The great thing about history is
you can always find bad examples to prove your point. Not so much for globalism but more for
nationalism. Nationalism as a concept comes around every few decades and the
opponents of nationalism usually point to the single greatest bad example of all
time for anything, NAZI. The National socialist party of Germany. After a devastating loss in World War I and
being stuck with the rebuilding costs it might seem inevitable that some leader
would rise up and try to rebuild his country.
He also promoted Christianity early on before becoming what we all know
he became. Funny how socialists aren’t
compared to Hitler.
Nationalism scares us because we
confuse it with a country bent on taking over its neighbors and waging war
which is really imperialism. Sometimes
it’s masqueraded as isolationism. We can’t
just stick our head in the sand. If we
are landlocked country we have to deal with our neighbors or they’ll deal with
us. If we are a massive superpower we
can’t allow dictators to do what they want.
Others are frightened of globalism,
all those who are science fiction fans especially. Who wants to read about utopia when you can
read about dystopia. It’s either end of the world caused by the global elites
or one run by them.
It takes a village doesn’t it? More like a street, a neighborhood. Every family looks out for themselves, for
their own interests. Sometimes there are
things that need to be done to protect everyone. If there’s been a rash of robberies in the
area, it’s in everybody’s best interest to keep an eye out. Maybe there’s a new development across the
street and you want to band together to stop it. So, it’s obvious that we need to
work together. This is why you have the
United Nations whose predecessor was the League of Nations. The Olympics and the International Space
stations are shining example of multinational cooperation working almost without
incident.
If our little neighborhood needed
to fund a project like bringing in a gas pipeline would every family be willing
to chip in $5,000 or would they say Larry’s got a mansion at the end of the
block, let him pay $15,000. What if all
the neighbors had already signed a deal allowing them to decide who gives
what. That’s the real and understandable
fear behind globalism. What if it’s in
everybodies best interests to have the largest nations pay a tax to help the
smallest nations. What if most of the
large nations said heck no except for ours?
I remember when I was seven years
old and I asked my Dad very naively, ‘Why can’t everyone in the world just have
equal? Why do some people have more and
others have less?’
He said, “Our house has three
rooms, your mom and I stay in one room, you have this room and your sister has
the room next to yours. Most families in
the world all live in one room. In order
to make everything fair we’d have to give up your room and you can go live with
your sister.”
I immediately said I don’t want
that. Why not he asked. It’s my room!
There’s two ways to take that.
Either I was selfish from the time I was seven or I had a right to my
own property. I didn’t take it from anyone, my dad worked for a living. I don’t expect globalism to immediately take
away my third room. Probably taxes such
as carbon tax, export tax, visas, flight taxes, ect will be small at
first. As our country joins larger and
larger free trade agreements however, regulations force businesses to give up
their sovereignty for the greater good.
Cooperation between countries
should always be first and foremost in the benefit of the countries engaging in
it. Secondarily, it should make the ease
of individual cooperation between two or more people’s easier and a minor tertiary
concern be beneficial for all of mankind.
If we were a multi planet species
or we were in contact with some form of extra terrestrials then we would some
sort of world government to protect us from our interests and we’d be arguing
over globalism vs systemism, galacticism or universalism.
