Since China devalued its currency three per cent, global markets have gone into a tailspin. Why should this be? After all, three per cent devaluation in China could be countered by a U.S. tariff of three per cent on all goods made in China, and the tariff revenue used to cut U.S. corporate taxes. The crisis in world [...]
When I heard the bad news, I was struggling with a mug of particularly nasty instant coffee in Kathmandu, trying to get my head around a report that gadgets now outnumber human beings; and while our global population grows at two people per second, mobile telephones now proliferate five times faster. This was worse; a [...]
We are supposed to be living in the postmodern era, freed from the traditional petty concerns of national interest and, even worse, nationalism. A new era of peaceful globalism was supposed to have dawned. Then came Turkey’s fusion of Islam and nationalism under its prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan; Sri Lankan leader Mahinda Rajapaksa’s use [...]
Patriotism is the wholesome, constructive love of one’s land and people. Nationalism is the unhealthy love of one’s government, accompanied by the aggressive desire to put down others—which becomes in deracinated modern men a substitute for religious faith. Patriotism is an appropriate, indeed necessary, sentiment for people who wish to preserve their freedom; nationalism is [...]