Of course, there is a great deal of nonsense coming from the Right, in the mainstream views that receive the bulk of publicity in the mass media—from both longstanding and well-respected academic experts (such as Samuel P.
Huntington [1996] and Paul Krugman [1996]) to self-styled (but often officially sanctioned) pundits (like the New York Times’s Thomas Friedman [2000]). Both utopias and dystopias are imagined. They write and speak of the end of the nation-state, the civilizing power of free markets, the Lexus running over the olive tree, and the increase in world welfare and social harmony created by the lowering of trade and financial barriers and the expansion of world economic interdependence—or, alternatively, of the
clash of civilizations and the intensification of regional conflicts.
