Listen to what a leftist says. His most common argument for globalism:
It's inevitable. Technology and a mushrooming population have brought us to a new frontier, and we need to forge a united human front. The international marketplace is inefficient, full of red tape that results in starvation and war. Borders in this day and age are nonsense. We literally have blood on our hands.
Etcetera.
These bon mots are, upon due examination, specious, naive garbage no better than the midnight ranting of a stoned college student.
Nationalists know. They know what they support: sovereign states, decentralized power, the maintenance and celebration of different cultural identities and histories--not out of nostalgia, but for their intrinsic worth--and competition among nations to drive innovation. The chaos of 195 nations, warts and all, is vastly preferable to a handful of unelected demigods deciding how best to supervise the entirety of humanity.
Globalists imagine. They conjure an Earth united, governed as a singular state. The elasticity of same-size-fits-all law. Harmony born of familiarity and a resultant increase in good will. The benefits are easy to imagine: seamless flow of capital, goods, and labor, the human race united in the common interest of the species. One currency.
One nation, under God, period.
This philosophy is not only juvenile, but a recipe for lost human rights and lives. First, a look at the ideas that purport to promote terrestrial oneness.
Each of us has a notion of what globalism means, but definitions differ. After all, it's just a concept, and concepts are inexact.
Some would say it's a matter of trade, and they are not wrong. Globalism in its infancy was no more than wooden ships on the water, laden with goods for distant shores. It has grown tremendously, especially in the past hundred years, with the advent of faster and more efficient means of transport.
Globalism has suffered through wartime, hacked apart only to be patched back together, some limbs severed, new ones sewn on. Its skeleton has grown the muscular armor of multilateral trade agreements, and multinational corporations building plants in poorer countries to lift them out of poverty while (ahem) lowering labor costs.
To others, globalism is primarily political, a series of contracts and compacts that make strategic allies out of mere trade partners to the point that war would be unthinkable, ruinous to both economies, mutually assured economic destruction. Much as the marriage of two young royals from rival kingdoms once tempered cries for war, so are corporations the princes and princesses of the modern age.
In its purest sense, globalism is shorthand for "pathway to borderless society." The domino chain of ideas--that more trade will lead to more tolerance, which in turn will dissolve the need for borders between partner countries, which will naturally till hard foreign soil so that seeds of democracy might sprout--all of these are presupposed.
Here it is, the precious ideal of globalism: one massive human family living in harmony, this land is our land, all of it, all ours.
A few years ago, Mike Collins in Forbes made neat work of the pros and cons of globalism. Crucially, he points out that currency manipulation often defeats the assumption that competition drives prices lower. Further, the spread of democracy--supposedly a byproduct of globalization--has failed to materialize, and despite the hyped notion that more trade = freer trade, G20 countries imposed well over 1,200 restrictive trade measures in the course of a few years.
Value Added Taxes (VATs) further diminish the returns of "free" trade, and while the country that expands into poorer countries loses jobs domestically, the biggest financial beneficiaries are the corporations themselves. After the incessant rhetoric about rising tides lifting all boats and the inferential blather that trade furthers Western democratic ideals, in the end, low-priced goods at home don't begin to replace lost jobs, and China, our greatest trade partner, is more aggressively communist by the day (see: Hong Kong and extradition, posturing in the South China Sea, etc.). More trade doesn't change ideology, but it does pay for new fighter jets.
Once the mirage of borderless democracy burns off, globalism begins to look an awful lot like an excuse to sanction cheap labor, helping the rich get richer on the backs of what is often slave labor and/or child labor. Due to its immense profitability, globalism will likely never be adequately defined, held to account for its sins of subjugation, or stripped of its idealistic veneer, which is why it's here to stay.
So we already have degrees of globalism through trade and policy. Now what? Open borders advocates, while legally out over their skis, have gathered backing from the usual dark quarters. One might ask, how much globalism is enough for the greedy?
One thing is certain: globalism cannot meet its end goals and reach its ideal state in the world as it exists today, in the foreseeable future, or, likely, ever. A few reasons why, and please pardon the absurdity of some of the questions:
Under the status quo, with nearly two hundred member states in the United Nations (only The Holy See and Palestine exist outside the U.N. as observer states), global power is reasonably decentralized. Eight sovereign states are known to possess nuclear weapons, while a ninth, Israel, maintains deliberate ambiguity about its status.
Contrary to popular wisdom, that's a good thing.
Omnilateral nuclear disarmament would be a natural precondition to globalist order. There would be no need for such destructive force in a unified uber-state. For that matter, citizens would have no need for guns, so hand those over too. Big Brother's got your back, it's all a matter of trust.
As the uni-state dismantles the armies of all nations, it must build a military of its own--a "peacekeeping force"--for it must maintain the ability to protect itself from uprisings--a conventional force to protect us from...well, us.
Who commands that army?
Further, is it not conceivable that the military, the singular, unopposed armed force entity on the planet, might devolve into a junta after, say, the chaotic aftermath of a natural disaster, or a rapidly spreading viral disease? The odds of a military-led coup d'etat, with the entire world as the spoils, seems more likely than less.
One would be excused for drawing parallels between global nuclear disarmament and the confiscation of guns from private citizens here and abroad (see: New Zealand). It's the same impulse with the same outcome: just as criminals wouldn't turn in their guns even if law-abiding citizens would, rogue nuclear actors would become the ultimate predator, super-pirates who could threaten any corner of the mega-nation with a nuke or two obtained from, for instance, the 50 warheads estimated to have gone missing during the Cold War and breakup of the Soviet Union.
Moreover, the nuclear genie doesn't fit back in the bottle. Once the knowledge of how to build devices--even crude dirty nukes--exists, as it has for 75 years, it doesn't vanish because of an armistice. This is to say nothing of the political hot-lava-tap-dance necessary to persuade rivals as geopolitically antagonistic as Russia-U.S., or India-Pakistan, or Israel-anyone to truly disarm.
To ask any nuclear power to hand it over and simply trust that every one of the 17,300 known warheads in existence is accounted for is a virtual and practical impossibility.
Next, imagine the structure and fathomless bureaucracy of a globalist world government. First, are the representatives gleaned from former nations, or various continents, or religious constituencies? All the above, and don't forget wiccans and witches. Surely LGBTQ+ would need representation, and a forever-blossoming one at that, as new identities spring forth from the seemingly bottomless well of sexual dysphoria.
Would representation be population weighted? Former-China and Former-India would become its drivers in an instant. A wealth-based merit system would too closely resemble the status quo, so that's out. Certainly a need-based scheme would gain adherents.
Global welfare: the rich pay for the poor until, presumably, the poor learn to code.
The further one goes down the rabbit hole of how one governing body would control all of humanity, the more farfetched and inefficient become the solutions. As neocons learned in the case of Saddam Hussein and others, sometimes it's preferable to let a dictator alone. He alone has figured out how to govern his squalid corner of the world, and holy hell is unleashed in his absence.
Further, if absolute power does indeed corrupt absolutely, the small body of humans who come to rule the world would inevitably turn into paranoid villains, a la President Snow from The Hunger Games. With the crushing weight of the obscenely diverse world on one's shoulders, corruption is a foregone conclusion. It's the heretofore untested depths of the power/corruption seesaw that should give us all pause, the sheer concentration of it.
Speaking of dystopian fiction, perhaps the final globalist solution is to turn the job of one-world governance over to artificial intelligence (AI) and recreate The Matrix IRL. We could all LARP as Neo. Talk about a redpill.
Human history is a repository of violence. It ebbs and flows, but it is nothing if not a constant. Violence in the name of religion is just as reliable. That's by design in some cases. Islam in particular brooks no other faith, and calls plainly for the death of apostates. It is the religion of peace--once everyone has converted to Islam, that is, or at least when apostates agree to pay the jizya, the nonbeliever tax explicitly called for in the Quran. Failure to pay results in death or enslavement.
These unfortunate details fly in the face of the academic pipe dream that is no-borders globalism, which would be rejected as a Western incursion, a secular crusade, into Muslim lands. Ask the families of Louisa and Maren, the late and headless Scandinavian backpacking duo, how Islamists in Morocco take to friendly outsiders.
For globalism to reach its apogee, society must erase its borders. Billions of people without cultural or physical barriers. This vision (for it cannot be soberly referred to as a "plan") ignores the empiricism of hate, and that some societies are purposefully insular, and still others are ideologically opposed to diversity.
Global Jewry is defined in part by the persecution that led to diaspora. Indeed, one finds a Jewish community in virtually every human outpost, from Kazakstan to Antigua, from Cape Verde to darkest Peru, yet exactly one Jew lives in Afghanistan. (He's the caretaker of an abandoned synagogue.) Zero Jews reside in Saudi Arabia.
Put simply, Muslims love to come to other people's parties, but they aren't keen on hosting.
Plainly, and with plenty of evidence over the past 1,600 years, many Muslims--not all, but many--have failed to "coexist" with people of other faiths, or assimilate into any other culture. This is not an attack on Islam, but on globalist logic. Jews would be loath to give up the fortified borders of Israel, which they have protected at such a dear cost these past seven decades. (Sadly, one struggles to think of a strong Christian leader who objects vigorously to globalism, as it is surely not Pope Francis.)
But it is the radical Muslim who is least compatible with the tenets of globalism, and most dangerous to its naive adherents. To Islamists in particular, a short dress is license to rape, homosexuality is provocation to murder. Therefore, in order for one-world globalism to work, all religions would have to be banned--a practical impossibility--or to assuage its nearly 2 billion Muslims, Islam would have to become the new world's only sanctioned religion, with others paying the jizya in order to to practice different faith rituals. Without one of these preposterous conditions, peace would never be achieved.
The only other option, barely worth mentioning, would be to allow people to congregate in specific areas of the world where they could live together with those of similar beliefs, and they could build up societies they deemed noble, and volunteer to protect their fellow men from aggressors, and...oh, wait.
To manage such a sprawling, borderless empire, its cadre of governors would necessarily rely heavily on technology. The argument for biometric scanners, identification implants and the like would begin simply: with the freedom globalism grants, some precautions must be taken. To protect you, we must know where everyone is. A society of coequals must agree to be monitored equally and always. For safety.
The primary goal of such monitoring would bloom under the guise of "security," grow unchecked as "enforced equality," and over enough time, rot enough to reveal its raison d'être as the utter extinction of privacy: the world government's sole defense against anyone who would seek to overthrow it. Think China, but writ large. Social credit scores. Life as a video game. Hey, player: you can't restart, and there's no pause button.
Globalist proponents tend to imagine that one-world government would promote the values of social justice. Why? This is a happy, baseless assumption. To see how insular societies play out, one need only look to existing closed societies, for a global society, by virtue of being singular, is by definition a closed society. (Until aliens arrive. More on this in a moment.)
The enemies of a closed system are no one, and everyone. Paranoia grows when the only potential enemy exists within. Look to the living examples of China and North Korea. For their own good, their citizens are told what to do, information is edited, limited, or prohibited. Again, power in the hands of the few leads inevitably to increasing control of the masses.
Humankind unites most admirably in the fight against a common enemy. Unless one counts the sabre-toothed tiger or diseases such as the plague, never have we fought as a united race against a single nonhuman aggressor, but globalists are always hunting for one, a new enemy to scare up support.
As imagined in apocalyptic cinema, what truly unites us is battle with a race of extraterrestrial aliens. Reminded that we are all human, we cast off our differences effortlessly and fight against evil side by side. This is the leftist/globalist method: lean heavily on catastrophe, real or imagined, in the hope it will garner enough support to remain politically relevant.
If the climate fluctuates? The world will end in 12 years! Green New Deal! Drop everything and outlaw air travel!
If gun violence goes up in (Democrat-run) inner cities? Ignore the constitution, make guns illegal!
A mild cheap labor shortage occurs in the West? Import 14th Century-mindset young men by the boatload!
There's a war or famine somewhere in the world? Erase borders! It's all just land, who cares?!
Leftist-globalists in particular need the fear of catastrophe to unite enough voters to achieve the wildly unnatural ends they've hatched in academic towers. Rahm Emanuel slipped and showed the playbook years ago when he said, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." They hunt for ways to frighten voters into compliance.
If you have a globalist friend, remind him that there is no plausible endgame to his childish ideology. Convince him that there is no sense in continuing to build the very beast that will destroy him. Instead, accept what good global trade has brought, seek to limit its inhuman yoke and inherent waste, and stumble forth as a collection of powers, always reaching for, but never pretending to seize, the illusion of lasting peace.
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almost everything you said is true, yet it is exactly what is taught by.. "Star Trek" and the like,, sifi on a spaceship.
Diversity and the make believe world in which we all would just get along, if we just listen to "Starfleet command" all is explained and would never be wrong and certainly cannot be questioned.
we must get approval from the high command to know how to act.
the supreme ruler was supposed to be Hillary and Barack, Trump messed it all up.
what ever happened to truth justice and the AMERICAN way..huh,
now you know why they are so mad. they cannot have the Utopian world the Hollywood portraits. hey look that lines up with, why we see actors go nut's. it is because normal people aren't getting what the script is selling
yes globalism is what Star Trek taught but most of us also realize that Star Trek is a sci fi tv show and nothing more. it is, or was, for entertainment purposes, not a template for a one govt world. now if people are stupid enough to think otherwise, they are in for a huge disappointment when they finally realize the fantasies of sci fi writers and their tv scripts don't equate to reality.
[…] Globalism Feeds On Fake Catastrophe: A Brief History […]