On both sides of the Atlantic, there are now two distinct, utterly hostile, opposing views about globalization and multiculturalism. The world-wise policies of the former investment banker Macron play well in the Paris “bubble” — and its doppelgangers in New York, San Francisco, Tokyo and London — but not so much in the struggling industrial and rural hinterlands....
This will require something in short supply today: a reasoned approach. The fulminating xenophobia of a Le Pen or Steve Bannon may be repugnant, but equally unreasonable and out of touch are the trade dogmas of the Davos group or open borders notions now embraced by many on the left.
Finding a way toward some sort of great recalibration, a middle ground between extremes, may be difficult in these polarized times, but it may be the only way to address critical issues without making the future far worse than the recent past.Democracy is supposed to handle this with compromise, but in a highly polarized environment compromise is seen as not only weakness but also betrayal.
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The globalization debate is just beginning
Joel Kotkin | Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in Orange, CA and executive director of the Houston based Center for Opportunity Urbanism
The globalization debate is just beginning
Joel Kotkin | Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in Orange, CA and executive director of the Houston based Center for Opportunity Urbanism
5 comments:
In France, the vote got split and Macron got the keys to the castle. It's a symptom of democratic transition.
I'm on the left but George Soros's idea of open borders terrifies me.
Liberalism requires an advanced level of collective consciousness and also approximate symmetry.
The level of collective consciousness now is too low and the asymmetry too great to apply liberalism across the board without qualification based on conditions.
This is going to take time, and my heuristic is 500 years for liberal globalization to be achieved. This is a civilizational shift.
This is as big a shift as the one that began in the Axial Age, when the great civilization shift that began was from mythology to reason and experience, the culmination of which was modern science.
The coming shift is going to take some time to unfold.
Evolution has no doubt ensued that there are authoritarians for a reason - it's a tough would. But if we are going to make it over the next 500 years societies will have to become more liberal and less harsh towards one another. After all, the weapons we've got are so powerful.
Why is Canada able to do what Europe refuses to do?
Having a sensible immigration policy would be a start... but multiculturalism requires work.
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