Two Views on Globalization

Two popular opinion-editorial writers from different ends of the political spectrum weigh in on the recent French and Dutch nay votes on the European Union and how this was impacted by the forces of globalization.

Conservative columnist Victor Davis Hanson believes the swelling tide of global communications, open markets and personal freedom --- liberal democracy, as this historically has been understood by Anglo-American societies, the Japanese and, to an increasing degree, India --- has or soon will flatten everything in its path, including the proposed European Constitution.

Meanwhile, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman contends the rejections reflect a growing sentiment among many Europeans that the world is moving too fast.

It underscores, Friedman believes, the stark differences between developed countries like France and the Netherlands, who want to preserve that which has been built over centuries, and developed countries such as India, which finally, as one writer described it, “are …seeing the ability to realize their dreams.

“Voters in ‘old Europe’ - France, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy - seem to be saying to their leaders: stop the world, we want to get off; while voters in India have been telling their leaders: stop the world and build us a stepstool, we want to get on,” Friedman writes. “I feel sorry for Western European blue collar workers. A world of benefits they have known for 50 years is coming apart, and their governments don't seem to have a strategy for coping.”

Posted by Jim Langcuster at June 3, 2005 04:37 PM | TrackBack