Globalism, like socialism, is one of those ideologies that, on paper, sounds cool, progressive, and humanitarian. I mean, nation-states have been the source of all the earth’s evils for centuries, right? So, hands across the world. The idea of a single, integrated world economy eventually leading to a unified world government must be the solution plain and simple.
NOT.
I grew up in that generation where George Orwell’s 1984 was required reading in school. The prophetic work that made Big Brother a household word was an enduring warning about the dangers of concentrated, centralized power in the hands of fallible humans.
The global bureaucrats will be smarter, a lot more powerful, a lot less answerable, a lot more subject to elite control, and have much greater self-serving agendas to protect their vested interests.
Let’s explain this from the grassroots up. I bet a lot of people live or have lived under Homeowner’s Associations (HOA’s). Ever notice what happens to the Joe Blows that end up on HOA boards? If you think people in these capacities make dumb, obnoxious, and arrogant decisions at even this most localized of governmental levels, extrapolate that on a global basis. There the power trip is a lot headier. The global bureaucrats will be smarter, a lot more powerful, a lot less answerable, a lot more subject to elite control, and have much greater self-serving agendas to protect their vested interests. Think deep state on a grand scale. In nearly every case, immense concentration of power leads to stifling authoritarianism and murderous suppression of individual liberties. The various communist and fascist governments of the recent past proved this.
Globalists will shout out exceptions like “we’re not talking one world government, just free trade and economic unity.” Let’s not be naïve folks. As economies go so do political structures and the slope to a single government would be slicker and slipperier than Bill Clinton telling us how he smoked dope but didn’t inhale.
Then we have the question of how this utopian system could ever work. It calls for open borders in an age of terrorism. It would cause massive disruptions and social unrest as ethnic groups from less developed parts of the world flood into and change the cultures of other more economically advanced countries.
The evidence is plain—liberal European countries with open borders like Holland, Germany, and Scandinavia are already experiencing massive backlashes not totally unjustified by the culture shock and the new ethic of host countries changing to accommodate the cultures of the immigrants, not the other way around. Efforts have been made, albeit largely unsuccessful, to create Sharia law in parts of certain western nations, but Sharia law is in practical effect in local- level no-go zones in countries France and Germany.
Nation states that have controlled immigration allowing for slow assimilation into the host culture have been a much better model for stability.
The globalist ideology is based on an outmoded concept that the nation states of today are the same as the nation states of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. First, colonial empires like Britain and France no longer exist, nor does the so-called American economic imperialism of the first few post-WW II decades. Several economic superpowers exist along with smaller, prosperous emerging nations along the Pacific Rim.
Yes, wars of national interest still happen, but colonialism with the purpose of extracting a nation’s raw materials is a thing of the past. I know someone from the peanut gallery will be shouting how multi-national corporations have just taken the place of the colonialists but that argument is more against globalism than nationalism—MULTI-national, get it?
The old adage that absolute power corrupts absolutely is an adage because it is true, and nothing could be more absolute than a single world government. The more localized government is, the more individual freedom can be preserved and individual actions can be exerted. America was founded on that principle.
Until the human race is advanced enough to prevent utopian ideas from going off the deep edge, modern nations states pursuing self-interest with fair treaties that equalize the playing field is still the best way to preserve human rights and individual liberties, promote prosperity and minimize culture shock and societal disruption.
So, between falling in love with cool, politically correct sounding ideologies that will lead to de- facto slavery at worst and diminish individual worth at best or sticking with a system that the world’s deconstructionists have given a bad rap, I guess I’ll stick with the bad rap.