The rise of new regions of power in recent decades has provoked much discussion of understanding the post-colonial state. While the global influence of the U.S. and the European Union appears to have diminished in past years, the significance of some post-colonial states, such as India and Pakistan, has consistently increased. The challenge for progressive thinkers is to formulate a theoretical model that can coherently explain the specific and general trajectories of these countries.

Modern social science's essence lies in its purpose, articulated in the 19th century, to expound a meticulous, secular knowledge of reality that is somehow corroborated by empirical research. The challenge for researchers of course rests in how they define "empirical research." The driving methodological debate in the social sciences -- however abstruse or historically distant -- orients itself according to the divide between the advocates of the interpretive method and the proponents of positivism.

When a great general was once asked to detail his military strategy, he replied, "I have no strategy." In other words, he knew all the strategies, but also knew that his choice of tactics depended on the situation. Progressives have much to learn from this insight. It is more important to have multiple options for each context than to have a fixed commandment for every state of affairs. The goal in any struggle is to maintain a position of maximum flexibility. The general understood that freedom means being in a position where one can advance along any line of the compass -- north, south, east or west -- to achieve one's objectives.

There is a question from a gentleman in the fourth row.

He introduces himself as Richard Rothschild. He tells the crowd that he ran for county commissioner in Maryland's Carroll County because he had come to the conclusion that policies to combat global warming were actually "an attack on middle-class American capitalism." His question for the panelists, gathered in a Washington, D.C., Marriott Hotel in late June, is this: "To what extent is this entire movement simply a green Trojan horse, whose belly is full with red Marxist socioeconomic doctrine?"