Rearview mirror.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Editor's Note - Editorial

For the final offering from our 100th anniversary conference, we're presenting you with Naomi Klein's provocative speech. It was almost impromptu. She'd come to be on a panel on the U.S. empire and to give a talk about her usual topic, the bank bailout, which she properly calls a "heist." But while she was at the conference, she was gripped by the possibility that the bailout might actually work and that this country might return to the somnambulism that afflicted it before Lehman Brothers came crashing down. When she looked through the rearview mirror, she saw the scary visage of Sarah Palin.

I admire Klein for her analytical ability--and for her quickness.

When I introduced her once at the conference, I paraphrased a gushing New Yorker profile of her, saying it called her "this generation's Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn." Without skipping a beat, she said, "I think Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn are this generation's Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn."

I hope you enjoy what this generation's Naomi Klein has to say.

F areed Zakaria took to the cover of Newsweek recently to publish his "Capitalist Manifesto." It wasn't exactly stirring reading, unlike that other manifesto.

Said Zakaria: "A few years from now, strange as it may sound, we might all find that we are hungry for more capitalism, not less."

First, he asserted: "When countries need growth, they turn to markets." But not when the markets have capitulated, as they have now, and as they did in the 1930s. In such circumstances, it's much more prudent to turn to government for growth.

Then he loaded up with some "ifs" to arrive at his desired "then." He wrote: "If, in the years ahead, the American consumer remains reluctant to spend, if federal and state governments groan under their debt, if government-owned companies remain expensive burdens, then private sector activity will...