American political theorist Benjamin R. Barber has recently appeared in a number of interviews where he talks about how capitalism has become a threat to democracy and civil responsibility. Hobby philosophers on social networks praise his ideas for criticizing an increasingly hollow and unstable consumer society. But much tells us that Barber isn't anything new under the sun.

Benjamin R. Barber talks about what he calls "push-capitalism," the state in which corporations invent consumer needs to force people to buy things they don't really need. Instead of shopping because we actually need something, we shop because it has become a lifestyle. The market is expanding but the jobs move away from beneficial areas like the public service sector, to the global consumer market, led by giants such as Wal-Mart.

Nothing of this is new to us. While Barber makes an overtly correct analysis of why the American economy and society are on the verge of break down, he doesn't properly understand the whole context of the situation. Barber believes in democracy and thinks that it has a social responsibility to "regulate" capitalism and make it serve pragmatic ends. This is where he fails.

Barber assumes that all individuals are able to asses the long-term consequences of consuming and actively take a "social responsibility" to use the free market towards a better end. Most people should know by now that only 2% or less of a population is concerned with real world issues. The rest have enough to think about their own immediate existence, which is why they don't have to time to study philosophy or politics to make realistic choices.

They're followers, not leaders.

Barber also attacks the process of privatization and atomization where people only see themselves as separate functions in society without any connection to something larger. While this is true, his belief in democracy as upholding a "social conscious" is laughable. Social conscious based on what? We vote for the people that will bring us the fattest pay check in our wallets and undo the damages we've done to the Middle East and elsewhere. Social conscious only exists in a society with a coherent culture and strong leadership. America currently lacks both.

This is where Barber's political theory essentially falls: you can't regulate free market capitalism and globalism with democracy, because democracy and capitalism are two sides of the same coin; they're best buddies because they are based upon the desire of the individual. Without culture holding people together under social consensus, without higher ideals beyond working and spending money, and without proper leadership that doesn't have to dumb itself down for mass appeal to clueless voters, you plunge a nation into economical debt, political corruption and human selfishness.

The corruption and selfishness are two self-evident effects of democratic thought: to appeal to people you have to use attractive imagery. Over time the leaders have to spend more time appealing to people than to make realistic choices, at which point you try to calm them down with consumer products. Capitalism is just a neat way of maintaining that system by making profiting an absolute: Consume, and thou shalt be "free"!

Benjamin R. Barber seems ironically enough to be a natural product of this corrupt system. He's out there to create appeal by pointing out the obvious without daring to address the real problems. Instead he speaks to us with humanism, explaining how we should help starving people in the third world instead of building borders to Mexico and in Israel. Money will set us free, if we're good-hearted Americans like Barber and show our compassion.

Let's not waste more time on promoting popularity-seekers like Benjamin R. Barber, Al Gore and Barack Obama. What America and most of the West today needs is a complete remake of what we call modern society. Capitalism is out of control, so is democracy, globalism and other systems created to exploit, promote and sell us cheap lifestyles, slowly replacing the true functional system of all great civilizations: organic culture under leadership. As the Bush Administration has showed us in Iraq, democracy cannot even "regulate" itself, which is why you'll vote to end it in the next election. Freedom, alas.