While it is true that Germany does not have a long history of democracy, France was a democracy before WW II.
Using
the WW II American intervention in Europe again and again to show how helpful the US Government is in spreading
democracy around the world is beginning to make me already a bit sick, like listening to a broken record. Why not say that without the French helping the US fight the English there would be no "the-good-old-US-of-A"? See, the French helped the US before the US helped the French.
When will most people understand that the notion of "Democracy" has a different meaning for different people, different cultures?! And that the "democracy" cannot be applied in the same fashion to different cultures?! Take Iraq for example: does one think that the Sunnis being a minority will be happy with the one-man-one-vote democracy? I do not think so, and I think there will be some not-so-friendly-debate over this subject for a while to come in Iraq...
Perhaps being American makes me think so, but I feel like this: who is someone to tell me what is good for me?! I know best what is good for me. So one telling me how to run my life and what democracy means makes me a bit "trigger-happy!" I am by no means gun-oriented, it is just a metaphor, one which others seem to take for real, read the news...
One of the first lessons I learned in my life is to try to put myself in another''s shoes, that is for me to try to think and feel what another / the other does, empathy I think it is called. It is hard but very helpful.
What is the end-result that one wants to achieve through
globalization? In how many ways can one achieve this result and at what price should one alternative be chosen over the other? What are the true results and who really benefits from these results? These are questions that many around the world are putting. And the answers to which many arrive don''t make these ones so happy, read the news...
Sometimes when I read stuff over globalization, for some reason it reminds of the stuff over the concept of quality in the 80s and 90s. There were automotive companies who always tried to quantify the quality in financial terms over the short period of time, one to five years. That is why there were terms like 80 % quality is most profitable, etc. In the long term these companies lost out. There were other companies who stated that quality cannot be but 100%, no matter what the associated costs in the short term are. It was hard to quantify it financially / numbers wise, but these companies won in the long term. Globalization seems to me, for some reason, to run along similar patterns. Everyone quantifies it in numbers along the competitive advantages, etc. But I think the main point, the end result is totally lost in the quantification. Yes, it is easier to understand but some of the unintended end-results are not so good. Take for example the globalization of the Green-House-Gases (GHG) emissions caps: try to sell this one just in financial numbers! Hard if not impossible in some parts of the world, read the news...