Excellent column by Pat Buchanan, who gets to the heart of the whole Scottish secessionist movement and why so many people, especially objectivists, libertarians and bottom-line globalists, are wrong in their theories on how to survive, let alone get along, in the modern world. A money quote from the piece: The call of blood, history, faith, culture and memory is winning the struggle against Economism, the Western materialist ideology that holds that the desire for money and things is what ultimately motivates mankind. Objectivists and libertarians especially, those who exalt pure reason over emotion or faith, miss this part because they see everyone else as they see themselves. Its hard for them to fathom how a centuries old grievance can be perpetuated and relived as if it happened yesterday. The Battle of the Boyne was fought in Ireland in 1690 between the forces of the deposed Catholic King James II and the man who the English parliament brought in to succeed him, King William III, a staunch Protestant. James lost badly, thus crushing for centuries the hope of Irish independence and, to Catholics, the right to openly practice their faith and participate in civil society. Yet for the better part of the 20th Century and even unto the current time, the bitterness sown then festered into intense hatred, terrorism and mass violence. People in the old country, wherever that happens to be, have long memories, while Americans, who essentially wrote the rules on how business is conducted in the modern era, are quick to forgive and forget. Unless, that is, you talk with some in the South about what they call the War Between the States. We have but one example, while across the globe, as Buchanan points out, tribalism affords scores, if not hundreds, of others. When I was in the executive search business, I warned Americans doing business overseas to be wary of one distinction between us and the rest of the world: We do business to do business, and we put the business ahead of everything else. They do business to advance their culture, and when a conflict develops between the business and the culture, they put the culture ahead of the business. The answer to world peace isnt global trade and non-intervention. While this may come as a shock to Ron Paul and his acolytes, its a no-brainer to those who see themselves as the logical successors to the Islamic armies that nearly overran Europe between the 8th to 17th Centuries -- they have business left unfinished. But even Buchanan falls prey to his own analysis in the last line of his piece when he asks relative to the Scottish question, What would Braveheart do? Braveheart was a movie, and a not all that historically accurate one at that. It is not a philosophy of government in the modern world. Sentimentality and painting yourself half-blue isnt the basis upon which a successful nation state is founded. Nor is offering our profligate lifestyle to those who see it as the incarnation of all they hate. There has to be another way.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 14:20:18 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015