Americas

The Sun is Not Setting II: Unfurl the Old Banners …

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In this earlier post, I should have linked to this piece by Fareed Zakaria, which is the first chapter of his new book. It is very much worth reading.

I like this Zakaria piece because he seems to be in broad agreement with me. Ha. We all like it when that happens. Also, his little capsule summary of the British Empire as our predecessor is nicely done. However, as I have complained to anyone who will listen, even Zakaria fails to understand how different the British Empire was from all its land-based predecessors. The one current writer to who “gets it” on this issue is Walter Russell Mead. Mead, in his excellent recent book God and Gold: Britain, America and the Making of the Modern World discusses the “maritime order” founded in recent centuries by the Dutch, then handed off to the British, then the Trident was passed to the USA. This is exactly correct.

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More Zen Meditation

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Following on the last post, here’s another one from the Zen Master:

If multiculturalists are correct that that the non-Western cultures are of greater moral stature than the oppressive West, then why did none of the non-Western cultures ever practice multiculturalism ?

Quite honestly, I don’t care if a culture practices inclusion, as long as it advances science. As it so happens, cultures that do practice inclusion do so because their mindset is eclectic and evolutionary (in terms of ideas), which also happens to be the best societal fit for the scientific mindset, but the multi-cultural part is an unanticipated side effect that ultimately I do not give a rat’s about.

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