Re: FW: The future is going our way

[William B Ward]

Karen, viz the 3 ideas,   I believe that the spelling should be 'piece' - we want a piece of them. I feel simply that we have moved from bodies in body bags to WTO-led dominance of the weak by the strong.   I feel the jury is still out on free markets. As an importer, free markets have helped me personally a bunch but I know I am buying from sweat shops that have no compunction to squeeze every last drop of blood out of their workers. I also believe that closed markets have the efficiency of more benefits for workers.   Democracy works for me because the US consumes about a half of all the resources in the world and gives my a pretty good living ]but does not do so for about 25% of our children]. I am not sure that American democracy would be quite as exciting if I were a resident of Iraq. I feel democracies are expensive to maintain and that they may accelerate the world's demise ala Jeremy Rifkin.   Bill Ward     On Mon, 16 Sep 2002 20:57:24 -0700 "Karen Watters Cole" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: Subject: Re: FW: The future is going our way   Is this not a bit xenophobic?           the big power, which makes its share of         mistakes, but without which nothing         good happens.     Yes, that statement was a bit overbroad.  What did you think about the rest of the piece?   What do you think about the �three big ideas�:  - Karen   Mr. Mandelbaum's thesis is that all the powerful ideological rivals to America and its democratic allies have been vanquished and that three big ideas now dominate global politics:  The first is peace as a way of organizing international relations.  By that he means the core idea that has finally stabilized a fractious Europe, namely arms control � the notion that armies should be configured primarily for defense, with a high degree of transparency so everyone knows what everyone else is doing.  The second idea that has triumphed is the notion that free markets are the best way for nations to grow from poverty to prosperity.  And the third is that democracy is the ideal form of political organization.