Sunday, January 02, 2005

Europe, America, Anglosphere

Did you ever read something that was profound, thorough, enlightening and made you realize what a dolt you were? Well, this lengthy (for the web anyway) discussion about the world's past, present & future during a review of a couple of books is one of those. I loved the read. I also feel appallingly stupid after reading it. The Anglosphere, Euro-Centrists, UN-Centrists, all here and very interestingly compared & contrasted.

Speaking of immigration and integration, specifically in Europe, of Islamic peoples:

To the extent that Rifkin holds up Europe as a model for Americans to emulate, he is in effect urging the purchase of a ticket on the Titanic.


Europe as leading the way:

Rifkin's book is a strange duck. It initially seems to offer a conventional example of the second Europeanist position. And in fact, it does include the standard Euro-critiques of the American socio-economic approach: prisons, McJobs, consumerism and so on. As usual, these arguments are used to fill in the argumentative gaps created by the shortcomings of actual, existing Europe, as opposed to the theoretically ever-more-efficient Europe beloved of the Wall Street Journal and the Economist.

Layered underneath these fairly standard approaches, however, is a deeper and more philosophical level of argument than Europeanists usually present. Rifkin argues that the European approach (The European Dream of his title) is precisely the abnegation of traditional progressivism in its most fundamental sense: the belief in the desirability of material and scientific progress, and the individual identity and freedom that accompany it. Thus, Rifkin's is a two-level critique of America contrasted with virtuous Europe. First, he asserts that Europe is surpassing America on the conventional criteria of prosperity. But he then adds that where economic success is absent in Europe, that's okay too, because progress is bad for you anyway.


Go read the whole thing.

1 comment:

Nylarthotep said...

I'd say that was a full bodied article. I don't feel stupid after reading it, but probably a bit more curious as to the theories. I can't read everything, so articles like that are great learning experiences. I suppose I'm going to go and try and find one of the newer books that he reviews. Probably Thomas P. M. Barnett's "The Pentagon's New Map" and "Timothy Garton Ash's Free World." They sound the best of those he reviewed. Don't you wish you were a better connected blogger so that you'd have people sending you their books for review?

It's a brutal subject though. I would guess that this is one of those topics that is just difficult to come easily to a clear conclusion.

I did find it enlightening about where he thought the economic alliances were going to come down to in the future. The reasoning is pretty convincing.

One statement though kind of bothered me when related to the democracy coming to Iraq.
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With medieval traditions of representative government moribund or long vanished, it is not surprising that Continental states had a particularly difficult time adjusting to parliamentary government, experiencing instead frequent coups, revolutions and periods of authoritarian rule, spiraling down to the abyss of fascism and communism.
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I wonder if we will be seeing this type of problem because of their historical lack of individualism and just being used to oppressive regimes and religious norms?