The  Harper's Magazine web site is lame - obviously they are highly concerned with protecting their dead tree franchise.  Curiously, I can find no mention on it's site of the May issue, and the article by William Finnegan on "The Economics of Empire - Notes on the Washington Consensus," which argues that Bush's empire building in reaility signals "its transcendent commitment to a set of fixed ideas about international trade, finance, politics, and economic development.  These ideas form a dogma - George Soros calls it 'market fundamentalism' - that, as dogmas do, purports to explain everything, to fold every event unto itself. sometimes known as the Washington Consensus, other times sinply as 'free trade," this gospel has been the main Ameircan ideology export since anti-communism ...lost its strategic relevance....Presented with special force to developing countries as a formula for economic management, it is also, in its fullness, a theory of how the world should be run, under American supervision. Attacking America is, therefore,  attacking the theory, and attacking the theory is attacking America..."

Its a fascinating article, and I encourage all of you to plod down to your corner newstand and pick up a copy.  maybe someday Harper's willd are to put its content online....

Update: I found a link to the full text of the article  here.

6:48:11 PM