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I don't disagree with you, roachboy, but I don't agree with you either. I don't agree that conservative policies and social agendas are inherently evil and predicated on the exploitation of the poor. And I don't believe that the globalization experiment has had the chance to yet be deemed a failure. I do believe the world must gain some homogeneity in regards to economic opportunity and that in the process, cultural distinctions will become less so and it will cause much strife and struggle around the world. I believe that the way of life we have taken for granted in the West will (continue to) take a downturn as people in places we normally haven't given much thought to start to claim their own piece of what we used to so charmingly refer to as the "American Pie" - as if it were the bottomless dessert tray that just naturally comes along with Manifest Destiny. I don't know what to think about liberals who decry the American capitalist system and then cry when the American capitalist status quo starts to dissolve under their feet. You can't have it both ways. Yes, corporate entities are taking advantage of cheaper labor to make more money. But they are also giving jobs to people who would do just about anything to scrub toilets in a fast-food restaurant so they could have the privilege of not watching their children starve to death. Yet we liberals here in the states want to be able to sit at a nice little table outside of Starbucks with our four dollar cafe latte and bemoan how bad off we are, how horrible capitalism is and the how evil the conservatives are when the truth is that the roots of the problem are so much deeper, more daunting and more horrible than we even want to begin thinking about. I don't have a lot of patience for it.
My point is, I don't think pure liberalism (ie, socialism) is anymore of an answer than pure conservatism (ie, capitalism). I think the answer will lie somewhere in the middle. In a system that gives people both social and economic opportunity. More control over their communities and more control over their lives. From the standpoint of the world we are living in now, I think this outcome is more likely than that of the world slaveholder cum, corpo-illuminati dictatorship model and that of the world-sharing, level playing field model.
Thusly, I find myself self-identifying as a moderate. Granted, I am not the most knowledgeable person around here and I don't have a compendium of graphs and articles to base my opinion on. My ideas are based on my own observations and what I believe is a pretty well-grounded sense of pragmatism. And that's about that.
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Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce
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