Word: westerner
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...found myself thinking of that while reading a new book by Martin Jacques, a British journalist turned academic. Jacques' tome is called When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order, and his thesis, which he advances with a depth of argument often missing in similar works, is made plain enough by his title. The most likely scenario for the future, Jacques writes, is that "China continues to grow stronger and ultimately emerges over the next half-century, or rather less in many respects, as the world's leading power...
...sense of its identity as a civilization as well as a nation state, a long-standing influence on the nations and cultures that border it, and a diaspora that impacts not just its region but the world. China's habits of governance, Jacques argues, are not those of the Western world; its values (let us say harmony and stability, rather than liberty and justice) are not those of the West. The roles of both the state and the extended family as social mechanisms in China differ from those in modern Western societies. All of this, Jacques argues, means that...
...agree with much of this. We have learned in the last 20 years that there are many ways of being modern, and that Western liberal democracy is but one of them. But that little collection of essays on the great equations reminds us that a society's characteristics today will not necessarily shape what it will look like tomorrow. History rarely runs in straight and predictable lines. At the end of the 19th century, Germany - or perhaps more accurately, Germanic central Europe - was a technological and scientific powerhouse, its universities nurturing geniuses like Einstein, Heisenberg and Schrödinger, whose...
...fashioned grassroots activism with Internet campaign techniques borrowed from the Obama playbook. They're also well placed to exploit the disillusionment with traditional politics that has seen voter turnouts in European and national elections plummet, and membership of big parties dwindle. As the global economy limps along and Western nations struggle to balance the needs of longtime citizens and newer immigrants, nobody should doubt that the far right is well positioned to attract yet more followers. (Read: "Europe's Voters Reward the Right...
...Tehran, a man in his late 50s said he had demonstrated in front of the British embassy in the aftermath of the election, writing nationalistic signs like "You are no longer a superpower. We are." He said he has no doubt that Western intelligence agencies played a significant role in fomenting postelection unrest, perhaps even in killing protesters. A 60-year-old veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, who lives in Qum, one of the most consistently conservative cities in Iran, wholeheartedly agreed with the regime's scripted story. "Our current problems are all because of foreign agents like...