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Tuesday, August 27, 2002

Aunt Sallies and red herrings: A spectre is haunting Europe. According to the Hudson Institute's John Fonte, 'transnational progressivism' is an attempt by what's left of the Left to impose collectivist international agreements like the Kyoto Agreement, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the International Criminal Court on the US. If it succeeds, US market dynamism will come screaming to a halt.

Nice name, shame about the concept. Lumping together individuals as diverse as Tony Giddens and Toni Negri should set alarm bells off.

There's nothing new about international cooperation, states working together for their common good. There's nothing new about the powerless seeking redress for local grievances by citing international standards.

What's new is the emergence of a Republican leadership intent on using US superpower status to get its own way.

Fonte's argument is a mirror image of what's actually happening. 'Transnational pseudo-judicial institutions' run by shadowy elites do exit. They're known as the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO.

File under fiction created by right-wing academics and journalists scrambling to produce an intellectual justification for the Bush administration's realpolitiking, its contempt for democracy, its belief that might gives it the right to reorder the world to suit its business ends. [Hudson Institute]; [UPI].

9:35 AM | permalink