Replies

No problem in understanding that given the context & overall thrust of your remarks. Although the difference between konstitutibni and konstitutivni sure flew right by me! :) Here's an excerpt from a D'nesh D'Souza article:

America has found a solution to the problem of religious and ethnic conflict that continues to divide and terrorize much of the world. Visitors to places like New York are amazed to see the way in which Serbs and Croatians, Sikhs and Hindus, Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants, Jews and Palestinians, all seem to work and live together in harmony. How is this possible when these same groups are spearing each other and burning each other's homes in so many places in the world? The American answer is twofold. First, separate the spheres of religion and government so that no religion is given official preference but all are free to practice their faith as they wish. Second, do not extend rights to racial or ethnic groups but only to individuals; in this way, all are equal in the eyes of the law, opportunity is open to anyone who can take advantage of it, and everybody who embraces the American way of life can "become American."

Don't you think that is a better solution than carving out ethnic cantonments & reservations?

Infinitely better. One of the great glories of the West was the development of the nation-state that comprised various ethnic/language groups, and of course, it reached its highest point in the US, which formalized the individual (rather than the ethnic group, clan, etc.) as the base unit of society.

The odd thing is that I think you can trace much of what is happening now, outside of areas where Islam is attempting to extend itself (which is an entirely different problem), to 19th century Romantic nationalism, when intellectuals went about discovering and cultivating quaint little ethnic or linguistic groups.

When it was limited to the area of folk songs and ethnic dress, it was perfectly harmless and even a positive thing. But it became political very rapidly, and even places like Spain - where Basques had never regarded themselves as, nationally, anything but Spaniards - suddenly began to discover old grievances and determine that they were somehow different, special, and deserved collective treatment as an offended group.

And then came Marxism, another late-Romantic intellectual movement which began, in some cases, by stoking the fires of 19th century ethnic indignation, and ended, paradoxically, by subjecting all groups to an almost unimaginable uniformity of misery.

It's an enormously complicated situation. Personally, I think the US has got to really put forward the model of the secular, non-ethnic state. (Notwithstanding the fact that we are increasingly losing the non-ethnic state with our forays into affirmative action....)

I am including Livius (I hope it's okay) because he/she decied to jump in and join us.

You know the answer ro your question, in the spirit in which it was presented. People of different ethnic background and religious persuasions get along much better because, as you said, it is all about individuals not groups.

America has no autonomous provinces for that same reason. Instead, those who cannot be asked to assimilate -- America's Natives -- are simply placed on reservations! I like that! I think the Serbs should do the same with Hungarians and Bosniacs and Albanians! On reservations! American style!. But how did Amereica come to be such a wonderful place (and it is -- now)? After many of it Natives have been forcefully displaced or even ethnically cleansed, my friends. Sure, everything is hunky dory here after 250 years of cleaning house, bloody civil war and an "equal but separate" society of racial nature way into the 20th century. Bravo! I think there is a kind of romanticism, belated or not, flourishing here as well. We are all in awe with the results, but have forgotten what it took to get to this point.

Now imagine what this place would have looked like if every time someone tried to do something someone slapped sanctions on us here? In other words, if every time we tried to do something (and it wasn't always noble either), someone came here to intervene on the world's behalf.

What? You have race riots? Obviously you can't handle race issues! Let's send UN troops to San Francisco and Chicago and appoint a governer from France to administer the areas under 'UN protection.'

After all, Serbia is the only former Yugoslav republic that has some 23 odd nationalities living there. Obviously, they must have some sense of individual rights! No one is revenging Serb death in Kosovo by mugging Albanians in the streets of Belgrade, or God forbid, for using their language as the Albanians are doing to Serbs in Kosovo.

Serbia is closer to Israel in that sense than to the US. It's history. It's so intervowen in the culture that you cannot separate one from the other. After 80 years of communism, the Russians never stopped calling Sunday "Resurrection."

Serbs and Croatians don't fight in America, but don't hang out with each other either. The story changes when one group forces another group from their homes.

The Balkan nations cannot be parceld out every so many decades because one super power or another is unhappy with the arrangement. It only perpetuates the unsettled problem. They too need their time to make everything hunky dory. But no one will leave them alone. It's time to let them arrange their house without any help.