David Brooks: What drove Blair?
... [Tony] Blair’s decision to support the invasion of Iraq grew out of the essence of who he is. Over the past decade, he has emerged as the world’s leading anti-Huntingtonian. He has become one pole in a big debate. On one side are those, represented by Samuel Huntington of Harvard, who believe humanity is riven by deep cultural divides and we should be careful about interfering in one another’s business. On the other are those like Blair, who believe the process of globalization compels us to be interdependent, and that the world will flourish only if the international community enforces shared, universal values.
Blair’s worldview began to take shape when he was 11 and his father suffered a debilitating stroke. That sent him off on an intellectual journey that led him to the theologian John Macmurray. “If you really want to understand what I’m all about, you have to take a look at a guy called John Macmurray,” Blair once said. “It’s all there.”
Blair absorbed from Macmurray a strong communitarian faith. As prime minister, he tried to remove the class and political barriers that divide the British people. Abroad, his core idea was also communitarian: “Globalization begets interdependence, and interdependence begets the necessity of a common value system to make it work.”
In April 1999, Blair delivered a speech in Chicago in which he ran down all the features of the globalized world that cross borders and unite humanity: trade, communications, disease, financial markets, human rights and immigration. “Today the impulse towards interdependence is immeasurably greater,” he argued. “We are witnessing the beginnings of a new doctrine of international community.”...
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Blair’s worldview began to take shape when he was 11 and his father suffered a debilitating stroke. That sent him off on an intellectual journey that led him to the theologian John Macmurray. “If you really want to understand what I’m all about, you have to take a look at a guy called John Macmurray,” Blair once said. “It’s all there.”
Blair absorbed from Macmurray a strong communitarian faith. As prime minister, he tried to remove the class and political barriers that divide the British people. Abroad, his core idea was also communitarian: “Globalization begets interdependence, and interdependence begets the necessity of a common value system to make it work.”
In April 1999, Blair delivered a speech in Chicago in which he ran down all the features of the globalized world that cross borders and unite humanity: trade, communications, disease, financial markets, human rights and immigration. “Today the impulse towards interdependence is immeasurably greater,” he argued. “We are witnessing the beginnings of a new doctrine of international community.”...