year, but the tenor of debate has certainly been less Christian — less charitable, less hospitable to the stranger.
It’s up to us who believe in open society to wage an intellectual counterattack. This can’t be done be repeating 1990s bromides about free choice and the natural harmony among peoples. You can’t beat moral fanaticism with weak tea moral relativism.
You can only beat it with commitment pluralism. People are only fulfilled when they make deep moral commitments. The danger comes when they are fanatically and monopolistically committed to only one thing.
The pluralist is committed to a philosophy or faith, but also to an ethnicity and also to a city, and also to a job and also to diverse interests and fascinating foreign cultures. These different commitments balance and moderate one another. A life in diverse worlds with diverse people weaves together into one humane, multifaceted existence. The rigidity of one belief system is forced to confront the messiness of work relationships or a neighborhood association.
The anxiety caused by small terror can produce nasty mental habits. Mental resilience becomes as important as physical resilience. That means remaking the case for open society, open cultures and a basic commitment to moral pluralism. Openness is worth the occasional horror fanatics cause.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/05/opini ... d=71987722
Ultra-Rich 'Philanthrocapitalist' Class Undermining Global Democracy: Report
As foundations and wealthy individuals funnel money into global development, what "solutions" are they pursuing?
From Warren Buffett to Bill Gates, it is no secret that the ultra-rich philanthropist class has an over-sized influence in shaping global politics and policies.
And a study (pdf) just out from the Global Policy Forum, an international watchdog group, makes the case that powerful philanthropic foundations—under the control of wealthy individuals—are actively undermining governments and inappropriately setting the agenda for international bodies like the United Nations.
The top 27 largest foundations together possess assets of over $360 billion, notes the study, authored by Jens Martens and Karolin Seitz. Nineteen of those foundations are based in the United States and, across the board, they are expanding their influence over the global south. And in so doing, they are undermining democracy and local sovereignty
More...
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/0 ... ialnetwork
As foundations and wealthy individuals funnel money into global development, what "solutions" are they pursuing?
From Warren Buffett to Bill Gates, it is no secret that the ultra-rich philanthropist class has an over-sized influence in shaping global politics and policies.
And a study (pdf) just out from the Global Policy Forum, an international watchdog group, makes the case that powerful philanthropic foundations—under the control of wealthy individuals—are actively undermining governments and inappropriately setting the agenda for international bodies like the United Nations.
The top 27 largest foundations together possess assets of over $360 billion, notes the study, authored by Jens Martens and Karolin Seitz. Nineteen of those foundations are based in the United States and, across the board, they are expanding their influence over the global south. And in so doing, they are undermining democracy and local sovereignty
More...
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/0 ... ialnetwork
What If?
ZURICH — Just get me talking about the world today and I can pretty well ruin any dinner party. I don’t mean to, but I find it hard not to look around and wonder whether the recent turmoil in international markets isn’t just the product of tremors but rather of seismic shifts in the foundational pillars of the global system, with highly unpredictable consequences.
What if a bunch of eras are ending all at once?
What if we’re at the end of the 30-plus-year era of high growth in China, and therefore China’s ability to fuel global growth through its imports, exports and purchases of commodities will be much less frothy and reliable in the future?
“Now that this debt bubble is unwinding, growth in China is going offline,” Michael Pento, president of Pento Portfolio Strategies, wrote on CNBC.com last week. “The renminbi’s falling value, cascading Shanghai equity prices (down 40 percent since June 2014) and plummeting rail freight volumes (down 10.5 percent year over year) all clearly illustrate that China is not growing at the promulgated 7 percent, but rather isn’t growing at all. The problem is that China accounted for 34 percent of global growth, and the nation’s multiplier effect on emerging markets takes that number to over 50 percent.”
What if the $100-a-barrel oil price era is over and all these countries whose economies were directly or indirectly propped up by those prices will have to learn to grow the old-fashioned way — by making goods and services others want to buy? Thanks to steady technological advances in America for fracking, horizontal drilling and using big data to identify deposits, OPEC’s pricing power has disappeared. Countries that have set their budgets based on $80- to $100-a-barrel oil will find themselves vastly underfunded just when their populations — in places like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Indonesia and Venezuela — have surged.
What if average is over for countries? During the Cold War you could be an average, newly independent state with artificial borders drawn by colonial powers. There were two superpowers ready to throw foreign aid at you, educate your kids in America or Moscow, build up your armed forces and security services and buy your crummy manufactured exports or commodities.
But what if the rise of robots, software and automation mean that these countries can’t rely on manufacturing to create mass labor anymore, that the products they can make and sell can’t compete with Chinese goods, that climate change is pressuring their ecosystems and that neither Russia nor America wants to have anything to do with them because all either wins is a bill?
Many of these frail, artificial states don’t correspond to any ethnic, cultural, linguistic or demographic realities. They are caravan homes in a trailer park — built on slabs of concrete without real foundations or basements — and what you’re seeing today with the acceleration of technology, climate change stresses and globalization is the equivalent of a tornado going through a trailer park. Some of these states are just falling apart, and many of their people are now trying to cross the Mediterranean — to escape their world of disorder and get into the world of order, particularly the European Union.
But what if the E.U. era is over? Reuters reported this week that Germany is telling other E.U. countries that if they don’t prevent the influx of more refugees into Europe from the Mediterranean and “relieve Berlin of the lonely task of housing refugees, Germany could shut its doors.” Some Germans even want a border fence. One senior conservative was quoted as saying, “If you build a fence, it’s the end of Europe as we know it.”
What if the era of Iranian isolation is over, just as the Arab system is collapsing and the two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians is history? How will all those molecules interact?
And what if all this is happening when the two-party system in America seems to be getting most of its energy from the far left and the far right? Bernie Sanders’s platform is that we can solve our most onerous economic problems if we just tax “The Man” more. Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are running on the theme that they are “The Man” — the strongman — who can magically fix everything.
What if our 2016 election ends up being between a socialist and a borderline fascist — ideas that died in 1989 and 1945 respectively?
And what if all of this is happening at a time when our government’s ability to stimulate the economy through either monetary or fiscal policy is constrained? Unless we go to negative interest rates, the best the Fed can do now is rescind the tiny rate hike made in December. Meanwhile, after all the vital government spending to stimulate demand after the 2008 crisis, there is no consensus in the country for another big round.
These what-ifs constitute the real policy landscape that will confront the next president. But here’s the worst “what if”: What if we’re having a presidential election but no one is even asking these questions, let alone “what if” all of these tectonic plates move at once? How will we generate growth, jobs, security and resilience?
There’s still an opportunity for someone to lead by asking, and answering, all of these “what ifs,” but that time is quickly coming to an end, just like the last dinner party I ruined.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/20/opini ... pe=article
ZURICH — Just get me talking about the world today and I can pretty well ruin any dinner party. I don’t mean to, but I find it hard not to look around and wonder whether the recent turmoil in international markets isn’t just the product of tremors but rather of seismic shifts in the foundational pillars of the global system, with highly unpredictable consequences.
What if a bunch of eras are ending all at once?
What if we’re at the end of the 30-plus-year era of high growth in China, and therefore China’s ability to fuel global growth through its imports, exports and purchases of commodities will be much less frothy and reliable in the future?
“Now that this debt bubble is unwinding, growth in China is going offline,” Michael Pento, president of Pento Portfolio Strategies, wrote on CNBC.com last week. “The renminbi’s falling value, cascading Shanghai equity prices (down 40 percent since June 2014) and plummeting rail freight volumes (down 10.5 percent year over year) all clearly illustrate that China is not growing at the promulgated 7 percent, but rather isn’t growing at all. The problem is that China accounted for 34 percent of global growth, and the nation’s multiplier effect on emerging markets takes that number to over 50 percent.”
What if the $100-a-barrel oil price era is over and all these countries whose economies were directly or indirectly propped up by those prices will have to learn to grow the old-fashioned way — by making goods and services others want to buy? Thanks to steady technological advances in America for fracking, horizontal drilling and using big data to identify deposits, OPEC’s pricing power has disappeared. Countries that have set their budgets based on $80- to $100-a-barrel oil will find themselves vastly underfunded just when their populations — in places like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Indonesia and Venezuela — have surged.
What if average is over for countries? During the Cold War you could be an average, newly independent state with artificial borders drawn by colonial powers. There were two superpowers ready to throw foreign aid at you, educate your kids in America or Moscow, build up your armed forces and security services and buy your crummy manufactured exports or commodities.
But what if the rise of robots, software and automation mean that these countries can’t rely on manufacturing to create mass labor anymore, that the products they can make and sell can’t compete with Chinese goods, that climate change is pressuring their ecosystems and that neither Russia nor America wants to have anything to do with them because all either wins is a bill?
Many of these frail, artificial states don’t correspond to any ethnic, cultural, linguistic or demographic realities. They are caravan homes in a trailer park — built on slabs of concrete without real foundations or basements — and what you’re seeing today with the acceleration of technology, climate change stresses and globalization is the equivalent of a tornado going through a trailer park. Some of these states are just falling apart, and many of their people are now trying to cross the Mediterranean — to escape their world of disorder and get into the world of order, particularly the European Union.
But what if the E.U. era is over? Reuters reported this week that Germany is telling other E.U. countries that if they don’t prevent the influx of more refugees into Europe from the Mediterranean and “relieve Berlin of the lonely task of housing refugees, Germany could shut its doors.” Some Germans even want a border fence. One senior conservative was quoted as saying, “If you build a fence, it’s the end of Europe as we know it.”
What if the era of Iranian isolation is over, just as the Arab system is collapsing and the two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians is history? How will all those molecules interact?
And what if all this is happening when the two-party system in America seems to be getting most of its energy from the far left and the far right? Bernie Sanders’s platform is that we can solve our most onerous economic problems if we just tax “The Man” more. Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are running on the theme that they are “The Man” — the strongman — who can magically fix everything.
What if our 2016 election ends up being between a socialist and a borderline fascist — ideas that died in 1989 and 1945 respectively?
And what if all of this is happening at a time when our government’s ability to stimulate the economy through either monetary or fiscal policy is constrained? Unless we go to negative interest rates, the best the Fed can do now is rescind the tiny rate hike made in December. Meanwhile, after all the vital government spending to stimulate demand after the 2008 crisis, there is no consensus in the country for another big round.
These what-ifs constitute the real policy landscape that will confront the next president. But here’s the worst “what if”: What if we’re having a presidential election but no one is even asking these questions, let alone “what if” all of these tectonic plates move at once? How will we generate growth, jobs, security and resilience?
There’s still an opportunity for someone to lead by asking, and answering, all of these “what ifs,” but that time is quickly coming to an end, just like the last dinner party I ruined.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/20/opini ... pe=article
Ways to Be Free
When you grew up in an unmapped, unwired world and find yourself in this one — observing the panic when GPS fails or the extent of online status anxiety — you can’t help wondering if somewhere along the way freedom got lost.
Freedom is still out there. We all have our idea of it, the deferred dream. Your psyche builds layers of protection around your most vulnerable traits, which may be closely linked to that precious essence in which freedom resides. Freedom is inseparable from risk.
Technology increases choice, but its prime purpose is to increase productivity; that is the amount that can be extracted from you in any given time. Like debt, it never sleeps. It confines you. It distracts you. It binds you. It depoliticizes you through isolation and through the blurring, in the cacophony it delivers, of fantasy with fact.
I don’t know if the world is freer than a half-century ago. On paper, it is. The totalitarian Soviet Imperium is gone. The generals who bossed Latin America are gone, generally. Asia has unshackled itself and claims this century as its own. Media has opened out, gone social.
Yet minds feel more crimped, fear more pervasive, possibility more limited, adventure more choreographed, politics more stale, economics more skewed, pressure more crushing, escape more elusive.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/22/opini ... d=71987722
When you grew up in an unmapped, unwired world and find yourself in this one — observing the panic when GPS fails or the extent of online status anxiety — you can’t help wondering if somewhere along the way freedom got lost.
Freedom is still out there. We all have our idea of it, the deferred dream. Your psyche builds layers of protection around your most vulnerable traits, which may be closely linked to that precious essence in which freedom resides. Freedom is inseparable from risk.
Technology increases choice, but its prime purpose is to increase productivity; that is the amount that can be extracted from you in any given time. Like debt, it never sleeps. It confines you. It distracts you. It binds you. It depoliticizes you through isolation and through the blurring, in the cacophony it delivers, of fantasy with fact.
I don’t know if the world is freer than a half-century ago. On paper, it is. The totalitarian Soviet Imperium is gone. The generals who bossed Latin America are gone, generally. Asia has unshackled itself and claims this century as its own. Media has opened out, gone social.
Yet minds feel more crimped, fear more pervasive, possibility more limited, adventure more choreographed, politics more stale, economics more skewed, pressure more crushing, escape more elusive.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/22/opini ... d=71987722
Social Media: Destroyer or Creator?
Over the last few years we’ve been treated to a number of “Facebook revolutions,” from the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street to the squares of Istanbul, Kiev and Hong Kong, all fueled by social media. But once the smoke cleared, most of these revolutions failed to build any sustainable new political order, in part because as so many voices got amplified, consensus-building became impossible.
Question: Does it turn out that social media is better at breaking things than at making things?
Recently, an important voice answered this question with a big “ yes.” That voice was Wael Ghonim, the Egyptian Google employee whose anonymous Facebook page helped to launch the Tahrir Square revolution in early 2011 that toppled President Hosni Mubarak — but then failed to give birth to a true democratic alternative.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/03/opini ... d=45305309
Over the last few years we’ve been treated to a number of “Facebook revolutions,” from the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street to the squares of Istanbul, Kiev and Hong Kong, all fueled by social media. But once the smoke cleared, most of these revolutions failed to build any sustainable new political order, in part because as so many voices got amplified, consensus-building became impossible.
Question: Does it turn out that social media is better at breaking things than at making things?
Recently, an important voice answered this question with a big “ yes.” That voice was Wael Ghonim, the Egyptian Google employee whose anonymous Facebook page helped to launch the Tahrir Square revolution in early 2011 that toppled President Hosni Mubarak — but then failed to give birth to a true democratic alternative.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/03/opini ... d=45305309
The Governing Cancer of Our Time
We live in a big, diverse society. There are essentially two ways to maintain order and get things done in such a society — politics or some form of dictatorship. Either through compromise or brute force. Our founding fathers chose politics.
Politics is an activity in which you recognize the simultaneous existence of different groups, interests and opinions. You try to find some way to balance or reconcile or compromise those interests, or at least a majority of them. You follow a set of rules, enshrined in a constitution or in custom, to help you reach these compromises in a way everybody considers legitimate.
The downside of politics is that people never really get everything they want. It’s messy, limited and no issue is ever really settled. Politics is a muddled activity in which people have to recognize restraints and settle for less than they want. Disappointment is normal.
But that’s sort of the beauty of politics, too. It involves an endless conversation in which we learn about other people and see things from their vantage point and try to balance their needs against our own. Plus, it’s better than the alternative: rule by some authoritarian tyrant who tries to govern by clobbering everyone in his way.
As Bernard Crick wrote in his book, “In Defence of Politics,” “Politics is a way of ruling divided societies without undue violence.”
Over the past generation we have seen the rise of a group of people who are against politics. These groups — best exemplified by the Tea Party but not exclusive to the right — want to elect people who have no political experience. They want “outsiders.” They delegitimize compromise and deal-making. They’re willing to trample the customs and rules that give legitimacy to legislative decision-making if it helps them gain power.
Ultimately, they don’t recognize other people. They suffer from a form of political narcissism, in which they don’t accept the legitimacy of other interests and opinions. They don’t recognize restraints. They want total victories for themselves and their doctrine.
This antipolitics tendency has had a wretched effect on our democracy. It has led to a series of overlapping downward spirals:
The antipolitics people elect legislators who have no political skills or experience. That incompetence leads to dysfunctional government, which leads to more disgust with government, which leads to a demand for even more outsiders.
The antipolitics people don’t accept that politics is a limited activity. They make soaring promises and raise ridiculous expectations. When those expectations are not met, voters grow cynical and, disgusted, turn even further in the direction of antipolitics.
The antipolitics people refuse compromise and so block the legislative process. The absence of accomplishment destroys public trust. The decline in trust makes deal-making harder.
We’re now at a point where the Senate says it won’t even hold hearings on a presidential Supreme Court nominee, in clear defiance of custom and the Constitution. We’re now at a point in which politicians live in fear if they try to compromise and legislate. We’re now at a point in which normal political conversation has broken down. People feel unheard, which makes them shout even louder, which further destroys conversation.
And in walks Donald Trump. People say that Trump is an unconventional candidate and that he represents a break from politics as usual. That’s not true. Trump is the culmination of the trends we have been seeing for the last 30 years: the desire for outsiders; the bashing style of rhetoric that makes conversation impossible; the decline of coherent political parties; the declining importance of policy; the tendency to fight cultural battles and identity wars through political means.
Trump represents the path the founders rejected. There is a hint of violence undergirding his campaign. There is always a whiff, and sometimes more than a whiff, of “I’d like to punch him in the face.”
I printed out a Times list of the insults Trump has hurled on Twitter. The list took up 33 pages. Trump’s style is bashing and pummeling. Everyone who opposes or disagrees with him is an idiot, a moron or a loser. The implied promise of his campaign is that he will come to Washington and bully his way through.
Trump’s supporters aren’t looking for a political process to address their needs. They are looking for a superhero. As the political scientist Matthew MacWilliams found, the one trait that best predicts whether you’re a Trump supporter is how high you score on tests that measure authoritarianism.
This isn’t just an American phenomenon. Politics is in retreat and authoritarianism is on the rise worldwide. The answer to Trump is politics. It’s acknowledging other people exist. It’s taking pleasure in that difference and hammering out workable arrangements. As Harold Laski put it, “We shall make the basis of our state consent to disagreement. Therein shall we ensure its deepest harmony.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/opini ... 87722&_r=0
We live in a big, diverse society. There are essentially two ways to maintain order and get things done in such a society — politics or some form of dictatorship. Either through compromise or brute force. Our founding fathers chose politics.
Politics is an activity in which you recognize the simultaneous existence of different groups, interests and opinions. You try to find some way to balance or reconcile or compromise those interests, or at least a majority of them. You follow a set of rules, enshrined in a constitution or in custom, to help you reach these compromises in a way everybody considers legitimate.
The downside of politics is that people never really get everything they want. It’s messy, limited and no issue is ever really settled. Politics is a muddled activity in which people have to recognize restraints and settle for less than they want. Disappointment is normal.
But that’s sort of the beauty of politics, too. It involves an endless conversation in which we learn about other people and see things from their vantage point and try to balance their needs against our own. Plus, it’s better than the alternative: rule by some authoritarian tyrant who tries to govern by clobbering everyone in his way.
As Bernard Crick wrote in his book, “In Defence of Politics,” “Politics is a way of ruling divided societies without undue violence.”
Over the past generation we have seen the rise of a group of people who are against politics. These groups — best exemplified by the Tea Party but not exclusive to the right — want to elect people who have no political experience. They want “outsiders.” They delegitimize compromise and deal-making. They’re willing to trample the customs and rules that give legitimacy to legislative decision-making if it helps them gain power.
Ultimately, they don’t recognize other people. They suffer from a form of political narcissism, in which they don’t accept the legitimacy of other interests and opinions. They don’t recognize restraints. They want total victories for themselves and their doctrine.
This antipolitics tendency has had a wretched effect on our democracy. It has led to a series of overlapping downward spirals:
The antipolitics people elect legislators who have no political skills or experience. That incompetence leads to dysfunctional government, which leads to more disgust with government, which leads to a demand for even more outsiders.
The antipolitics people don’t accept that politics is a limited activity. They make soaring promises and raise ridiculous expectations. When those expectations are not met, voters grow cynical and, disgusted, turn even further in the direction of antipolitics.
The antipolitics people refuse compromise and so block the legislative process. The absence of accomplishment destroys public trust. The decline in trust makes deal-making harder.
We’re now at a point where the Senate says it won’t even hold hearings on a presidential Supreme Court nominee, in clear defiance of custom and the Constitution. We’re now at a point in which politicians live in fear if they try to compromise and legislate. We’re now at a point in which normal political conversation has broken down. People feel unheard, which makes them shout even louder, which further destroys conversation.
And in walks Donald Trump. People say that Trump is an unconventional candidate and that he represents a break from politics as usual. That’s not true. Trump is the culmination of the trends we have been seeing for the last 30 years: the desire for outsiders; the bashing style of rhetoric that makes conversation impossible; the decline of coherent political parties; the declining importance of policy; the tendency to fight cultural battles and identity wars through political means.
Trump represents the path the founders rejected. There is a hint of violence undergirding his campaign. There is always a whiff, and sometimes more than a whiff, of “I’d like to punch him in the face.”
I printed out a Times list of the insults Trump has hurled on Twitter. The list took up 33 pages. Trump’s style is bashing and pummeling. Everyone who opposes or disagrees with him is an idiot, a moron or a loser. The implied promise of his campaign is that he will come to Washington and bully his way through.
Trump’s supporters aren’t looking for a political process to address their needs. They are looking for a superhero. As the political scientist Matthew MacWilliams found, the one trait that best predicts whether you’re a Trump supporter is how high you score on tests that measure authoritarianism.
This isn’t just an American phenomenon. Politics is in retreat and authoritarianism is on the rise worldwide. The answer to Trump is politics. It’s acknowledging other people exist. It’s taking pleasure in that difference and hammering out workable arrangements. As Harold Laski put it, “We shall make the basis of our state consent to disagreement. Therein shall we ensure its deepest harmony.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/opini ... 87722&_r=0
From ‘Je Suis Charlie’ to Attacks on Free Speech
After the murderous attack on the offices of the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo in January 2015, “Je suis Charlie” became a rallying cry in France and across much of Europe in support of free speech and freedom of expression. It is a sad and depressing sequel to that display of solidarity that so many European nations seem willing today to curtail those same freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism.
As Raphael Minder of The Times reported from Madrid last week, a “lengthening string of prosecutions” across Europe offer alarming evidence that laws hurriedly enacted in the wake of terrorist attacks are being misused to stifle legitimate protest.
He cited the example of two puppeteers arrested in Madrid for a show that included a play on the names of Al Qaeda and ETA, the Basque separatist organization, as well as the conviction of the comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala in France for a Facebook post suggesting sympathy with one of the Charlie Hebdo gunmen.
Meanwhile, up to 100 people are under investigation in France under a new antiterrorism law for posting comments that appear to support terrorism; in Spain, a 21-year-old woman was recently convicted of inciting terrorism after she posted messages on Twitter calling on a radical far-left group to kill politicians.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/29/opini ... d=71987722
After the murderous attack on the offices of the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo in January 2015, “Je suis Charlie” became a rallying cry in France and across much of Europe in support of free speech and freedom of expression. It is a sad and depressing sequel to that display of solidarity that so many European nations seem willing today to curtail those same freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism.
As Raphael Minder of The Times reported from Madrid last week, a “lengthening string of prosecutions” across Europe offer alarming evidence that laws hurriedly enacted in the wake of terrorist attacks are being misused to stifle legitimate protest.
He cited the example of two puppeteers arrested in Madrid for a show that included a play on the names of Al Qaeda and ETA, the Basque separatist organization, as well as the conviction of the comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala in France for a Facebook post suggesting sympathy with one of the Charlie Hebdo gunmen.
Meanwhile, up to 100 people are under investigation in France under a new antiterrorism law for posting comments that appear to support terrorism; in Spain, a 21-year-old woman was recently convicted of inciting terrorism after she posted messages on Twitter calling on a radical far-left group to kill politicians.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/29/opini ... d=71987722
The Movement Mentality
It feels like people clumped themselves into intellectual movements more 30 years ago than they do today. There were paleoconservatives and neoconservatives. There were modernists and postmodernists; liberals, realists, and neoliberals; communitarians and liberation theologians; Jungians and Freudians; Straussians and deconstructionists; feminists and post-feminists; Marxists and democratic socialists. Maybe there were even some transcendentalists, existentialists, pragmatists, agrarians and Gnostics floating around.
Now people seem less likely to gather in intellectual clumps. Now public thinkers seem to be defined more by their academic discipline (economist or evolutionary biologist) or by their topic (race and gender), than by their philosophic school or a shared vision for transforming society.
The forces of individualism that are sweeping through so much of society are also leading to the atomization of intellectual life. Eighty years ago engaged students at City College in New York sat in the cafeteria hour upon hour, debating. The Trotskyites sat in one alcove and the Leninists sat in another, and since the Trostkyites were smarter and won the debates, the leaders of the Leninist faction eventually forbade their cadres from ever talking to them.
But today we live in a start-up culture. There’s great prestige in being the founder of something, the lone entrepreneur who creates something new. Young people who frequently say they don’t want to work in some large organization are certainly not going to want to subsume themselves in some pre-existing intellectual label.
The Internet has changed things, too. Writers used to cluster around magazines that were the hubs of movements. On the Internet, individual posters and tweeters are more distinct, but collectives of thinkers are less common.
The odd thing is that it was easier to come to maturity when there were more well-defined philosophical groups. When there was a choice of self-conscious social movements, a young person could try them on like clothing at the mall: be an existentialist one year and then join a Frankfurt School clique the next. This was a structured way to find a philosophy of life, a way of looking at the world, an identity.
Eventually you found what fit, made a wager, joined a team and assented to a belief system that was already latent within you. When I joined National Review at age 24 I joined a very self-conscious tradition. I was connected to a history of insight and belief; to Edmund Burke and Whittaker Chambers and James Burnham. I wanted to learn everything I could about that tradition — what I accepted and what I rejected — as a way to figure out what I believed.
When you join a movement — whether it is deconstructionist, feminist or Jungian — you join a community, which can sometimes feel like family in ways good and bad. You have a common way of seeing the world, which you want to share with everyone. When you join, people are always pressing books into your hands.
Believing becomes an activity. People in movements take stands, mobilize for common causes, hold conferences, fight and factionalize and build solidarity. (I remember late night at one conference dancing near four generations of anti-communists.)
There are opportunity structures for young people to rise and contribute. First you set out the chairs for the meetings; later you get to lead the meetings. Young people find that none of the mentors is perfect, so they can’t be completely loyal to any particular leader, but they can be loyal to the enterprise as a whole, because it embodies some real truth and is stumbling toward some real good.
The whole process arouses the passions. Today universities teach “critical thinking” — to be detached, skeptical and analytic. Movements are marked by emotion — division and solidarity, victory and defeat.
columnists, The Times editorial board and contributing writers from around the world.
There are fervent new converts, and traitors who “break ranks.” There are furious debates over strategy; the future design of society is at stake. There are inevitably love affairs and breakups. People learn ardently, with their hearts.
As in any love, there’s an idealistic early phase, then a period of disillusionment, and then, hopefully, a period of longer and more stable commitment to the ideas. The movement shapes one’s inner landscape. It offers a way to clarify the world; a bunch of books to consult if you need to think through some problem.
Of course there is often rigidity and groupthink, but people can also be smarter when thinking in groups. For example, movements pool imagination. It’s very hard to come up with a vision so compelling that it can provide a unifying purpose to your life. But such visions emerge in a movement collectively, and then get crystallized by a leader like Martin Luther King.
It all depends on taking steps that are less in fashion today: committing to a collective, accepting a label, keeping faith, surrendering self to a tradition that stretches beyond you in time.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/01/opini ... 87722&_r=0
It feels like people clumped themselves into intellectual movements more 30 years ago than they do today. There were paleoconservatives and neoconservatives. There were modernists and postmodernists; liberals, realists, and neoliberals; communitarians and liberation theologians; Jungians and Freudians; Straussians and deconstructionists; feminists and post-feminists; Marxists and democratic socialists. Maybe there were even some transcendentalists, existentialists, pragmatists, agrarians and Gnostics floating around.
Now people seem less likely to gather in intellectual clumps. Now public thinkers seem to be defined more by their academic discipline (economist or evolutionary biologist) or by their topic (race and gender), than by their philosophic school or a shared vision for transforming society.
The forces of individualism that are sweeping through so much of society are also leading to the atomization of intellectual life. Eighty years ago engaged students at City College in New York sat in the cafeteria hour upon hour, debating. The Trotskyites sat in one alcove and the Leninists sat in another, and since the Trostkyites were smarter and won the debates, the leaders of the Leninist faction eventually forbade their cadres from ever talking to them.
But today we live in a start-up culture. There’s great prestige in being the founder of something, the lone entrepreneur who creates something new. Young people who frequently say they don’t want to work in some large organization are certainly not going to want to subsume themselves in some pre-existing intellectual label.
The Internet has changed things, too. Writers used to cluster around magazines that were the hubs of movements. On the Internet, individual posters and tweeters are more distinct, but collectives of thinkers are less common.
The odd thing is that it was easier to come to maturity when there were more well-defined philosophical groups. When there was a choice of self-conscious social movements, a young person could try them on like clothing at the mall: be an existentialist one year and then join a Frankfurt School clique the next. This was a structured way to find a philosophy of life, a way of looking at the world, an identity.
Eventually you found what fit, made a wager, joined a team and assented to a belief system that was already latent within you. When I joined National Review at age 24 I joined a very self-conscious tradition. I was connected to a history of insight and belief; to Edmund Burke and Whittaker Chambers and James Burnham. I wanted to learn everything I could about that tradition — what I accepted and what I rejected — as a way to figure out what I believed.
When you join a movement — whether it is deconstructionist, feminist or Jungian — you join a community, which can sometimes feel like family in ways good and bad. You have a common way of seeing the world, which you want to share with everyone. When you join, people are always pressing books into your hands.
Believing becomes an activity. People in movements take stands, mobilize for common causes, hold conferences, fight and factionalize and build solidarity. (I remember late night at one conference dancing near four generations of anti-communists.)
There are opportunity structures for young people to rise and contribute. First you set out the chairs for the meetings; later you get to lead the meetings. Young people find that none of the mentors is perfect, so they can’t be completely loyal to any particular leader, but they can be loyal to the enterprise as a whole, because it embodies some real truth and is stumbling toward some real good.
The whole process arouses the passions. Today universities teach “critical thinking” — to be detached, skeptical and analytic. Movements are marked by emotion — division and solidarity, victory and defeat.
columnists, The Times editorial board and contributing writers from around the world.
There are fervent new converts, and traitors who “break ranks.” There are furious debates over strategy; the future design of society is at stake. There are inevitably love affairs and breakups. People learn ardently, with their hearts.
As in any love, there’s an idealistic early phase, then a period of disillusionment, and then, hopefully, a period of longer and more stable commitment to the ideas. The movement shapes one’s inner landscape. It offers a way to clarify the world; a bunch of books to consult if you need to think through some problem.
Of course there is often rigidity and groupthink, but people can also be smarter when thinking in groups. For example, movements pool imagination. It’s very hard to come up with a vision so compelling that it can provide a unifying purpose to your life. But such visions emerge in a movement collectively, and then get crystallized by a leader like Martin Luther King.
It all depends on taking steps that are less in fashion today: committing to a collective, accepting a label, keeping faith, surrendering self to a tradition that stretches beyond you in time.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/01/opini ... 87722&_r=0
Mass surveillance silences minority opinions, according to study
A new study shows that knowledge of government surveillance causes people to self-censor their dissenting opinions online. The research offers a sobering look at the oft-touted "democratizing" effect of social media and Internet access that bolsters minority opinion.
The study, published in Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, studied the effects of subtle reminders of mass surveillance on its subjects. The majority of participants reacted by suppressing opinions that they perceived to be in the minority. This research illustrates the silencing effect of participants’ dissenting opinions in the wake of widespread knowledge of government surveillance, as revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013.
More...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the ... -to-study/
A new study shows that knowledge of government surveillance causes people to self-censor their dissenting opinions online. The research offers a sobering look at the oft-touted "democratizing" effect of social media and Internet access that bolsters minority opinion.
The study, published in Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, studied the effects of subtle reminders of mass surveillance on its subjects. The majority of participants reacted by suppressing opinions that they perceived to be in the minority. This research illustrates the silencing effect of participants’ dissenting opinions in the wake of widespread knowledge of government surveillance, as revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013.
More...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the ... -to-study/
How Covenants Make Us
When you think about it, there are four big forces coursing through modern societies. Global migration is leading to demographic diversity. Economic globalization is creating wider opportunity but also inequality. The Internet is giving people more choices over what to buy and pay attention to. A culture of autonomy valorizes individual choice and self-determination.
All of these forces have liberated the individual, or at least well-educated individuals, but they have been bad for national cohesion and the social fabric. Income inequality challenges economic cohesion as the classes divide. Demographic diversity challenges cultural cohesion as different ethnic groups rub against one another. The emphasis on individual choice challenges community cohesion and settled social bonds.
The weakening of the social fabric has created a range of problems. Alienated young men join ISIS so they can have a sense of belonging. Isolated teenagers shoot up schools. Many people grow up in fragmented, disorganized neighborhoods. Political polarization grows because people often don’t interact with those on the other side. Racial animosity stubbornly persists.
Odder still, people are often plagued by a sense of powerlessness, a loss of efficacy. The liberation of the individual was supposed to lead to mass empowerment. But it turns out that people can effectively pursue their goals only when they know who they are — when they have firm identities.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/05/opini ... d=71987722
When you think about it, there are four big forces coursing through modern societies. Global migration is leading to demographic diversity. Economic globalization is creating wider opportunity but also inequality. The Internet is giving people more choices over what to buy and pay attention to. A culture of autonomy valorizes individual choice and self-determination.
All of these forces have liberated the individual, or at least well-educated individuals, but they have been bad for national cohesion and the social fabric. Income inequality challenges economic cohesion as the classes divide. Demographic diversity challenges cultural cohesion as different ethnic groups rub against one another. The emphasis on individual choice challenges community cohesion and settled social bonds.
The weakening of the social fabric has created a range of problems. Alienated young men join ISIS so they can have a sense of belonging. Isolated teenagers shoot up schools. Many people grow up in fragmented, disorganized neighborhoods. Political polarization grows because people often don’t interact with those on the other side. Racial animosity stubbornly persists.
Odder still, people are often plagued by a sense of powerlessness, a loss of efficacy. The liberation of the individual was supposed to lead to mass empowerment. But it turns out that people can effectively pursue their goals only when they know who they are — when they have firm identities.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/05/opini ... d=71987722
Impossible Missions
Extract:
"In earlier historical epochs the world relied on imperial powers to come in and control zones of weak governance, as the Ottomans did for 500 years in the Middle East. Then it relied on colonial powers. Then it relied on homegrown kings, colonels and dictators to maintain order.
But what if we’re now in a post-imperial, post-colonial and post-authoritarian age? The kings, colonels and dictators of old did not have to deal with amplified citizens deeply connected to one another and the world with smartphones. The old autocrats also had vast oil resources or aid from superpowers in the Cold War to buy off their people. What if they now have bulging populations, dwindling oil revenues and can’t buy off their people or shut them up?"
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/06/opini ... d=71987722
Extract:
"In earlier historical epochs the world relied on imperial powers to come in and control zones of weak governance, as the Ottomans did for 500 years in the Middle East. Then it relied on colonial powers. Then it relied on homegrown kings, colonels and dictators to maintain order.
But what if we’re now in a post-imperial, post-colonial and post-authoritarian age? The kings, colonels and dictators of old did not have to deal with amplified citizens deeply connected to one another and the world with smartphones. The old autocrats also had vast oil resources or aid from superpowers in the Cold War to buy off their people. What if they now have bulging populations, dwindling oil revenues and can’t buy off their people or shut them up?"
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/06/opini ... d=71987722
The Death of Liberalism
Liberalism is dead. Or at least it is on the ropes. Triumphant a quarter-century ago, when liberal democracy appeared to have prevailed definitively over the totalitarian utopias that exacted such a toll in blood, it is now under siege from without and within.
Nationalism and authoritarianism, reinforced by technology, have come together to exercise new forms of control and manipulation over human beings whose susceptibility to greed, prejudice, ignorance, domination, subservience and fear was not, after all, swept away by the fall of the Berlin Wall.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/14/opini ... ef=opinion
Liberalism is dead. Or at least it is on the ropes. Triumphant a quarter-century ago, when liberal democracy appeared to have prevailed definitively over the totalitarian utopias that exacted such a toll in blood, it is now under siege from without and within.
Nationalism and authoritarianism, reinforced by technology, have come together to exercise new forms of control and manipulation over human beings whose susceptibility to greed, prejudice, ignorance, domination, subservience and fear was not, after all, swept away by the fall of the Berlin Wall.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/14/opini ... ef=opinion
Is There Too Much Democracy in America or Too Little?
DOES the rise of Donald J. Trump mean there is too much democracy in America? This is one way to explain the surprising success of Mr. Trump and Senator Bernie Sanders this year, which resembles the flourishing of anti-system candidates in Europe.
In a widely read essay for New York magazine called “Democracies End When They Are Too Democratic,” the journalist Andrew Sullivan denounced both Mr. Trump and “the demagogue of the left, Bernie Sanders” and declared that “the barriers to the popular will, especially when it comes to choosing our president, are now almost nonexistent.”
In the United States, though, and in Europe, too, the problem is not an excess of democracy, but a democratic deficit that has provoked a demagogic backlash.
In “Ruling the Void: The Hollowing of Western Democracy,” the Irish political scientist Peter Mair identified the trans-Atlantic trend that he called “the twin processes of popular and elite withdrawal from mass electoral politics.” Politicians chosen by membership-based mass parties have been replaced by politicians selected by donors and sold by advertising to voters. At the same time, the decline of neighborhood party machines turning out the vote has resulted in declining participation by lower income and less educated voters. The Americans who do vote are disproportionately affluent.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/opini ... d=71987722
DOES the rise of Donald J. Trump mean there is too much democracy in America? This is one way to explain the surprising success of Mr. Trump and Senator Bernie Sanders this year, which resembles the flourishing of anti-system candidates in Europe.
In a widely read essay for New York magazine called “Democracies End When They Are Too Democratic,” the journalist Andrew Sullivan denounced both Mr. Trump and “the demagogue of the left, Bernie Sanders” and declared that “the barriers to the popular will, especially when it comes to choosing our president, are now almost nonexistent.”
In the United States, though, and in Europe, too, the problem is not an excess of democracy, but a democratic deficit that has provoked a demagogic backlash.
In “Ruling the Void: The Hollowing of Western Democracy,” the Irish political scientist Peter Mair identified the trans-Atlantic trend that he called “the twin processes of popular and elite withdrawal from mass electoral politics.” Politicians chosen by membership-based mass parties have been replaced by politicians selected by donors and sold by advertising to voters. At the same time, the decline of neighborhood party machines turning out the vote has resulted in declining participation by lower income and less educated voters. The Americans who do vote are disproportionately affluent.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/opini ... d=71987722
Letter From Austria: Is Europe’s ‘Tolerant Society’ Backfiring?
VIENNA — Not long ago, riding the subway with my 8-year-old son to his school here, I noticed a headline in a newspaper left on a nearby seat: “Schoolteacher sues Muslim father for refusing to shake hands with her.” Compared with the alarming rise of the far-right Freedom Party here in Austria in recent months, this was minor news, but resonant. It seemed to point in some way to the clash-of-civilizations narrative feeding the xenophobic brand of politics ascendant on both sides of the Atlantic.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/23/opini ... 87722&_r=0
VIENNA — Not long ago, riding the subway with my 8-year-old son to his school here, I noticed a headline in a newspaper left on a nearby seat: “Schoolteacher sues Muslim father for refusing to shake hands with her.” Compared with the alarming rise of the far-right Freedom Party here in Austria in recent months, this was minor news, but resonant. It seemed to point in some way to the clash-of-civilizations narrative feeding the xenophobic brand of politics ascendant on both sides of the Atlantic.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/23/opini ... 87722&_r=0
Is This the West’s Weimar Moment?
Hamburg, Germany — WE Germans can never escape the trauma of our recent history. That has rarely been clearer than today, as we look around our Continent and across the Atlantic. There are almost too many differences to mention between what happened in the 1930s over here and what is going on today. And it goes without saying that Donald J. Trump and Austria’s Norbert Hofer are not Adolf Hitler. Still, Germany’s slide into a popular embrace of authoritarianism in the 1930s offers a frame for understanding how liberal democracies can suddenly turn toward anti-liberalism.
Setting aside debate about whether the rise of Nazism was built into the German DNA, there were four trends that led the country to reject its post-World War I constitutional, parliamentary democracy, known as the Weimar Republic: economic depression, loss of trust in institutions, social humiliation and political blunder. To a certain degree, these trends can be found across the West today.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/31/opini ... d=71987722
Hamburg, Germany — WE Germans can never escape the trauma of our recent history. That has rarely been clearer than today, as we look around our Continent and across the Atlantic. There are almost too many differences to mention between what happened in the 1930s over here and what is going on today. And it goes without saying that Donald J. Trump and Austria’s Norbert Hofer are not Adolf Hitler. Still, Germany’s slide into a popular embrace of authoritarianism in the 1930s offers a frame for understanding how liberal democracies can suddenly turn toward anti-liberalism.
Setting aside debate about whether the rise of Nazism was built into the German DNA, there were four trends that led the country to reject its post-World War I constitutional, parliamentary democracy, known as the Weimar Republic: economic depression, loss of trust in institutions, social humiliation and political blunder. To a certain degree, these trends can be found across the West today.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/31/opini ... d=71987722