In May of 2018, two brothers of a historically Jewish fraternity, Alpha Epsilon Pi, were harassed and physically assaulted near Towson University, Maryland. Classified as a “hate-bias” crime in a statement released by Towson University, the incident was only covered by two local newspapers despite its graphic nature and public display.

To many Americans, the hostile political atmosphere following the election of President Donald Trump and the ‘Make America Great Again’ campaign have fostered an environment of intolerance, giving extreme right-wing idealists a platform to stand upon. With hate crimes on the rise for the fourth consecutive year, racially-fueled violence has become more acceptable in American society, desensitizing the public in the process and allowing incidents of hate crimes to go virtually unpunished.

One such incident, ignored and unpunished, occurred at Towson University in Maryland. As two members of Alpha Epsilon Pi were walking near campus in the middle of the day, two unidentified students shouted a racial slur, “f*** the Jews” and punched one victim in the face before the assailants ran off. After filing a report, the administration released an official statement condemning the behavior and declaring that any student found responsible for acts of hatred, racism or bias “could be subject to sanctions including suspension and expulsion.” However, their decision to use the word “could” instead of “will,” falls short of entirely condemning the actions and clearly outlining consequences, a troubling response from an institution expected to protect and defend its students.

From abuse of the Native Americans in the early 19th century, to the horrors of the Jim Crow laws, and even to contemporary political examples such as the Muslim ban, the United States is no stranger to racism. Towson University lies at the heart of a once Confederate state, and traditional Southern racism, although less overt, still exists today. In fact, Maryland reported 398 hate crimes in 2017, with 19 self-proclaimed hate groups operating at any given time. Thus it is evident that the historical precedent of racism and anti-semitism has not evolved with progressive ideals but rather festered under the radar for years, bubbling over when tensions are high.

The Towson case demonstrates a transition from subtle racism to unapologetic anti-Semitism. Simply walking along the street near their university, these two young men were targeted for their beliefs, harassed with hate speech, and physically abused. The University Administration, in combination with local news sources, refused to even label the incident as a hate crime, preferring “hate bias” instead, which minimized the severity of the events.

Despite the controversial debate regarding the racist principles of the Trump administration, it is irrefutable that his election has given a platform to those once forced to keep their racism behind closed doors. The “rise and decline” of overtly racist regimes serve to support the assertion that the desire for power and superiority can be building blocks for racist ideology, according to George Fredrickson in his book Racism: A Short History. Whether it made an intentional decision or not, the university may have opened the door for potential future abuse by signaling a lack of commitment to fighting against cases of racism or anti-Semitism. The soft condemnation of the actions along with the short and inadequate investigation by Towson University and Maryland law enforcement further reinforce the southern traditional illusion of white power and legal immunity. Appropriate action and accurate news coverage along with university-enforced policies to punish hate crimes must be taken to quell the repetition of deeper institutional racism within the U.S.

The Towson incident brings about larger ethical implications regarding public desensitization to overt and subversive racism. In March of 2019, a group of Southern Californian high school students went viral to millions of people on Instagram playing “German beer pong,” with the cups arranged in the shape of a swastika and a few individuals raising their arms in the Nazi salute. The immediate public outrage was met with a stunning explanation: this was not an act of anti-semitism. Rather, the teens simply didn’t know any better. While this does not serve as an acceptable excuse, it does draw attention to an alarming issue: this generation of American youth does not understand the severity of using racist images and derogatory phrases, nor do they understand the historical implications of using these overtly racist symbols. The resurgence of racist ideology has taken a more subtle foothold in American politics and society, while education regarding the matter is severely lacking.

Although the statement by Towson University condemned racism, the words are empty without action. Even further, it could be perceived by those who prescribe to themes of racism and anti-Semitism as the beginning establishment of a new social order or hierarchy where this type of overt racism is allowed. Towson was one specific incident with only two direct victims. However, applied on a larger scale, the apathy and indifference of Towson University, the Maryland Police Department, the news media and the general public indicates a shift in societal values. Less than a year later, the California teenagers under fire for playing “German beer pong” illuminated the shocking lack of education regarding racism and anti-semitism administered to American youth. To combat such a deeply-rooted tradition will not be easy. However, active resistance and acknowledgement is essential in order to preserve the liberal nation America has struggled so hard to build. The youth of our nation must understand the severity of racist ideology, actions and symbols in order to actively prevent this resurgence of cultural racism.

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In their song “Punk Prayer”, anti-Putin feminist group Pussy Riot criticizes the use of Russian Orthodox to deify the political regime:

Bless our festering bastard boss,
Let black cars parade the Cross,
The Missionary’s in class for cash,
Meet him there, and pay his stash.

Members of the group famously received two years jail time after illegally performing the song in a Moscow Cathedral in 2012. Though the protest itself was radical, the argument calling the Russian Orthodox Church a politicized shell of its former self is a common thread among Russian opposition and Western commentators. It’s an easy one to make when the Moscow Patriarch – head of Russian Orthodox – Kirill I lauds Putin’s leadership as “a God’s miracle”, decries the West as a doomed, materialist civilization and goes on television to urge Russian citizens not to worry about falling oil prices or the devalued ruble. All this from an institution that has received billions of dollars’ worth of restituted property from the government after it was appropriated by the Bolsheviks, and oversees a business empire complete with Orthodox banks, shopping malls and bottled holy water.

In Pussy Riot’s latest video for their song “Chaika”, or “seagull”, the group calls out the church’s irreligious corruption and affluence. (PussyRiotVideo/Youtube)

Beyond the obvious hypocrisies, the church’s enthusiastic championing of the ultra-conservative and anti-Western elements of Putin’s brand can seem contradictory given the USSR’s categorical decimation of Russian Orthodox during the Cold War—priests were executed and replaced with KGB informants, churches were converted to atheistic propaganda centers and what was left of the community of believers became a spiritual spearhead of anti-Soviet protest. But historically, Russian Orthodox has always been exploited for political marketing. Both the Crimean War of 1853 and the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 saw the Tsar paint Russian expansionism into the Ottoman Empire as “a noble defense” of oppressed Serbs and other Orthodox Christian minorities living in the majority Muslim state. Nicolas I and Alexander II were not moral crusaders. They knew a religious narrative would fuel the necessary Islamophobic, anti-Turkish sentiment to motivate a strategic war. For those with a cyclical philosophy of history, Putin’s talk of a “holy war” against ISIS to defend persecuted Christians in Syria and Iraq is rhetorical gold.

But is it fair to reduce the reemerged Orthodox sentiment in Russia after decades of secular, Soviet erosion to a publicity stunt organized by Medvedev and Putin? Does today’s Russian Orthodox, with its gilded history, ascetic icons and arcane mystical rituals go no deeper? Consider the fact that the number of Russians who call themselves Orthodox rose from 31% in 1991 to 72% in 2008. Though most don’t formally practice, that’s a significant realignment of cultural identity. In November of 2011, three million Muscovites braved sub-zero temperatures to venerate The Belt of the Virgin Mary, an important Orthodox relic brought from Mt. Athos in Greece to Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior. The location was particularly symbolic; the church was famously rebuilt in 1997 after Stalin had it destroyed. A statement of this kind can’t just be a product of cynical political manipulation. The surge of confidence in the post-Soviet era has roots in a genuinely faithful Russian psyche, desperate to reconnect with a glittering past.

Russian Orthodox was relaunched on the back of this desperation in the early 90s. The collapse of the Soviet project in 1991 left Russia with a gaping spiritual and ideological hole. Enabled by Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost, opportunistic foreign religious groups swarmed the country in an attempt to fill the moral vacuum. Mormons, Jehovah’s witnesses, scientologists and Hare Krishnas all gained converts in the ruins of Eastern Europe. Perceiving the success of encroaching Western cults as a threat to Russian identity, the government began its mission to rekindle Orthodoxy as a ward against Western ideological corruption. In 1997, Yeltsin passed the Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations, which effectively barred foreign churches from registering in the country, and granted the Russian Orthodox Church a privileged, tax-exempt place in the eyes of the regime. Today the law is criticized as a violence against religious freedom and diversity, treating other major faiths in Russia like Islam and Buddhism as second-class. But at the time, state support for Orthodoxy was a defensive move against what was, to some extent, a Western “hearts and minds” campaign preying on Russian citizens.

Here we see the origins of the Church and State merger in post-Soviet Russia not as an outright exploitation to legitimize the central power, but as an initiative by both the people and the government to keep Russia “Russian”. Though Putin and Kirill often disagree – like on the extent of Orthodox education in schools, for instance – the two have an understanding: Kirill coats the state’s leadership and its foreign policy in flattering, religious gloss, and Putin will give the church the resources to keep Russia’s rich cultural history alive in the midst of low living standards and an Americanized entertainment landscape. For the public, it’s more a source of pride in heritage than a purely spiritual fulfillment.

With this more nuanced framework we can make sense of Pope Francis’s much-discussed recent meeting with the Russian Patriarch on February 12, the first contact between the leaders since the West-East schism in the 11^th century. Western pundits interpreted the meeting as a direct diplomatic success for Putin, represented by Kirill. The religious leaders spoke of the need to end the persecution of Christians in the Middle East, and Francis echoed Putin’s criticisms of the West’s handling of Iraq and Libya, going on record saying, “In part, there has been a convergence of analysis between the Holy See and Russia.” Virtually nothing was said about the crisis in Ukraine or the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, an institution that answers to the Vatican and that the Russian Orthodox Church considers a perversion on traditionally Orthodox territory. So yes, the politics was there. But in Russian eyes, the event was a testament to a recovered Russian spirit and identity, a meeting of civilizations that deserve to be treated – as they were through the Romanov dynasty – as cultural and political equals.

The same double consciousness plays out in Ukraine, where since the Crimean annexation, Russian Orthodox has been losing its symbolic foothold. Though the Ukrainian Church formally answers to the Moscow Patriarch, nationalism and Russian aggression have driven it to consider splitting with its historical father.

On the one hand, the split threatens Putin’s conception of a united Russian people – “Russiky Mir” he calls it, or, “The Russian World” – which he used to justify the pro-Russian separatist cause. While the Russian Orthodox Church has not directly endorsed the rebels, Kirill has accused rival churches in Ukraine (Orthodox groups born after Soviet rule, who don’t answer to Moscow) of persecuting followers of the Russian patriarch. In a letter to the highest cleric of the Orthodox Faith, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, Kirill called Ukrainian military efforts against pro-Russian rebels an attempt to overpower the Orthodox Church, saying, “the conflict in Ukraine has unambiguous religious overtones.” All pure Kremlin-speak.

On the other hand, there’s something deeply nostalgic in this idea of “Holy Rus” that Kirill touts in his statements about Ukraine, a theological term that refers to the Kingdom of Heaven as well as the state in the Middle Ages made up of modern Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. It’s a tender note of grandeur and survival from a religion whose constant dwelling on apocalypse and anti-Christs matches its people’s grim history. It’s never just the state of Russia; Putin and Kirill refer to a “Russian world” pitched against a Westernized backdrop. The sanitary peaks of The Church of Latter-day Saints and the neon McDonald’s yellow in Red Square make it a credible narrative. And given the unwavering popular domestic support of both church and state, that kind of immense language is what the Russian people need, or at least, believe in.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors or governors.

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Guest Contributor: Amanda Schmitt

“There’s no negotiating with ISIL [and]nothing to negotiate,” asserted Secretary of State John Kerry in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on US strategy against the Islamic State (IS), also commonly known as ISIS or ISIL. “ISIL must be defeated. Period.” IS has killed 5,500 civilians and created 1.8 million internally displaced persons in their quest to construct an Islamic caliphate under sharia law. As is common in cases of humanitarian intervention, the ethical and legal natures of the circumstances are at odds. The over 50-state US-led international coalition demonstrates the need for a response to IS; yet, the UN Security Council has not, and will not, authorize military action within Syria’s borders due to laws of sovereignty. This prevents legality of the action under international rules of force, necessitating a UN Security Council resolution, government consent or a self-defense claim.¹ Iraq requested the collective self-defense claim within its borders, but the US asserts that the Assad regime relinquished its right to consent foreign action within state territory given a practical lack of physical and political control of the area in question. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon accepted the legitimacy of this argumentation, further authenticating it as an exception to rules and norms in international law. While the technical legality of such action under international law and the future application of US dispersed weapons are controversial, it is ethically appropriate for the US to arm Syrian rebel forces deemed moderate by the intelligence community. Given the severity of the human security crisis, the nature of warfare with non-state actors and the purpose of sovereignty, the rationale for the action outweighs the potential negative aspects of infringements on international law.

With globally disseminated videos of public beheadings, systematic killing and raping of women, rejection of women’s right to education and acts of mass killing against any opposing group, IS is not an actor that abides by the rules of the international system and therefore cannot be dealt with as such. States have global legal frameworks and structural governance mechanisms to mitigate anarchy, but the context changes completely when dealing with non-state actors. When there is no option for diplomacy, the only viable alternative is military action to counter the violence. If the military response were confined solely to aerial bombardment, then IS’s resources and infrastructural support could be debilitated; however, the individual participants of IS would not likely be contained on a large-enough scale to cause a permanent power shift against them. The nature of such terrorist organizations prompts revitalized defiance and fundamentalism in response to attack. One cannot bomb an ideology.

IS’s power has grown militarily, territorially and ideationally, since their rhetoric has struck a chord with other Islamist jihadist groups. This momentum has created a daunting opposition on numerous levels that requires a multifaceted combative initiative, including the necessity of a ground counter-force to IS’s constant push for expansion. The Iraqi military has not proven itself as a strong enough containing force within Iraqi territory. Furthermore, the Turkish military became only recently involved in October 2014 to protect its borders. Within Syria, however, IS has gained significant territorial control, and the Assad regime’s military has proven ineffective. Within the US-led coalition, government positions vary in support of action within Syrian borders—all members agree with action in Iraq given the government request of collective security, yet they differ on both air strikes and arming rebels within Syria without government consent. Without other international military support, the Syrian rebels are therefore the most viable ground counter-force within Syria. As Secretary Kerry elucidated, arming the moderate Syrian rebels as a counter-force to IS precludes the potential need for US ground forces. While there are some American critics of a weapons assistance program, there is little to no support for any contribution of US troops to containing IS, restricting military options to training and weapons programs.

An unavoidable risk of engaging in a conflict of such an uncontrollable nature is the potential for future misuse of US weapons post-conflict, another area of American concern. In the September 2014 Senate debate for arming Syrian rebels against IS, Senator Rand Paul referred to past interventions, expressing his concern that intervention would create a “chaotic vacuum” of power that could result in radical groups contributing to further violence with the provided weaponry. While the future application of the weapons and training are always of concern, the extent of unease is lessened since the CIA already armed vetted Syrian rebel groups against the Assad regime in 2013. Any remaining weapons will likely be applied toward this same effort given the multifaceted conflict environment. This application of resources is likewise problematic under international law without a Security Council resolution for arming rebels against the Assad regime; nonetheless, this context limits the probability of weapon use beyond a US-backed initiative, given Syrian rebel priorities of combating IS and the Assad regime. This weapons allocation could actually act as an unstated strategy to bolster Syrian rebel groups for both US initiatives of combating IS and the Assad regime. This approach addresses US interests on both fronts and likewise prevents the need for American ‘boots on the ground’.

From an international legal perspective, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has reacted negatively to the option of arming actors as a means of intervention, reasserting its illegality. In the 1986 Nicaragua case in the ICJ regarding the US arming of rebel groups, the ICJ declared, “the protection of human rights, a strictly humanitarian objective, cannot be compatible… with the training, arming and equipping of the contras.” ²However, when there is such immense international outcry for the need to relieve a humanitarian crisis, as there was in the Rwandan Genocide and Syrian Civil War and currently with IS, international organizations refrain from serious reprimands despite breaking international legal procedure. This dynamic creates a de facto exception to rules of international law, with the ethical concerns of intervention taking precedence over the legal complexities.

At the core of the debate of ethics versus international law is the issue of sovereignty for determining the acceptability of intervention. Laws of sovereignty prohibit a misuse of an intervention claim for individual or state control over another’s territory, like Russia’s recent claim of the protection of ethnic Russians in Ukraine to effectively annex Crimea. It is a legitimate concern that numerous “exceptions” to international legal procedure for such state interference could enable governments to either intervene for largely self-interested reasons or to manipulate shifts in power in a state-building process. However, the current gridlock around intervention within the UN Security Council given China and Russia’s vetoes limits the international legality of intervention for cases of legitimate humanitarian crises; China and Russia aim to preclude any precedence that could enable foreign interference in their domestic spheres. These circumstances put global leaders like the US in a catch-22 position. If they do nothing militarily given the legality issue, they receive condemnation for failing to prevent continued loss of life. They are ridiculed for allowing the promulgation of terrorism as a global leader in the international system. By acting, they violate and undermine the international laws that create structure for the system.

The Assad regime has used the strict legal argument of sovereign control to its advantage despite that US assistance to combat IS is actually in its interest, as well. If asked for consent, the Assad regime would undoubtedly oblige, as IS is a serious threat to their control both territorially and politically. However, the Assad regime would conversely be staunchly opposed to any bolstering of opposition rebel groups for this purpose, as that would likewise strengthen the groups vying to unseat them. Since the US government does not recognize the Assad regime’s authority due to its human rights abuses, the US will not legitimate the regime by requesting its consent to act within its borders for aerial attacks. The US government’s insistence to work against a stringent interpretation of laws of sovereignty demonstrates the prioritization of ethics, including rejection of the authority of the Assad regime and utilization of the most promising campaign strategy.

To look deeper at intentionality behind the concept of sovereignty, scholar Stephen Krasner explains that sovereignty within a Westphalian state system is legitimized through “political authority based on territory and autonomy.”³ He suggests utilizing the Westphalian model as a guideline rather than concrete rules.⁴ With the current state of global governance mechanisms and international institutions, Krasner asserts that “compromising Westphalia is not only inevitable, it can also be good,” allowing for a “normative discourse more consistent with empirical reality.” ⁵ By neglecting to provide the necessary components for a state’s viability – rule of law, security, and markets – the territory becomes a failed state unable to employ sovereignty rights. Scholars Michael Fowler and Julie Bunk additionally support criteria for sovereign nationhood through “de facto internal supremacy… and external independence,” as well as de jure independence recognized by other states. ⁶  The Assad regime does not have supreme political control within Syria or international recognition of authority, delegitimizing its sovereign power. Ethically, if a government does not uphold its responsibility to maintain the security of its territory and political autonomy over governance, the government forfeits its right to sovereignty. The purpose of international law is to mitigate anarchy in the international system by ensuring the global protection of human rights and establishing standard operating procedures to facilitate diplomacy. It therefore cannot permit a context in which both are being violated or abused by the party in power. International law should not become a delaying mechanism that inadvertently helps the violent opposition cause further harm.

Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan empathized with this legalistic versus ethical dilemma, stating, “sovereignty implies responsibility not just power.” In a context in which the de jure sovereign body is not able to exercise its state responsibilities or maintain authority over its territory, it forfeits its claim to sovereignty. Given this circumstance with the Assad regime, the US is ethically justified in its intervention through arming Syrian rebels. IS is not a threat that will diminish without forced containment, necessitating a significant international response and thorough actions toward a viable end to a successful campaign. The strategy must be robust enough to have a high probability of success to prevent an ongoing waste of resources and diminishing political will. The strong and global coalition coordinating various types of resources to aid in this campaign demonstrates the global sense of urgency in combating this threat. Therein, the military aspects of these contributions currently take prevalence as having the largest impact. The US is the only state with the resources, will and political power to lead the military effort against IS, therefore implicating its responsibility to act. Without US action to arm the Syrian rebels, there is limited ground support – only strongly on the Turkish border by the Turkish military and relatively ineffectively in Iraq by the Iraqi military – to ensure the finality of the air strikes’ intentions to contain IS. This leaves a high probability that IS will continue to expand its control militarily and its support from those they radicalize into their ranks. A further empowered IS would necessitate an elongated and increasingly expensive campaign, one that the US government aims to avoid. While there is never a definitive assurance of the success of any campaign, the absence of an armed opposition on the Syrian front significantly decreases the probability of success. It would not be feasible for any foreign military to contribute ground troops within Syria given the additional context. Moreover, there is no domestic political or social will to contribute American ground troops elsewhere in the region. The Syrian rebel groups become the final front to a holistic and hopefully conclusive IS containment strategy. Thus, beyond the paramount ethical argument of protecting collective human security, the US initiative to arm Syrian rebels is also practical from collective security, financial, strategic and sovereignty standpoints.

Amanda Schmitt is a senior at the University of Southern California majoring in International Relations.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors, or governors. 

The post The Ethics of Intervention appeared first on Glimpse from the Globe.

The term “melting pot” hasn’t been received too kindly these days, particularly with the ascendancy of multiculturalism in the Western academe and its explosion into the political and social worlds. I’d say that’s a shame—it remains a particularly useful metaphor, more unifying and ennobling than the “salad bowl” or the “mosaic.” In standing against the nativism of rightist quasi-racist populists, while shunning the relativistic multiculturalism of lofty lefty elites, “melting pot nationalism” provides a march forward along the path that has forever defined the best possible American identity—an ever-more inclusive mix of diverse cultures, ethnicities and philosophies, each contributing something unique to the American tradition, unified by a shared commitment to particular social, cultural and political ideals and an untarnished loyalty to the star-spangled banner.

In a highly celebrated quote located within a very underrated and under-published address to the Knights of Columbus, Teddy Roosevelt famously said, “There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism.” He was referring to ethnic factions within the United States – German-Americans, Italian-Americans, etc. – who in the coming international crisis might side with their ancestral homelands and strive to influence US foreign policy in favor of foreign aims at the expense of American interests and unity. While this concern may or may not have been valid in 1915, and its validity was quite contestable in 1941, it certainly appears to be outdated in 2014 and was a prime source of national embarrassment in 2001. Millions of Americans today identify themselves as Indian-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Asian-Americans, African-Americans, Arab-Americans, and any mix of prefixed-American combinations. And those without a blatant prefix are always Anglo-Americans or Euro-Americans of some type or other. Yet there is no risk that hyphenated-American citizens would betray the United States if a war broke out tomorrow, or even side with the foreign nation in their blood sympathies. When it comes to political identity, there’s basically no question about it—hyphenated Americans en masse swear no allegiance or fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty. In their loyalties they are citizens of the United States and the United States alone. Why, then, is there any problem inherent to multiculturalism, provided that it is strictly a question of cultural identity rather than political identity?

Indeed, there has never been a truly unified American nation throughout the entire course of our history. (The same could probably be said about just about every nation in the history of the world.) As David Hackett Fischer illustrates in his anthropological history of early America, Albion’s Seed, the English settlers who populated the thirteen colonies were already diverse in their habits and identities, and that doesn’t even account for the multitude of German, Dutch and French immigrants, African slaves, and multitudinous Native American tribes with whom our Anglo forebears shared the continent. Regional identities took precedence over any national identity for much of the antebellum period and still make themselves known today, if somewhat less blatantly. Various subcultures within America, from religious groups to ethnic groups to, perhaps most pervasively, political and social factions, have often been a primary source of identity for the vast majority of Americans. Vast influxes of immigrants brought thousands, millions of newcomers from foreign lands to our shores, newcomers who clung to their identities as justly as Northerners and Southerners, urbanites and yeoman farmers, clung to theirs. That has been the case outside the great periods of immigration, and that has been the case within every great period of immigration. It seems, too, that whatever thin veil of national identity we have ever had has tended to be almost entirely a political construction, encouraged by nationalist politicians and authors whenever they had the chance, and particularly upped whenever severe disunion or crisis appeared imminent. It’s not that there’s no organic “fellow feeling” among Americans—rather, that organic fellow feeling has always been a cultural bottom line rather than a cultural touchstone, amidst a sea of diverse identities and groups. One could nearly conclude, with some justice, that multiculturalism is merely a slightly broader continuation of the state of affairs we have known throughout our history, one that allows more leeway and freedom for groups that have been historically oppressed.

This is a tempting fantasy. There is much truth to it, as well as much truth to the proposition that cultural diversity, like nature, is worth preserving in and of itself.

But I would propose that diversity does not, in fact, need help to be perpetuated—it does that on its own already, since humans and human groups possess culture within themselves. We run no real risk of losing diversity. We may run the risk of losing the particular traditions of certain groups, which may or may not be unfortunate (polygamy and slavery happened to be the traditions of particular cultural groups in this country) but in the long run, culture evolves in a capitalist society, and we’ll most likely wind up keeping most of the best traditions.

Indeed, the waters are muddied and bloodied when it comes to persecution of a people and their culture – as it was in the cases of the Native Americans and the African-American slaves – but these questions arise in cases when groups are actively excluded from society, which is not so much a question of identity as a question of justice. These are questions that are linked intrinsically; but here we will focus on questions of identity within the broader American polity. For all intents and purposes, Native Americans and African-Americans have been expressly part of the unified American polity since the 1960s, and, to a lesser degree, since the end of slavery and the closing of the frontier.

We do, however, run the risk of losing unity, and therefore it is incumbent upon us to do whatever we can to preserve and enhance it, lest the next crisis break us asunder. Every school-kid knows what the lack of a strong, common American identity did to the nation in 1861, and what it threatened to do in the social upheavals of the 1870s, 1930s, 1960s, and what it may well threaten to do in the coming decade. Even worse, there are those alive who have witnessed three times or more in their lifetimes what happens when war frenzy drives the briefly united American people to seek out enemies in their midst. The Japanese internment of 1941-45 weighs heavily on our conscience as a nation, the Red Scare McCarthyism of the 1950s is a stain upon our national soul and the harassment of Arab and Muslim-Americans in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, testifies to the fact that we are still not above accusing our innocent fellow Americans of treason simply for the color of their skin and their profession of faith.

It is a blessing that we indeed have a long tradition of promoting national unity to draw upon. The Federalists and the Whigs most clearly represented this in early American history, though even their deadly foe Thomas Jefferson preached that “We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.” Daniel Webster’s immortal line, “Liberty and Union, Now and Forever, One and Inseparable!” continues to ring as one of the most beautiful statements on national unity made before the Civil War.

But it was during the Civil War, when the Union split, that true unity was first articulated and then realized. Abraham Lincoln might be considered the first great nationalist President, for it was he who first re-united and then presided over an America that, for all its mix of cultural identities, possessed a single political identity. The economic and social programs that he and most of his successors put in place were the foundations of the 20^th Century progressive state that did not create, but did enhance and enable, the flourishing and dominance of the American middle class, and thus narrowed the culture gap and encouraged a broad middle-class American culture. This progressive state was advanced further by such great 20^th Century lights as Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, and for whatever excess and unsustainability might have been inherent to it, the progressive state certainly did much to unify a broad stratum of Americans around a shared higher standard of living. Clearly there were those who did not reap the benefits the system conferred on this privileged middle class; nonetheless, it was a start.

The social upheavals of the 1960s and 70s and the revolution in social and political thought that took place then shattered the unity of the nation, and the neoconservative and neoliberal reactions of the 1980s and 90s did not do much to heal the wounds in the long term. This series of upheavals does much to explain the contemporary situation of American politics, a landscape of polarized identities of political, ethnic, religious and cultural stripes. I view multiculturalism in this context—not primarily a social ideology standing on its own, but at least in part a result of and reaction to the intensely divided nature of American politics that has gotten particularly worse since the 1960s. And, looking into the future, it seems that absent a major crisis or a major push towards the political reform and cultural reunification of the nation, we have nothing else to look forward to but a continuation of the same. This bodes dangerously for the future of the nation, and particularly for the future of the minorities most vulnerable to the wrath of Middle America.

Because of all this, I view it as absolutely critical that as Americans, we cultivate a national culture that transcends the culture of any subgroup or minority and goes past even the hallowed traditions of national civic culture (which is in deadly decay now, too, and needs a revitalization of its own.)

In terms of national culture, there’s really not too much to worry about. So long as we get back on the road to political reform, and reinvent a great progressive state that will support the proliferation of a wider and wider middle class (something the last two presidential administrations have, at the very least, attempted to do through legislative reforms), I believe the natural forces synthesizing a genuine American culture will continue to integrate minorities into the greater American system, taking what is “best” and abandoning what is “worst” of these minority cultures and the dominant “native” WASP-ish culture. This has been the trend of the last 100 years at the very least, and very likely of the whole of American history. It is the vision the likes of Michael Lind, a columnist at Slate and a major proponent of American nationalism, and Joel Kotkin, an urban policy thinker and professor at Chatham University, prognosticate, and which I believe most nativists and multiculturalists would be quite content having (though they would not necessarily admit it.)

There’s no need to impose government policy to integrate minorities and make everyone feel good—gradually, as minority cultures make a foothold, their imprint upon American culture will grow and grow, and their younger members will gradually transition from being only Irish-Americans and Chinese-Americans to being mainly Americans who are also Irish-Americans and Chinese-Americans. Look at St. Patrick’s Day becoming a national American celebration and “Kiss me, I’m Irish!” becoming a popular saying, and compare it to the steady proliferation of Chinese take-out and martial arts. Every other American minority has slowly integrated this way – with the unfortunate exceptions of African-Americans and Native Americans, whose general isolation is the result of entrenched, institutionalized policies against them for generations – and there is no reason to expect that today’s influx of immigrants (and the proliferation of their children) from Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and elsewhere will not similarly be as Americanized in a generation or two as the descendants of Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, and Polish-Americans currently are. Indeed, most Americans who identify today as Asian-American, Latino-American, or Muslim-American are as American as you can get, and the multicultural impulse to set aside heritage weeks and months for them will one day look like having heritage months for Irish and German-Americans: nice to have so you can remember where your ancestors came from, but not a defining source of political identity. I think the gradual integration of these various traditions into the broader American tapestry, and the subsequent decline of “__________-American” as a serious political identity and into a series of proud and interesting parochial and secondary cultural identities no more important than “Scottish-American” or “Canadian-American” are today, is the ultimate fate of multiculturalism.

Moreover, the future richness and unity of American national culture is not the only fruit of this vision; I sincerely believe that as “American” becomes the general term, and as various iterations “________-American” recede, the likelihood of racially and culturally-based prejudices – particularly in times of war – will go down with it. May this future come quickly.

So there’s the general American social culture, the general tone of society which it appears no one (save the people working on fixing the entitlement system) has much control over, though the people on the microphone and in the blogosphere certainly have the loudest opinions. What of civic culture?

It has been observed for quite some time that national civic culture is approaching an all-time low, as the most politically-active people are also the most radical, as the percentage share of voters declines with every election, and as knowledge of our history and national philosophy declines among our young people. This is unfortunate, and I believe a series of social trends are the primary culprits here, as well as the general tendency of a liberal society to view rights as more valuable and important than duties. I am firmly of the belief that a rejuvenation of national civic culture is vital to our health as a democracy and our unity as a nation. I believe that, particularly as we re-reform our system of political economy to something more sustainable and yet more prosperous than we have known in recent years, it will be important to re-instill ideals of selfless civic service and patriotism among our populace, if we are to see a real resurgence of national unity.

I’m biased, as I received my civic education from three mighty institutions of civic pride: the United States Navy (my Dad’s a Captain and he imbued all of us kids with nationalist sentiments, and gave us copies of “The Warrior Ethos” and similar oaths when he was serving in Iraq), the American Legion (I was honored to be given the opportunity to attend Boys State the summer after my Junior Year in high school, and it really did transform my civic views), and the Boy Scouts of America (all the way from Tiger Cubs—this most of all.)

All of these organizations place a premium on American citizenship—not based on any ethnicity, on any region, on any class, but on an ideal of Americanism in general. They stress that being a good citizen, participating in civic life, and being willing to give one’s life and career to the service of that nation are critical pillars of citizenship in a republic. This in a broader American culture that generally promotes entitlement and material well-being as the greatest goods. Theodore Roosevelt said that there are no hyphenated Americans. I have heard it said that no hyphenated-American ever died in our wars overseas, only Americans did. There’s a certain nobility to this ideal, that it is not your origins or your blood that matters, but your choices. This rugged realism, of not bothering with anyone’s identity save what is deferential to the race-less flag, is perhaps untenable and controversial in civilian life, but appears to be a necessity in the warzones and certainly is a value stressed by these organizations in peacetime. More than once in our history, prominent Americans have advocated replacing the virtues of Main Street, Wall Street, and Hollywood Boulevard with the virtues of West Point. Pretend for a moment that I’m a prominent American and count me in on that list. Now more than ever seems like a time for unity.

There are of course various ways such virtues can be promoted, not least a re-emphasis on American history and American politics in our primary education, higher rates of investment in voting accessibility, greater support for civic organizations, mandated or incentivized youth national service, and most critically of all, significant reform of our decadent and crumbling political establishment in Washington. I will go into that later; for now, suffice it to say that we can do better as a nation in being a nation.

I am an unabashed American nationalist and proponent of higher standards of citizenship, and greater links of national unity. To this end, though I am ethnically an Asian-American and an Anglo-American, I am an American first, and a hyphenated-American second. The salad bowl and mosaic celebrate diversity, and what truly must be celebrated is our unity- for the word ‘American’ is too noble to be a suffix, too important to be prefixed with any disclaimers. Let every individual American take pride in their personal identity, be it regional, ethnic, religious, ideological, cultural, or whatever else there is to name. Diversity is the hallmark of a flourishing, burgeoning, pluralistic society.

But when the day comes to vote, when the draft comes to each town, when the seventh inning comes around and the informal anthem is sung, when the fireworks light up the sky, when the world asks the American: “What are you?” let them answer with firmness in the right as they are given to see the right, “I am an American, and I am proud.”

The views expressed by these authors do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors, or governors.

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Manifest Destiny, so often taught as little more than white patriotism justifying expansionism, is less about racial superiority (though historically that held significant appeal) and more about the superior ‘civilizing’ morality of the American nation justifying its preeminence among nations and thereby justifying its vigorous expansion. It held American hearts and minds from the turn of the 19^th Century to the dawn of the 20^th.

Finally, American Exceptionalism has been something of a synthesis between the previous two ideas. It teaches that, because America is the golden nation depicted by the City on a Hill, it uniquely reserves the right to spread its ideals to the oppressed peoples of the world.

Taken together, these ideas start to resemble the attitudes of crusading nations throughout history. That is because in its insistence on the justness of its own ways of thought, the United States has constructed for itself a civil religion. When looking at various case studies throughout recent American history – from the widely maligned arguments for the democratization of Iraq and Afghanistan, to the humanitarian rationales for intervention in Bosnia and Libya, to federal support for democratic regimes and movements across the Post-Soviet arc – the sheer irrational faith American policymakers have had in the rightness of their own ways is literally almost religious. Belief in the infallibility of democracy and zeal for its global dissemination quite simply depicts one of Christianity’s most important influences on American politics: the missionary tradition. Bear in mind that the United States has always been a majority Protestant nation, and thus Protestantism energizes its worldview.

But the correlation extends into the very substance of American ideals. As James Kurth brilliantly depicts in his article, “The Protestant Deformation,” Americans have shaped their political ideals with their religious ones. The 16^th Century Protestant rejections of hierarchy, tradition and preeminent community, replaced with egalitarianism, reason and individualism, define the American creed about as well as any secular understanding. Protestantism, in particular, emphasizes the dignity and equality of all individuals, which are concepts enshrined in the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Oftentimes, these ideas are attributed to Enlightenment ideology and secular rationality. While this is directly the case, it is rarely mentioned that the Enlightenment and the faithful ‘secularism’ it engendered were the intellectual heirs of the Protestant Reformation. Had most early Americans practiced a religion other than Protestantism, it is extremely dubious whether the ideals that took root would ever have been developed, much less embraced, on American soil.

Yet, in the 20^th and 21^st Centuries, some might argue, the ideology has changed so much that it can hardly be called inspired by Protestantism.

However, I believe it still can. No matter how different one species is from its ancient ancestor, the linkage is still there, and in the case of American ideals the temporal space is really not that wide. The high regard for individual rights and privileges ubiquitous throughout American political rhetoric today – so deep-seated, in fact, that those who speak out against specific individual rights of any kind, be they rights of expression, property, political participation, or cultural issues such as abortion or marriage, are often derided as bigots and, in some extreme cases, even as fascists – is held not only due to a natural love of freedom or power, but also to a religious conviction that individuals are autonomous and should be treated by the state as such.

The implication of this is that those of all political stripes in the United States – if they subscribe to American ideals as justification for their ideologies – are living the classic American civil religion of faith in republican ideals, with a rooting in Protestant Christianity. And more often than not, these ideals translate into foreign policy attitudes and decisions.

It is important to note that every American who subscribes to the general American ideology, therefore, takes part in the Protestant tradition regardless of his or her own faith. I suspect the individuals most likely to object to this characterization are rational atheists who consider themselves secular. For my part, as a (poorly) devout Catholic and a proud American, I was originally somewhat disconcerted to discover the Protestant, and, at times, anti-Catholic roots of the political tradition to which I subscribe. But a realization of the fallibility and historical contingency of American political ideology, as well as of its general benevolence and, indeed, its tolerance and accepting attitude towards those of all religious traditions, have allayed my fears and allowed me to practice my political faith in a more nuanced light. I only hope that other thinkers bothered – or overjoyed, for that matter – at America’s fundamentally Christian nature can allow themselves to be sobered by that acceptance.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff and editorial board.

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There has been a slight stir in the headlines in the wake of a South Carolina High School graduation incident. Defying his school district’s newly-instituted policy of replacing the traditional prayer at graduation with a moment of silence, valedictorian Roy Costner IV tore his graduation speech to shreds and recited the Lord’s Prayer, proceeding to detail his passion for his religion and justify his opposition to the school district’s ruling.

The incident, perhaps worthy of immortalization by Hollywood (or at least the cast of Saturday Night Live), is indicative of one of the most salient features of American domestic politics in the Information Age: the so-called “Culture War” which pits the knights of tradition against the crusaders of progress. More practically, this ideological conflict is part of the latest in the all-American debate over national identity. At the moment, the most vocal factions seem to be those on the Far Left and the Far Right: the traditionalists versus the progressives, the religious versus the secular, the Tea Party versus the Occupy Movement, Fox News versus MSNBC, etc. Though it is tempting for individuals who identify with these factions to characterize the state of affairs to be an apocalyptic battle of Right and Wrong over the “Soul of America” (and indeed both movements have heritages deeply critical to the general American heritage) it is likely that historians in the future- perhaps a mere couple of decades from now- will describe them as general movements in a pluralist mosaic of interest groups and identities whose interactions drive the general historical development of the Republic.

Given that these movements are integral to the fractious fabric of contemporary American society, it would be prudent for the student of American foreign policy to understand them, if they would understand the relation of American domestic politics to American foreign policy. The movement which the South Carolina graduation speech case represents, generally, is the populist, conservative, religious, and traditionalist faction of American society which, in the present day, tends to vote Republican, support family values and small government, and support strong-armed (though not necessarily neoconservative) foreign policy measures.

The graduation speech case is a demonstration of the power of this faction in certain geographic areas of the United States. After the requests and complaints of church-and-state groups caused the Pickens County School Board to replace graduation prayers with moments of silence, the deeply religious valedictorian at Liberty High School chose to protest the policy by quite literally bringing prayer back into the ceremony. Many in the crowd cheered as he did so; and the school pursued no disciplinary action against him. Though there has been much secular criticism of the valedictorian’s action, equal numbers of the faithful congratulate and support him. Regardless of the moral or legal implications or consequences of the event, and whatever the moral judgment ought to be upon the student or the school district, the incident clearly shows that religious factions in South Carolina- and indeed, in the United States in general- are strong and numerous enough to wield great domestic political power. Given that elected politicians in the United States must respond to their constituents, this power must exert some effect upon American foreign policy.

In his excellent piece The Tea Party and American Foreign Policy, Walter Russell Mead explores how populist movements have affected foreign policy throughout American history. While he ultimately concludes that systemic constraints and strategic priorities have been more considerably important than domestic demands, Mead explores certain tendencies which populist movements- the Jacksonians, the Populist Party, etc.- have exerted upon foreign policy. Expansionism and protectionism (and isolationism) have been among these, and they have typically accompanied critical structural changes in American politics.

In the modern iteration, it is common to see the present generation of populist conservatives advocate strong, moralistic foreign policy and a general skepticism towards international institutions. Indeed, their great hero, Ronald Reagan, seemed to exemplify this approach to foreign policy, and many followed the neoconservative Bush regime into supporting the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (though, again, those involved more war fever, and it is dangerous to characterize conservatives in general as neoconservative.) The policy-making power of this faction, however, is checked by the existence of that large faction which tends to be more pluralistic, secular, and supportive of international institutions, which often votes along Democrat lines. This faction shall be examined in a later post; for now it will suffice to say that however powerful it is, it exists alongside that faction which is generally supportive of Roy Costner IV in that bipolar balance which has defined American politics, and affected American foreign policy, since the nation was born.

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