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Entry: Cosmopolitan Si, Multicultural, No! Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/cosmopolitan_si_multicultural_no#2827 Post contents: Thanks for a reflective article. Why can’t we all get along? Because we lack a RELIGIO, Latin for the leather ribbon that held the sticks together in the Roman fasces. Figuratively, it means “that which binds us”. Well, what binds us? Let’s consider some answers, using European, not American, political language: 1. Liberal democracy says, “we atomic selves all have very different goals, all of which are supposed to offer pleasure (Bentham). Let’s just have traffic rules (‘rights’) to keep us atoms from bumping into each other, set up otherwise The Night Watchman State, all will be will.” Did this work? Did this bind us? I don’t thinks so. 2. Social democracy, the Rawls special, adds to the Liberal: “Let’s satisfy ‘needs’ (education, housing, pensions, medicine, etc) that everyone needs to reach any goals, regardless what those goals are, and have them satisfied by The State, and all will be well.” I submit that this was even less successful in binding us together, as tax-takers despoil taxpayers and politicos sell their votes. 3. Nationalism. “Let’s have everyone of the same ‘nation’, and then let’s kick out and keep out ‘les juifs, les protestants, les francs-maçons, et les métèques’”. Forget for a minute this repugnant exclusion. Forget that nationalism gave us two world wars, to say nothing of the mess in the Balkans, Darfur, Somalia, Kurdistan – you name it. Let’s talk about ol’ Benito. Italy is and as been for 3000 years a collection of city states, and they all hate each other. I lamented once to a Roman about how said it is that Venice is sinking into the sea. “It can’t sink fast enough!” he said. “They’re the worst people in all of Italy!” The liberal nationalism of Risorgimento didn’t change this, and it alienated the Catholics as well. So Benito was going to make a nation with his fists and jackboots. It didn’t work, and the result was more than a few bloody noses. So scratch nationalism off your list too. Richard Sennett calls it “re-tribalization”. I do grant Herzl his point: After a group is subjected repeatedly to attempted genocide by everyone else, maybe they need their own piece of the Earth to call their own. 4. Racialism: “Let’s have everyone of the same race.” Wir wissen wohin DAS ging! 5. “Let’s have everyone of the same religion (religion in the common meaning of the term).” Yeah, real bright! Try to sell that to the Waldensians and the good burghers of Drogheda and Magdeburg. It worked for a while in Belgium. The Flemings, Catholics, were given the choice of joining their Dutchphones to the north, Calvinists, or the the Walloons, Catholic, to the east. We know whom they chose, and it worked – for a while. 6. So what’s left? Real Conservatism and Christian Democracy. Real Conservatism rejects 1-4, and seeks other connections than just religion. The Austrian Empire was held together by (1) a common religion (Catholic), (2) the most prestigious dynasty in Europe, and (3) common enemies (now THAT really unites people). Even in World War I, no national groups carried out a secession. The annexation of Bosnia in 1909 was the big boo-boo. Empires just don’t know when to quit. Christian Democracy – which appealed to Protestants in Germany in 1945, and has in its Centrist Democrat International two Israeli rabbinical parties, the Democratic Party of Albania (which governs the country), and soon the Turkish Justice and Development Party (will the Japanese New Komeito be far behind?) – might do the trick. Whether it can overcome the myriad of “identity politics” is an open question. It’s worth a try. Whether Greater Europe has enough RELIGIO to unite it also is an open question. Sent at: 2008 10 13