WASHINGTON -- Despite the worst efforts of violent protesters in Quebec, Canada, leaders of countries throughout the Western hemisphere concluded their Summit of the Americas by proposing a broad free-trade agreement. Bringing more of the world's poor into the global economy is the best hope for raising them out of poverty.
Curiously, globalization has become the latest cause celebre of leftwing activists. These First World demonstrators self-righteously pose as defenders of Third World peoples, even as they advocate leaving the latter destitute.
The process of development, of moving traditional, agricultural societies into the industrial and information age, is extraordinarily painful. It was difficult enough for Western societies, which took hundreds of years to develop. It is even harder for today's developing states, which are attempting to telescope the process into a few decades.