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Response to Jihad vs. Mcworld

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In Benjamin R. Barber’s article “Jihad vs. McWorld”, Barber predicts and classifies the future of politics into two possible outcomes—tribalism vs. globalization. The chief goals of McWorld are not only to achieve globalization, but also to create a world without national boundaries where enterprises become transnational and cooperate with others on economy, resources, information-technology and ecology. As a result of McWorld, people from different countries go to international banks that are available everywhere, use convertible currency, eat hamburgers at McDonald, watch American—produced movies, employ English software, and trade resources freely. In fact, McWorld is gradually becoming a tendency in the world. Oppositely, Jihad is a conflicting concept with McWorld. The most significantly purpose of Jihad is to pursue isolation and nationalism. People advocate and inherit their own cultures, nations, politics and religions. Therefore, wars and revolutions might usually arise for people to form boundaries with others.
Although McWorld impresses people by its peaceful and prosperous features and seems more attractive than Jihad, it does not promote democracy more successfully than Jihad does. Instead, both notions are unbeneficial to democracy since McWorld ignore the distinction between nations and Jihad excessively points out the dissimilarity of different groups. Barber believes that confederal, the system that offers local places to possess their own government and enables citizens to directly participate in civic activity and civic judgment, can solve the problem formed by McWorld and Jihad.
After reading Barber’s article “Jihad vs. McWorld”, I was convinced by his proposition that “a confederalized representative system would serve the political needs of McWorld as well as oligarchic bureaucratism or meritocratic

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