Deepak Lal again, criticizing the leftist moralism of the NGOs and the rightwing moralism of neoconservatives: “The attempt to create an international moral order, either by the transnational route advocated by the global salvationists [NGOs] or by the exercise of U.S. imperial power as advocated by the ethical imperialists, is a route to global disorder. Just when some of the great Eurasian civilizations have come to realize that changing their material beliefs and modernizing througyh globalization does not entail changing their cosmological beliefs by Westernizing and losing their souls, this Western jihad in the name of human rights, democracy, and freedom might lead to a backlash against that very modernization that is promoting the liberties that matter – economic and civil liberties.”
Point taken; but any sort of global order, including an order of free trade, depends on some moral vision and commitments. Lal would extend the naked public square to the entire world. Doesn’t Lal’s vision of globalization have a shrine at the center, to development, modernization, and prosperity? I.e., to Mammon?
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