Modern Age - Summer 2016 - 44

MODERN AGE

SUMMER 2016

future. This is not rational thinking, or critical thinking, or historical thinking; it is ideological thinking-or no thinking at all.
Exclusion on nearly any ground is unfair, unequal, and discriminatory in the case of individuals, as well as groups. In the context
of immigration, the liberal argument from rights and fairness
emphasizes the ideological concern for individual immigrants,
while overlooking the communitarian interest of the native
population. But reasons drawn from considerations regarding
the personal welfare of would-be immigrants and individual fairness are not the sole moral considerations at stake. The problem
in its individual dimension is complicated by the valid moral
claims of nations and communities to their own well-being and
comfort, to their self-identity, their coherence, and their right to
self-determination, and even self-preservation. The argument for
exclusion speaks to what Michael Walzer calls the maintenance
of "communities of character" built on consensus rather than on
some universal ideal of moral perfection.
America is "the permanently unfinished country," as Nathan Glazer
once said. About twenty years ago, a Chinese-Hawaiian student,
encouraged by a reporter from the Wall Street Journal, confided
to him that she would grade America "incomplete." This sort of
thinking, very prevalent in the United States today, reminds me
of Nietzsche's remark that the modern world is obsessed with
becoming, while ignoring being. It was Toynbee who observed,
"The same elements that build up an institution eventually lead
to its downfall." And Richard Lamm, a former governor of Colorado, argued thirty years ago that "immigration reform is not the
death of the American Dream. . . . It is the necessary precondition
for the preservation of the dream."
America is not a nation in the sense that all other nations are
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Modern Age - Summer 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Modern Age - Summer 2016

Contents
Modern Age - Summer 2016 - Cover1
Modern Age - Summer 2016 - Cover2
Modern Age - Summer 2016 - Contents
Modern Age - Summer 2016 - 2
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