The system of competing tribes with different realities only works if there is an overarching sense of community. From the Europe of the Peace of Westphalia, 1648, emerged the idea of the nation state. This was the binding together of similar yet different peoples into a shared identity.
Three-hundred-plus years later, that ideal began to crumble. Devolution became the objective of peoples who found unity artificial. Minus the integrative loyalty of communism, Yugoslavia crumbled into different ethnic enclaves and civil war. Czechoslovakia broke into the Czech and Slovak Republics. The Soviet Union broke up into its pre-imperial past. Many African states devolved into tribalism.
Our strength is most definitely not our multiculturalism. Our strength is a multicultural society that possess a transformative sense of unity. Dramatic events like 9/11 rekindle that purpose. ...
Read the whole thing.
