Benjamin Barber

[Jon Ford]

Barber is a fine thinker. Note what he says below (from the article Wayne 
sent us), and note that what he is saying is pretty close to what I was 
saying (perhaps not clearly enough) a week or so ago in my exchange with 
Bob-- we need to think about what we export to foreign countries, and add 
some real values to the "value added" of our products!

Jon


<The underlying theme in all his work is democracy -- how to strengthen
it, export it, describe the variations found in different countries.
Neither the extremists of "Jihad" nor the capitalists that make up
"McWorld" are serving democracy, he argues, because both evade or ignore
the process.

"I said precisely that the war of Jihad versus McWorld, if it was not
alleviated by global democracy, an international civic infrastructure,
was likely to explode. These two sets of forces could not avoid clashing
and exploding; they were going to create nothing but death and explosion
unless we did this third thing, and we didn't.

"The question is: Will we now? Will we now acknowledge the
interdependence that has been demonstrated? Will we make interdependence
not just a matter of AIDS and global warming and weapons destruction and
terrorism, but will we make it a matter of global civic and political
institutions? I think there are inducements that were not there before.

"On September 10, when I talked about global democracy, people thought,
'What a quaint, charming utopian that guy Barber is.' On September 12,
they were saying what a political realist that guy is."

Barber talks about a new "declaration of interdependence," which
acknowledges that "no one nation can experience prosperity and plenty
unless others do, too." America is a reluctant power, he says, and in
this reluctance it communicates indifference and arrogance to other
nations.

"We want to be loved, to be understanding, to be sensitive, whereas what
the world wants from us is to use our power to construct a global system
that will let them take care of themselves. They don't need our
sympathy, they don't want our sensitivity, they want a fair system that
gives them a fair shake. Our sentimentalism sometimes gets in the way.
We want to be "liked," you see what I'm saying? We are a very big
elephant that thinks it's a large pussycat."

Multinational corporations tend to prefer to operate in countries that
impose few limits on their operations, Barber says. Those tend to be
countries with anarchic, weak or corrupt governments, which also provide
a fertile breeding ground for terrorists. Although in this country
capitalism has thrived within the "container" of regulation and civil
society, America has failed to export or promote similar restraints
overseas. "If we export capitalism without democracy, we breed anarchy
and terrorism," he says.

"It's now a matter of national security. Part of the war on terrorism
has to be to address the conditions that produce terrorism, and that has
become a matter of necessity and not some intellectual vision of what a
good world is. The hidden silver lining in this hideous, desperate
terrorist act is the sense of what wonderful punishment for the
terrorists -- if what they actually did was prompt us toward a more
civic and democratic world. Imagine how upset they'd be!"




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