Gulliver unbound: can America rule the world?

Sydney Morning Herald ^ | August 6 2003 | By Josef Joffe

[Johnbalaya]

nice to read something that goes well with my coffee

[HitmanLV]

This comes off more like a college junior's poli sci essay, especially with coining words and prhases that try to make it look more sophsiticated than it is.

For example, he can "Uuber-Gulliver" all he wants, but its pretty clear the writer isn't very familiar with the works of Swift. If he was he could have developed that theme much better - instead, he clearly just wanted to say 'giant' and that's the giant he chose to sound sophisticated.

It just looks like amateur hour.

[Tolik]

http://www.aicgs.org/about/board/joffe.shtml

Dr. Josef Joffe is publisher-editor of the German weekly Die Zeit and contributing editor of Time (Intl.). Previously he was columnist/editorial page editor of Süddeutsche Zeitung (1985-2000).

His essays and reviews have appeared in: New York Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, Commentary, New York Times Magazine, New Republic, Weekly Standard, Prospect (London). Regular contributor to all the major U.S. and British quality dailies and frequent commentator on U.S., British and German TV/radio.

His second career has been in academia. The Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford in 1999/2000, he was Visiting Professor of Government at Harvard in 1990/91, with which he remains affiliated through the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies. In 1998, he was a visiting lecturer at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School. While a researcher at the Carnegie Endowment and Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington (1982-84), he was Professorial Lecturer at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He has taught at the University of Munich and the Salzburg Seminar and lectured widely in universities and research centers around the world.

His scholarly work has appeared in many books and in journals such as Foreign Affairs, The National Interest, International Security and Foreign Policy as well as professional journals in Germany, Britain and France. He is the author of The Limited Partnership: Europe, the United States and the Burdens of Alliance and co-author of Eroding Empire: Western Relations With Eastern Europe. Most recent book: The Future of International Politics: The Great Powers (1998).

Boards: American Academy in Berlin, International University Bremen, European College of Liberal Arts, Berlin, Leo Baeck Institute, New York, European Advisory Board, Hypovereinsbank München. Editorial Boards: The National Interest, Washington and Prospect (London). Trustee: Atlantik-Brücke, Berlin, Deutsches Museum (Munich), Alfred-Herrhausen-Gesellschaft (Deutsche Bank), Frankfurt. Member: Trilateral Commission, American Council on Germany, Intl. Institute for Strategic Studies, Harvard Club of Munich. Honors: Theodor Wolff Prize and Ludwig Börne Prize (Journalism/Essays/ Literature, Germany), Federal Order of Merit (Germany).

Raised in Berlin, he was educated at Swarthmore College (B.A.), the College of Europe, Johns Hopkins (M.A.), and Harvard (Ph.D.). Married to Dr. Christine Brinck Joffe, two daughters.

Address: Die Zeit, Speersort 1, 20095 Hamburg, Germany. Voice: +4940-3280-584, Fax: 3280-596, email: joffe@zeit.de.

 

[Ohioan]

I gave some of your articles a quick read ...

I read the article on race and the one on immigration on your website. Taking both of those into account, you seem to be advocating selective immigration based on superior racial attributes and the ability to easily blend into the existing culture.

My reason for posting links to more extensive essays, is to avoid having to summarize complex subjects, however I will respond briefly to your comments here. I have a number of articles that deal with racial questions, or issues in which racial questions may be involved; so I am not sure which one you are referring to. However, there is nothing in any article on any subject, at my web site, which would conflict with the immigration views stated in Immigration & The American Future.

My position is that immigration should be sharply limited, both in general and along the lines of selectivity for compatibility to the ongoing cultural dynamic of the American mainstream. I am not sure just what you mean by "superior racial attributes." That terminology has emotional rather than analytic attributes. Although there are senses in which it could be taken that are analytic, it is more likely to mislead than enlighten in terms of current social dialogs.

Believing that we should admit people who are most compatible with the culture we are trying to preserve, is common sense. The subjective evaluation of the relative worth of different cultures, races or ethnicities, has little if anything to do with such a policy. Frankly, an objective analysis would have to admit that some immigrants from quite different cultures, developed by other racial or sub-racial groups, have superior aptitudes in some very important areas of human development, to those of the average American. That does not make them more suitable as immigrants--although any immigration policy will make some exceptions for persons who fill particular needs, within reasonably determined bounds. The problem only emerges, when large numbers are admitted, who do not share the value system on which American institutions are based.

The other subject to which you refer--different groups attitudes on intermingling of races--is hardly something to be addressed in a few paragraphs of a response on a thread such as this. Obviously, anyone addressing such a subject would have to consider the immense array of ways that different people interact, and that could hardly be handled in a brief essay.

On the other hand, your injection into such query, the term "disdain"--implying that the motivation for questioning the advisability of this or that species of interaction is in contempt for the interaction, rather than a rational analysis of its dynamics--is really to invite someone to beg the actual questions involved.

Human history is far more complex than your or my personal preferences. The idea of interpreting the interaction of peoples, classes and ideologies, solely from the notion of a particular social bias, has been pushed by the great collectivist movement of the Left, but Conservatives should try to avoid the same mindset. After all, we start out with the idea that truth itself is the primary virtue--as George Washington stated, "honesty is always the best policy"--and as such "disdain" is not a proper motivation, for starting discussions of social dynamics. (I do not mean to imply that one may not come to feel disdain for an argument or policy that is not supportable in reason; but it is "reason," not disdain, where analysis must begin.)

William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site