The New Radicals

The people who brought us Seattle have now done Washington. Are they dreamers or sly subversives?

Maybe part of the problem is the word. Globalization. It has a sinister ring, like a euphemism from the same technocrats who gave us "downsizing" during the Reagan years and "pacification" during Vietnam. The term conjures up a futuristic vision of vast, implacable economic processes steamrollering their way across the earth, leveling forests, languages and customs without regard for puny individuals. Globalization: right or wrong, it sounds unstoppable.

Which may be one reason so many people of so many different persuasions have sworn to stop it. The word itself throws down a challenge. The first mass uprising to meet that challenge...

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