Wow! Thomas Friedman’s books and columns, parading as hip political-economy for a Globalized Flat World, are really naive, romantic longings for an imagined Past.

Friedman wishes he could have been “a district governor in Africa or India,” he tells Ian Parker [“Profile: The Bright Side” (New Yorker Magazine, November 10, 2008)]. Friedman’s “eyes … dampened” as he reads aloud from Karen Blixen’s Out of Africa, “a vivid snapshot of African colonial life in the last decades of the British Empire.”

Friedman elaborates, “You could get places relatively easy (sic) — but they were still totally unspoiled and cultures hadn’t been polluted. That period, I’ve always loved.” He adds, “There was a sense of discovery. Who can discover anything anymore?”

Poor Thomas. I’ve always seen him as naive. Now I understand how deeply rooted his naivete is: He believes in The White man’s Burden! He want to be one of those White Men. He longs for a romantic governorship in a distant land, made safe for travel by the White Man’s inventions, but still populated by quiescent Natives to do all the work. His best-selling, prize-winning writings on Globalization are the old wine of Colonialism and Empire “re- branded” in new bottles and marketed to a public equally romantic, equally naive.

Friedman’s sense of loss — nothing left to discover — is an integral part of The White Man’s romantic vision. He imagines an aboriginal time, a time before time, before History. In this Pure Prehistory, things are “unspoiled,” cultures “unpolluted.” One imagines the Biblical Eden and understands the Crusades as a quest for the Grail of Originality. These fantasies have long since been pricked. We know that humans and cultures are always influencing one another, and that this doesn’t require The White Man’s Empires and Colonial interventions, and that the intermixing of cultures is not “pollution.”

Friedman wants to “brand” his thoughts, to preserve a claim to originality (and to copyright). But there is nothing new here. Only the brand itself is new. We’ve seen the ideas before.

One more thing. A tip to Tom: You’ll discover lots of new things if you get out of the rickshaw.