Thanks for your interesting article. I somewhat agree with your article, but I think its emphasis should be slightly on something else and that is on the influence of business (capitalism) and especially of big business.

I think the focus on the overarching state (in this case America) is a nationalistic concept somewhat globally antiquated already and only still relevant in a few states anymore: like the U.S., North-Korea, Iran and so on comes to mind – countries with a strong nationalistic feeling, often for some specific reason.

The focus on your article should also perhaps not be on the Globalist agenda, since this is still quite vague, but as I mentioned on the influence of capitalism and money making and the influence this had on viewing the individual as an economic unit and influencing states (as you rightly point out) to increasingly treat its citizens as individuals, even children, so that they can be targeted as such (economic units) to whom products can be marketed and sold. And all potential clients should be protected at all costs, even if children need to be protected from their own families in order for them to keep selling products to their customers.

So, to sum up: I think big business atomized the population into individuals, thereby negating the family unit, convincing us that our individual tastes in shoes and clothing and cars and so on is of paramount importance and when this individualization got saturated the next obvious marketable offset point for their products became the child: with children’s toys, clothes, technology and so on…and of course they would want to protect these consumers and the state duly obliges.

Thanks again for an interesting article.

• Omar Daniel Fourie (21 Nov. 2018).