A new direction for the left?
I did not do full justice to Peter Beinart's article
in my previous entry. Peter Beinart argues mainly for liberals in the
US to increase military spending and to embrace the "neocon" view of
foreign policy, but to add proper nation building. Oliver Kamm seems to do the
same thing in his upcoming book Anti-Totalitarianism: The Left-wing Case for a Neoconservative Foreign Policy, according to his blog. Kamm's focus is on Britain.
It is very heartening to see this attitude change in the left, because I believe and hope these two writers to just be the forerunners of a major shift in attitudes in the democratic left.
Because these are just the books. What is happening is that the blogs of the world are functioning as a distributed think tank. Old leftist ideas and above all leftist aestehics, are combined with a saner view on foreign policy issues and democracy abroad. Think tanks and other long range thinkers have a stronger impact on society than one may at first expect. The combined intellectual horse power of bloggers makes it likely that they will outperfom think tanks and also some researchers, over time, because of the higher intellectual metabolism possible on the Internet. Sometimes it seems that politicians take ideas of thin air. Well, the air is getting thicker.
It is very heartening to see this attitude change in the left, because I believe and hope these two writers to just be the forerunners of a major shift in attitudes in the democratic left.
Because these are just the books. What is happening is that the blogs of the world are functioning as a distributed think tank. Old leftist ideas and above all leftist aestehics, are combined with a saner view on foreign policy issues and democracy abroad. Think tanks and other long range thinkers have a stronger impact on society than one may at first expect. The combined intellectual horse power of bloggers makes it likely that they will outperfom think tanks and also some researchers, over time, because of the higher intellectual metabolism possible on the Internet. Sometimes it seems that politicians take ideas of thin air. Well, the air is getting thicker.