If I were to combine the ideas of Thomas Friedman's column over a year's period, they would amount to less than two. He just keeps saying them over and over again, and keeps citing his friends. Yet, in today's US (and outside of the US even), they pass as pearls of foreign policy wisdom. But then again. Tom Hanks won the Academy Awards (over Anthony Hopkins). Decline of standards, or elimination of standards, EVERYWHERE. Now, that IS globalization.