The past is malleable and flexible, changing as our recollection interprets and re-explains what has happened.
From Peter L. Berger
One can't understand the Christian Right and similar movements unless one sees them as reactive - they're reacting to what they call secular humanism.
Even in a society as tightly controlled as Singapore's, the market creates certain forces which perhaps in the long run may lead to democracy.
The negative side to globalization is that it wipes out entire economic systems and in doing so wipes out the accompanying culture.
Even if one is interested only in one's own society, which is one's prerogative, one can understand that society much better by comparing it with others.
We also have a cultural phenomenon: the emergence of a global culture, or of cultural globalization.
So I think one can say on empirical grounds - not because of some philosophical principle - that you can't have democracy unless you have a market economy.
In a market economy, however, the individual has some possibility of escaping from the power of the state.
If the cultural elite has its way, the U.S. will be much more like Europe.
It has been true in Western societies and it seems to be true elsewhere that you do not find democratic systems apart from capitalism, or apart from a market economy, if you prefer that term.
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