Happy New Year

Two posts ago I wrote about Niall Ferguson, the LA Times columnist who wanted to wish everybody Happy New Year in his New Year's Day column but decided against it because he said that for most of the world New Year’s doesn't start on January 1st. He used the song Auld lang syne" to illustrate his point and added that only English speakers understood the meaning of that song. So his point was that not only did New Year’s not start on Jan 1st for a large percentage of the world but that most of the world didn't speak English and thus could not share in the sentiment that accompanied the closing of the old year.

Ferguson was really lamenting the shrinking of the Anglo, English-speaking world. He is, I believe, a bit of a traditionalist and sentimentalist. He once admitted to being a pessimist. I think he really wishes the world were still set in the British Empire. He ended his New Year's Day article with this: "Yes, let's have a drink 'for auld lang syne' this New Year's - for we English speakers have our best years behind us"

His last comment prompted me to fire off a letter to the Times. To my delight they published it. This is what I wrote: Niall Ferguson should take some comfort in the fact that the world is turning out more in the fashion of the English-speaking world than any other. The English-speaking world has made and established the rules and methods within which the world operates. Those rules and methods are not likely to change because they have proved, through a process of elimination, that they work best for the modern world. The world's needs and aspirations cannot be met without democracy and capitalism [, the DNA of the modern world].

The last phrase I put in brackets because it was omitted from the Times letter, though it was in my original draft. I used that phrase because it was, ironically, an idea Ferguson introduced me to in his book the "Cash Nexus". In it he suggested the idea that perhaps democracy and capitalism constituted the DNA of the modern world, which together probably make up the only workable form of governance for the modern world.

I think, though, Ferguson was being sarcastic with that suggestion. He was really being critical of Fukuyama's idea that liberal democracy, aka democracy/capitalism, was the end point in human governance. As I interpreted Ferguson, he was saying something like, 'Do you mean say, as Fukuyama believes, that those two doctrines together make up the essential ingredient necessary to run and sustain the modern world and nothing else will do? Where does he get off with such an idea?' Nevertheless, I find the DNA analogy interesting because I had come to believe that the reason democracy and capitalism have paralleled each other in developed democracy like ours is because neither can exist without the other, nor can our modern societies continue without them working in tandem.

There are people like Fukuyama and myself who believe the world is on a trajectory. And that trajectory is a defusing of power and the world becoming more alike, more politically unified, more power sharing, with no country truly dominant. On the other hand, I think Ferguson thinks the world still needs a controlling power, like an empire, to be a broker and an enforcer, so as to keep the world safe and secure. He saw America as that power, especially after 9/11. Now he laments that not happening because America has lost a lot of its influence in the world due to its poor judgment in the Middle East. But as I see it, with the world becoming more alike and unified, there is no room for empires anymore. The world is beyond that. And even America has had a hand the decline of its influence in the world by suggesting and persuading other nations to be more like it, which is happening more and more with the spread of globalization. No, the decisions of the world are not for any one empire anymore.