Benjamin Barber, noted political theorist and author, spoke in the Alexander G. Hill Ballroom last Monday. Addressing the annual Václav Havel Civil Society Symposium, Barber discussed the challenges of building a global civil society, implementing democracy and fighting terrorism. Czech Ambassador to the United States Martin Palous was among the audience.

Barber wrote the 1995 bestseller Jihad vs. McWorld, which explored the tension between the globalization of politics and the increasing tribalization of national cultures.

He writes regularly for Harper’s, the New York Times, the Atlantic Monthly and the Nation and advises politicians such as Bill Clinton and Al Gore, as well as institutions like the European Parliament and UNESCO.

One of Barber’s main arguments was that the institution of democracy is the best way to end terrorism. “To put an end to terrorism, you can’t just use the military,” he said. Inverting President Bush’s concept of “preventive war,” he suggested “preventive democracy” as a tool to pre-empt terrorism. “Democracy is more likely to hold the key to solving terrorism than preventative war.”

Barber further discussed the president’s strategy in the war on terror, criticizing Bush’s view of terrorism as “a cancer infecting the body politic” of bad countries and his solution of “killing the body.” Barber pointed out that terrorists “are mobile parasites—occupying the body of rogue states.”

In order to battle the terrorists, Barber said that he believes in removing their support base. He said what troubled him most after Sept. 11 was “to see the pictures of people in the Third World who seemed to approve” of the attacks. Barber identified “their fears of despondency and marginalization” as the problem.

“We can’t just kill them; we have to change the world,” he said. During the war, he would have placed an “M1 Abrams tank in front of every school, library and museum, to protect the real legacy of Iraqis. The future of democracy was in the libraries and schools. Why were the schools left out?”

He proposed implementing democracy, a large part of which would be educating the population. “The Taliban know schools are key,” he said. The extremist Wahhabis have 30,000 schools spreading a “narrow-minded view of Islam,” while Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf can’t afford to fund moderate schools. He criticized U.S. funding of schools, noting that Oregon schools closed three weeks early this spring. “Something is screwed up if we don’t understand that education is key to democracy in this country.”

“If we spent a dollar on smart kids instead of smart bombs, in a generation we wouldn’t need smart bombs,” Barber said.

In the implementation of democracy, Barber also emphasized the importance of civic engagement. Barber stated that support for civil democracy “doesn’t get translated in our international work. We have to understand what democracy is. If anyone thinks that to put up walls and reduce liberties will prevent terrorism, the price of stopping terrorism in the United States is giving up democracy.”

He also noted that capitalism is not democracy.

People have mistaken the arrival of capitalism as democracy, he said. For example, in post-war Iraq, “Paul Bremer privatized Iraq’s state-owned systems without asking the Iraqis—to introduce capitalism before democracy.”

He said that while capitalism is a marvelously productive system, “it’s lousy at distribution. It’s good at wealth production, but bad at job production.” While “the synergy of democracy and capitalism produces good,” he said the problem was that people have “globalized the system without the democratic envelope” to control its inevitable excesses.

Barber concluded with a optimistic message: “Democracy is hard and not easy. Put an end to the axis of inequality [and] the axis of evil will vanish and they will be disempowered,” Barber said. “We can do a lot by cooperation—it’s an interdependent world.”

He urged those in attendance to get involved locally. “There are communities in this city that need help. There are lots of things to be done locally. Civic engagement starts locally. It’s hard to be free—you have to want to do it.”