Emotions drive protest

Trade unionists were there to protect good-paying jobs and to protest against companies moving their operations to countries with cheap labour. Environmentalists were there to protect sea turtles and other species and to protest the lax regulatory regimes of developing nations. Socialists were there to protect social programs and to protest against the heartlessness of the capitalist system. Human-rights activists were there to protect human decency and to protest against tyrannical abusive regimes. Some were there because it was the trendy thing to do and a good place to meet other trendy people. And the chief trend-setter, President Bill Clinton, came to show he feels the protesters’ pain.

Whatever the reason, the protesters who disrupted the World Trade Organization talks in Seattle, Wash., have probably done the world a favour by focusing attention on the global economy. It’s a topic worthy of attention because it affects the lives of billions of people. But the people waving signs and charging through police barricades would do themselves and the world an even bigger favour if they actually thought about what they were protesting first.

Take, for example, the youngsters burning American greenbacks to protest against capitalism. Where were they when the Iron Curtain fell? Communism is dead everywhere in the world except Cuba and North Korea, and we don’t see hordes of people lining up to live there. A short visit to an orphanage full of starving kids in North Korea would cure them of their starry-eyed view of a worker’s paradise. And just try protesting anything in Cuba.

Trade unionists can’t be blamed for wanting to protect good-paying jobs. But what about the world’s poor in developing nations? Should they be prevented from competing in the global economy because assembly-line workers want to keep on making more in a day than they make in a year? Do they really believe that economic activity should be restrained in developing nations to keep all the good-paying jobs in developed ones?

Environmentalists can’t be blamed for wanting high standards everywhere. Yet most seem blissfully unaware that the poor worry more about putting food on the table than protecting the environment. And why rail against the evils of capitalism when the evidence shows that private enterprise has done a better job protecting the environment than state enterprise, wherein no one is accountable? Protesters would probably pass out from the fumes if they had to march through some of the rusting, pollution-spewing chemical plants and industrial complexes of the former Soviet Union.

Human-rights activists might think twice about slapping embargoes on nations that have the misfortune to be governed by dictatorial, plundering tyrants if they realized it is the poor people of those nations, not the tyrants, who are most affected. Should these people be left out of the economic loop because of their leaders’ egregious conduct?

Bill Clinton ought to know better, though. He has traveled all over the world and no doubt is aware of the grinding poverty that persists in many developing nations. Yet he came to Seattle to advocate sanctions against nations that have weak labour and environmental codes. How will sanctions help the poor in those struggling nations build their proverbial bridge to the next century and a better life?

Clinton, more than any American in Seattle, ought to know that social justice isn’t something that developed nations can impose by dictum on developing ones. It is an evolutionary process, just as it was in North America and Europe. There is no fast-forward button to push.

There is a naive, yet offensive, smugness underlying the protesters’ efforts to scuttle global trade talks. Most waving signs and placards are well-educated and prosperous. Few have had to struggle for their basic human needs and basic freedoms. They have moved on to higher goals and nobler aspirations. They are the world’s high-minded, out to remake the world in their own image.

The protesters can’t be blamed for wanting to preserve the social benefits they have, and they can’t be blamed for championing progressive environmental standards and labour codes. But what gives them the right to shut the door on the world’s poor? Why shouldn’t people in developing nations be allowed to aspire to the same high standard of living we enjoy — standards attained largely through capitalism and free markets — through whatever competitive advantages they have?

More reason and less emotion might help the protesters see the world as it is, not as they wish it to be. Reality is the best starting point to understand the challenges of globalization, and to see solutions and not just problems.