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05/31/2003 Archived Entry: "globalism"

GLOBALISM - A NATION-BUSTING IDEOLOGY: Robert Locke raises some interesting points about globalism in what I believe is his first feature article for The American Conservative, although we differ somewhat on trade policy. Incidentally, I think he and fellow FrontPage alumni J.P. Zmirak offer a better definition of "neoconservatism" than what you usually get in paleoconservative circles (any conservative who disagrees with me) or what Jonah Goldberg recently offered in a series of G-File columns (it doesn't exist and definitely doesn't describe me). The hardening of conservatism from a tempermanent defined by what it does not believe in - to borrow from John Derbyshire - into a concrete democratic capitalist ideology, something that came up in response to the Cold War, could plausibly be described as "neoconservatism."

But aside from the "conservative zoology" - a term I also believe I am borrowing from the Derb - angle, Locke makes an important distinction between globalization, the desirable economic fact, and globalism, the undesirable ideology. It's one that is too frequently ignored.