Modern Age - Fall 2014 - 34

MODERN AGE

genocide-alongside material developments
that menaced the physical well-being of
the planet. While not identical in nature,
ideational and material threats posed an
equivalent danger. Only by reorienting our-
selves ideationally and materially would we
be able to respond properly to global chal-
lenges. Ideationally we must tear down the
walls that divide political communities, and
materially we must work with one another to
overcome those things that undermine our
common physical well-being. To the delight
of partisans of universal political homogene-
ity, Obama argued that human beings had
no other choice but to participate together in
this two-pronged plan of attack:
Partnership and cooperation among
nations is not a choice; it is the one
way, the only way, to protect our com-
mon security and advance our common
humanity. That is why the greatest dan-
ger of all is to allow new walls to divide
us from one another. The walls between
old allies on either side of the Atlantic
cannot stand. The walls between the
countries with the most and those with
the least cannot stand. The walls between
races and tribes; natives and immigrants;
Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot
stand. These now are the walls we must
tear down.3

Pragmatic progressives had for over a
century argued that the "walls" of moral
and philosophic certitude that produced
violence were of our own political and cul-
tural making. But in Obama, proponents of
this philosophy had a candidate not simply
angling to become president of the United
States or leader of the free world but also
bent on reshaping the American regime and
American people on multicultural premises.
Moreover, Obama claimed that the shift
34

FALL 2014

to a more materialist orientation in world
affairs, by placing material and ideational
threats side-by-side, would reinforce the idea
of a shared human political destiny. As the
walls between countries, races, tribes, and
religions on one hand and the environmental
degradation on the other hand were merely
political artifices, they could likewise be
remedied by a world that stood as one. Thus,
a speech that began with an American presi-
dential candidate announcing that he was a
citizen of the world ended with his announc-
ing to the people of Berlin that they had no
choice but to become a people of the world.
In a repeat performance five years later
at Germany's Brandenburg Gate, President
Obama addressed Germans as nationals at
the beginning of his speech, only to address
them thereafter as global citizens. Noting the
gate that has "stood tall as the world around
it convulsed-through the rise and fall of
empires; through revolutions and republics;
art and music and science that reflected the
height of human endeavor, but also war and
carnage that exposed the depths of man's
cruelty to man," Obama promised a better
future to the peoples of the world as long as
all "cared more about things than just our
own self-comfort, about our own city, about
our own country." In other words, only when
men become dual citizens of their native
country and the global city of man can they
pursue "peace with justice."
And what, according to President Obama,
were the demands the global city made of
its citizens in exchange for allowing them to
share in a common destiny? Merely that they
practice tolerance on all matters of moral
indeterminacy (faith, human sexuality,
and cultural preferences), "extend a hand"4
in granting others the same moral fate (in
promoting self-determination), and work
immediately to address all matters of mate-
rial determinacy (stopping climate change,
Modern Age - Fall 2014

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