Friday, July 1, 2016

Globalism: a term essentially without meaning

Theodore Kupfer at NRO makes the great point that globalization does indeed mean something; globalism, not so much:

“Globalization,” properly understood, refers to a process whereby economies of scale forge international connections abetted by technological developments. The term “globalism,” meanwhile, is used loosely to denote the notion of a one-world government. The conflation of globalization and globalism has traditionally been made by radical anti-capitalists, who play up fears of Americanization to rally opposition to trade agreements and economic institutions. If the United States benefits from international trade, then international trade agreements are a bad thing. 
For a guy for whom rhetorical and conceptual clumsiness is his  signature personality trait, Squirrel-Hair has actually demonstrated a kind of cleverness by giving this "globalism" business a rightie sheen:

Trump is no dogmatist, and likely not a true believer. His motivations are simultaneously more pragmatic and atavistic. He knows that Americans rightly worry about unfettered immigration. And he melds this with a fear of foreign workers. Both of these anxieties have been exacerbated over the course of our current administration: the first by a reluctance to enforce immigration laws, the second by sluggish economic growth. Trump combines distaste for the foreign with a vilification of politicians who stand in his way. All the problems are rolled up into one mass, and all the opponents are likely slaves to the same problematic impulses. Hence, Congress and their financier friends outsource jobs to Mexico in pursuit of globalism. This concatenation of fear and ignorance is less principled than the leftist critique, and equally deluded. 
And his drooling, slavish Bots hammer it home even more emphatically than he does.

I'm looking at you, Laura Ingraham.

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