Making America safe for the world
atimes.com
the closing paras -
--- Toward a world beyond extremes
Almost 20 years ago when Western communism started to crumble, Francis Fukuyama declared that history was over. [7] He later retracted that. [8] With the worldwide and still growing financial crisis, history is perhaps really ending. This time, it is the end, or bankruptcy, or demise, of the extreme types of Western ideologies: be it the centralized communism or its counterpart of Western market fundamentalism.
Despite their vastly different ideological underpinnings, each tries to change the rest of the world according to its own ideological pure type; neither wants to live with an imperfect world full of gray areas; both see the world in black-and-white terms; together, they drag the rest of the world into the last phase of the "Western Civil War", which is the Cold War.
Indeed, the 20th century, which is widely claimed to be the American century, turned out to be the bloodiest century in world history, during which all forms of Western ideologies - be they liberalism, nationalism, Nazism, militarism, communism, statism - pursued their pure types. It is fair to argue that there is no such a thing as clashes of civilizations, but the clashes of extremists, as their extreme agenda reinforce and justify each other's existence.
In the midst of the current unprecedented crisis of Western market extremism, it is time for the world to pause, think and search for a different model of political economy. It should be beyond and away from excessive greed, excessive consumerism, excessive laissez-faire, to mention just a few. A major task of a world leader is to search for a proper balance between the market and the state, between individual need and societal interests, between equality and efficiency, between materialistic growth and cultural/spiritual harmony, and between nurturing the innovative business class and protecting other vulnerable social groups.
Such an approach is also common sense, as was the choice made by the little girl Goldilocks, who prefers things not too hot, not too cold, not too hard, not too soft, but just right. In this regard, Europe is taking the lead. Compared with Americans who have dismal government assistance and relatively little saving, average Europeans in the current economic crisis are far better protected by free health care and largely free education. China, too, is returning to its traditional Confucian "middle approach" (zhong yong) by pursuing a "kinder-and-gentler" public policy for a more "harmonious" society.
It is time for the new leaders in America to shift its focus away from Bush's obsession with terrorism and to refocus on the broader well-being of the world and Americans. And the world is waiting and watching. ---
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my kingdom(farm) for a centrist non-ideological Pres & govt. |
