A divide in the conservative world raises some interesting philosophical and political questions:
Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, jazz musician and Web designer Charles Johnson has devoted his blog, Little Green Footballs, to exposing Muslim extremism in and outside the United States…
But in the early days of Barack Obama’s presidency, LGF has become better known for the various fights it picks with many on the right — including conservative bloggers, critics of Islamic extremism, and critics of Islam in general who used to be Johnson’s fellow travelers…
Johnson worries, in conversation and on his blog, that his old allies have been duped by far-right European political parties and have bought into wild attacks on the president that discredit their own causes.
“I don’t think there is an anti-jihadist movement anymore,” Johnson said. “It’s all a bunch of kooks. I’ve watch some people who I thought were reputable, and who I trusted, hook up with racists and Nazis. I see a lot of them promoting stories and causes that I think are completely nuts.”
Johnson’s disgust with the terrorism-focused conservative blogosphere has had a traumatic effect on a dogged and dogmatic community of bloggers and scholars. When Johnson began blogging about Islam and terrorism after 9/11, he inspired untold other supporters of an aggressive war on terror to start their own Websites, link up, and push back against “Dhimmitude” — organizations and foreign policy decision makers that were “soft” on terrorism. Now, some of his followers have started blogs that track Johnson’s “madness,” while a video that portrays Johnson as Adolf Hitler going mad in his bunker makes the rounds.
Many conservatives — most famously, Mark Steyn — have long argued that Europe is becoming increasingly Islamic due to immigration from Muslim countries, low birthrates among native Europeans, and high birthrates among the new arrivals.
My point here is not to argue whether this is correct. I have not lived in Europe for years, so I have no first-hand observations. (Steyn’s anecdotes and demographic data are convincing, but a recent report may indicate that native Europeans are now having more children while European Muslims are having fewer, seemingly as a result of assimilation.)
But many on the right, justifiably or not, still believe in their thesis of a forthcoming Eurabia. For the sake of argument, let’s suppose that they are correct. Now, two questions arise: 1.) Is a Europe comprised of a majority of Muslims a bad thing? and 2.) If so, what is the proper response?
The idea of the nation-state — the cornerstone of international relations since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 — is based on two ideas: the nation and the state. The nation refers to a population of people based on common ethnicity (such as the Franks in France and the Jews in Israel). The state refers to a government that has the sole right — known as sovereignty — to rule within its borders. When these two terms are combined, what results are the sovereign nation-states of countries like France and Israel. (Interestingly enough, the United States is a state but not a nation since it has historically been comprised of various ethnic groups as a result of immigration.)
The nation-state made practical sense for hundreds of years. Following the Thirty Years’ War between Catholics and Protestants in Europe, the idea that each country should be left alone to determine, among other things, its religious policy has likely saved many lives. Moreover, people of a common ethnicity have tended to live among themselves since the dawn of humanity. The nation-state was a common-sense method to incorporate these two principles.
But the core questions are: Is the idea of a nation-state inherently better than any other conceivable system? Is it worth fighting to preserve? Do peoples, through their governments, have the right to enforce some degree of a homogeneous society?
Yes. Despite what well-meaning idealists believe, people tend to want to live among their own. Most neighborhoods in cities are self-segregating. In Boston, for example, Brookline is the Jewish neighborhood, the North End is the Italian neighborhood, and Southie is the Irish neighborhood. I am sure that the same is true for all major American cities. When I graduated from Boston University, I ended up moving to Brookline because that was where I felt comfortable: my synagogue was there, and my favorite Jewish deli was there. And so on.
When most places become ethnically diverse, there is an increased likelihood of tension and conflict. It could be racism, it could be anger over the public benefits that the poorer community receives, or it could be the service jobs that the immigrants are likely to receive. When I lived in East Boston, residents of the formerly Irish and Italian neighborhood would frequently grumble about the increase in Hispanic and Latin American immigrants in the neighborhood, as well as about the increase in drug use, violent crime, and prostitution that they associated, fairly or not, with them. As a recent study by noted sociologist Robert Putnam revealed, an increase in diversity generally leads to a decrease in the closeness of a civil society. (The most notorious example is Africa, a continent where the national boundries of many countries were foolishly drawn by European colonial powers to include competing tribes and ethnic groups. The result, of course, has been endless civil war and conflict.)
Societies formed of people of a common ethnicity make sense. Governments, in a sense, have always known this, and they have always tried to preserve their characters as a result. Israel grants automatic citizenship to anyone who is at least one-quarter Jewish by ethnicity. In the heyday of the 1990s economic boom, Ireland offered an easy path to citizenship for anyone who was at least one-quarter Irish and wanted to move there. Many European countries have laws favoring immigrants who share the destination country’s ethnicities.
Of course, the United States is an exception, of sorts. It is the one country in which immigrants, for the most part, have helped the country grow and prosper. But this is because the United States is the only country on the planet that never intended to be comprised of a single ethnicity. Anyone can assimilate because the country was founded on ideas, not on a national peoplehood. Problems, like my East Boston example, arise only when a significant immigrant community arrives and does not assimilate into the greater culture. But in nation-states, an increase in diversity inherently creates problems. (This is why the idea among many left-wing Israelis to create a binational state — in which all Jews and Arabs from the Gaza Strip to Israel proper to the West Bank have a single vote — would certainly lead to civil war.)
However, the problem arises when one must determine how to preserve a society that is ethnically homogenous, and this is the debate that is occuring between center-right and far-right conservatives who see the problems that may occur in a Europe that is increasingly Muslim. Those on the far-right seek to emulate neo-Nazi parties by expelling Muslims (and probably Arabs as well) from European countries. This, of course, is a horrendous idea.
But those on the center-right have few solutions of their own. Commentators like Steyn seemingly have thrown in the European towel and wish to build a Fortress America to protect against the forthcoming Eurabia. But I would argue that there are other centrist solutions that Europe can take — namely, enforce the rule of law, take legal action against any potentially violent or treasonous behavior, and show that any intimidation by extreme Islamists will not be tolerated. In such an environment, those Muslims who are radical will likely leave Europe — or, if they are immigrants, be deported — and then the number of Muslims will decline, creating relative peace. In a globalized world, the labor force, through immigration, will always ebb and flow in every country, but that does not mean it needs to be a sociological problem.
Related: The Future of the Nation-State
