Agent of Globalization
A parody from Europe.

By Michael Novak, the George F. Jewett scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Novak is the author, most recently, of the upcoming On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding.
October 15, 2001 1:00 p.m.

he start of war of September 11 prevented me from sending this dispatch from Europe, just as I was making ready to do so. Since some issues never seem to go away — Bastiat first suggested this more than 150 years ago — this parody may not have lost its timelessness:

The French press reported yesterday a huge protest in Paris against the globalization and unjust hegemonic order of the sun. The protest was apparently timed to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the birth of Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850).

Radicals protested that the sun shines everywhere in monopolistic fashion — on every continent, in every country, without exception, and without any competitor of comparable size or power.

Other radicals shouted that the sun is demonstrably unfair in the amount and quality of light it distributes. One feature of this inequality, the crowd pointed out, is particularly irksome to France — the sun shields it strength over England, allowing for frequent cloud cover and even gentle rains for London. This is unfair, since Provence is subject to such unrelenting sun that its inhabitants are often reduced to shedding their clothes, thus exposing themselves to potential cancers of the skin.

One more example of the perfidious behavior of Anglo-Saxon capitalism, radical Greens called it. The sun has plainly become an accomplice in unfair practices.

In other stories this morning, the French press reported from Durban that the U.N. Conference on Racism had also lodged a protest against the unequal practices of the sun.

The sun shines with unequalled intensity, even cruelty, upon Tropical peoples, the protesters insisted, while tempering its rays in the so-called Temperate zones.

The delegates unanimously accused the sun of racism, which some called the inevitable fruit of globalism.