It's Super Tuesday in the US, and regardless of what the outcome actually is, we can be pretty certain that the political landscape in the US is under-going major shifts as anti-establishment candidates such as Trump and Sanders become mainstream. This reflects changes in political realities which have led to the rise of UKIP and Front Nationale, whilst Jeremy Corbyn takes over the leadership of the Labour Party. This crisis has also given oppurtunity to the enemies of the west in the form of ISIL.
In some ways this is deeply concerning, as the political certainities of the previous decades are essentially falling apart all around us. As Francis Fukuyama said back in 1989, people thought it was the "end of history" and that we had arrived at the "end point in man's ideological development" with the near universal triump of Liberal ideas. Now instead, the political wreckage of those certainties has driven us into a period of intense political polarisation and economic crisis. Intellectually, we are adrift. we don't know what is happening, we don't know what is going to happen. formerly marginalised ideas and ideologies and filling the void as people look for solutions, no matter how crazy. This is extremely bad for the status quo, and for those sincere defenders of freedom and democracy. it is hard to assert the values of tolerance for difference of opinion when the voices that are being heard are so extreme.
The absolute worst thing we can do now is be complacent and fall into the trap of thinking that liberty is man's natural condition and take our freedom's for granted. This is perhaps, one of those "turning points" where things could do go either way and it is necessary to be active, vocal and militant in expousing our ideas- whatever they may be.
Virtually any form of "Socialism", both in the centre-left and in the far-left have been on the margins for the past three decades (at least since Thatcher and Reagan). Now, if anything, Capitalism is on life-support- and whilst the future is far from certain, half the job is simply turning up. The surest path to irrelevance is apathy.
So my question is whether this crisis is a "problem" or can infact be an "oppurtunity" for us to push a Socialist agenda; whether we can work to improve people's awareness of the social problems that created and have fed into this crisis based on the intellectual weakness of the status quos, and find workable solutions to it?
In some ways this is deeply concerning, as the political certainities of the previous decades are essentially falling apart all around us. As Francis Fukuyama said back in 1989, people thought it was the "end of history" and that we had arrived at the "end point in man's ideological development" with the near universal triump of Liberal ideas. Now instead, the political wreckage of those certainties has driven us into a period of intense political polarisation and economic crisis. Intellectually, we are adrift. we don't know what is happening, we don't know what is going to happen. formerly marginalised ideas and ideologies and filling the void as people look for solutions, no matter how crazy. This is extremely bad for the status quo, and for those sincere defenders of freedom and democracy. it is hard to assert the values of tolerance for difference of opinion when the voices that are being heard are so extreme.
The absolute worst thing we can do now is be complacent and fall into the trap of thinking that liberty is man's natural condition and take our freedom's for granted. This is perhaps, one of those "turning points" where things could do go either way and it is necessary to be active, vocal and militant in expousing our ideas- whatever they may be.
Virtually any form of "Socialism", both in the centre-left and in the far-left have been on the margins for the past three decades (at least since Thatcher and Reagan). Now, if anything, Capitalism is on life-support- and whilst the future is far from certain, half the job is simply turning up. The surest path to irrelevance is apathy.
So my question is whether this crisis is a "problem" or can infact be an "oppurtunity" for us to push a Socialist agenda; whether we can work to improve people's awareness of the social problems that created and have fed into this crisis based on the intellectual weakness of the status quos, and find workable solutions to it?
