Fareed Zakaria at the Commonwealth Club of California. What an important thinker, an asset to the intellectual life and conversation in America. Paraphrasing some of his thoughts:
There are enormous strengths in this society. We are the pluralistic model for the rest of the world. We attract more immigrants per year than the rest of the world combined. We, alone, in the industrialized world, will maintain our demographic strength, and chance to continue our competitiveness in the future.
American companies get this new world.
Washington does not. They continue to do what they do, impervious and arrogant to the workings of the rest of the world. To ourselves, we sit above. To the rest, we are simply not present.
Fareed sums up the current situation in the political world:
"Just as the world is opening up, we are closing down."
(discussing US-Indian relations)
"American relations are always strongest with they are not only state to state, but society to society. What is enduring are these deeper relationships. They seem much more familiar to each side."
