New Light on the Hill - Book Details

New Light on the Hill:

From Dominance to Diversity in a 
Multi-polar World     

George W. Shepherd Jr.

Preface: Accepting Change

Part I: Free Citizens' Vision

Chapters

1. Origins of the Free and Equal Citizens

2. The Rise of the Liberal Secular States
3. Loss of the Vision in World Wars of Empires

Part II: The Decline of Western Powers

4.  Liberation Movements against Western Empires

5.  Cold War and Rise of New Nations

6.  Collapse of the Soviet Empire into Russian Oligarchy

7.  Decline of U.S. Hegemony under the One Percent

Part III: More Equitable Political Economies

8. The New Political Economies of the Global South
9. China's Rapid Growth Under "Princeling" Plutocrats
10. Free Citizens Continue the Struggle for Secular Tolerance of Diversity
11. New Light on the Multi-Cultural and Multi-Polar World                   

Definitions

Bibliography
Index

       

Synopsis

New Light on the Hill: From Dominance to Diversity in a Multi-polar World  

By George W. Shepherd Jr.

Free and equal citizens have emerged from slavery, colonialism, theocracy and imperialism to create the more equitable secular states in the world. The first new American republic was basically unequal in its dominance over other nations such as the Indians and enslaved Africans for profit.

However, the shift of power from dominance of the Western world to new nations has produced new prospects for greater equity and peace, despite the growing threats of fundamentalists and nationalists.  Free Citizens have risen to struggle against tyranny, beginning with Classical Greeks and early Christians, who evolved the power of reason and law in the first democratic secular state. Under leaders like Pericles, the Greeks developed and defended their early democratic system based on the rule of patriarchal individual white men with slaves from other cultures.

The significance of individualism and the right to know the truth led to the Reformation and discovery of science, which produced the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution.   Out of this came the liberal secular state first established by religious dissenters and freethinkers like John Locke and in the new world, Thomas Jefferson with other revolutionaries who united the American colonists against their British king and established the first liberal secular republic.

In the U.S., the conquest of Indian lands turned into a new imperialism of   “the civilizing mission” that also invaded Mexican and Spanish colonies. This Western imperialist expansion of industrialized states spread into the colonization of the Indian and Chinese nations and later into the Middle East and Africa.

World Wars between these European empires expanded Western hegemony but undermined their wealth. Liberation movements demanded independence and fought for their own states in the colonial areas, weakening Western imperial economies. New powers like China, India, Brazil and South Africa, emerged out of this new nationalist struggle. They began to form inter-regional political and economic systems. This created a shift of power from Western hegemony to the Global South.  New state economies began to surpass Western GDP growth and create a new, interdependent world economy based on new and more effective concepts of state-led development.

The struggle of Free Citizens to maintain the idea of a democratic secular state based on equality before the law has continued in both the old and new states.  Religious fundamentalists have joined with authoritarian nationalists to over throw the secular liberals who strive for tolerance, justice and reconciliation.  However, Global Free Citizens in new states, as well as the older Western nations, continue to struggle to create secular states against intolerant authoritarians. A multi-polar world has emerged, gradually replacing Western dominance. 

Equalitarian chances for billions of peasants have improved with the decline of Western hegemonic interventionism. The U.S. and other world powers have increasingly recognized the limits of their dominance and turned to the United Nations for authorization of action rather than military intervention.  Regional associations in this multipolar world have gradually become important centers of economic development and instruments for peaceful negotiations. New political economies have provided the basis for stronger states and the chances for greater human dignity under law.  Western powers need to become less aggressive as new light reveals the changed world.