Carnifex

your resulting rise in blood pressure, apoplexy, exploding head or general icky feelings. (I am indebted to my former law partner, Matt Pethybridge, for his contributions to this afterword. Matt joins me in this dissent.)

'Do I hate cosmopolitans?' you ask. Why, no, of course I don't hate them. That would be like hating sex . . . or drugs. Cosmopolitanism is like sex and drugs, you know; it just makes you feel all gooey and great inside. It's like sex and drugs in another way, too. I'll cover that later.

Okay, I'll be serious now.

Imagine, just for now and just purposes of illustration, some solid geometric figure; a cube will do. One side of the cube is labeled 'progressivism.' Another might be 'pacifism.' Still another might be 'multiculturalism.' Then there's 'humanitarianism' and 'environmentalism' and 'cosmopolitanism.' What's inside the cube, if it is a cube, I can't tell you, but surely it's something that holds those six (or probably more) together. After all, scratch a cosmopolitan; wound a multiculturalist. Kick a progressive and set an environmentalist to screaming.

Some might say that what's inside the cube is communism. I'm not so sure it's that sophisticated. Really, I suspect there's not a lot more holding all those –isms together than a mix of arrogance, envy, hate, and rage. Oh, and greed. Greed's often very important, too. Still, I don't know what's inside. The cube—if, again, it is a cube—is not that opaque.

I know only what's on the outside. One of those things is cosmopolitanism. And yes, that's what I'm going to talk about right now.

There are a number of different kinds of cosmopolitanism, most of which are not really all that cosmopolitan. We have the religious versions, notably the Islamic and Christian ones. There's also a communist cosmopolitanism. And then there's what one might call 'true cosmopolitanism,' the kind put forth by Immanuel Kant and, more recently, Martha Nussbaum. For the most part, I'm going to talk about 'true cosmopolitanism,' hereinafter, just plain 'cosmopolitanism.' To do that, though, we need to at least glance over the others.

'All wars are civil wars because all men are brothers.'

—Francois Fenelon, Archbishop of Cambrai[1]

Cosmopolitan religions typically allow anyone to join in; they are open to anyone who will accept their tenets, laws and philosophies. That's as far as it goes, though. If one has not joined in the circle of the given religion, and that religion means anything to its adherents, one is outside it. I don't think I'm doing any violence to cosmopolitan thought by saying that religious cosmopolitanism is different, that drawing the kind of circle cosmopolitan religions do—us and them, in and out—is not really cosmopolitanism.

Communist cosmopolitanism, on the other hand, starts with the premise of ins and outs. It may cut across nations and ethnicities, but communist cosmopolitanism cannot avoid the distinction of class. It exists because of the distinction of class. Class is a bright line circle drawn around some men, and excluding others.[2]

Cosmopolitanism, on the other hand, permits no circles. It would allow no 'us and them.' It insists, to take Fenelon's words, that 'all men are brothers.' Of course, if all men are brothers then we are all part of the Family of Man.[3] To cosmopolitanism, this is so, the merest truth. Any distinctions drawn, any circle that doesn't include the entire human race, is arbitrary and illegitimate. Keep that—'arbitrariness'—in mind for later.

For now, let's look into families, shall we?

'No matter how much I care about progressive politics, at the end of the day, it's my family and their well-being that's going to come first.'

—Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, Kos

Kos here doesn't mean the 'Family of Man.' He means his own. One doesn't usually get that much honesty from anyone, let alone from the Left. (Applause—sincere applause—to Kos.) But do they act that way? Do they act as if their families came first? Of course they do, even though they usually hide behind any number of high sounding phrases: 'Family of Man,' 'Human Rights' . . . 'Progressivism.'

When Kofi Annan abetted his son, Kojo's, tax fraud, that was putting his family and their well-being first. It was the same with the post-tax fraud cover up. It's there, too, in Benan Sevan's use of his aunt as a notional posthumous money launderer for his little profits from the 'Oil for Food' scam. It's written in the lines of every Darien, Connecticut mansion or Manhattan penthouse owned or rented by the head of some humanitarian non-governmental organization.[4] It is implicit in the very generous educational benefits the fund-starved United Nations grants to the children of its bureaucrats for the sacrifice, if that's quite the word, they undergo of earning, if that's quite the word, fifty or one hundred times more than most of them could hope to in their own lands. It is George Soros raiding the Bank of England and doing insider trading with the French Societe Generale for his own personal benefit. It is a highway in Africa which is never built to standard and washes away with the first hard rain because the money for material went to line someone's nephew's pockets.

If there is a Third World politician who does not believe blood is thicker than water, he or she has probably been overthrown in a coup. It is the rule of Iraq, the rule of Iran.[5] It is China.[6] It is Latin America and Africa. It is, in ever growing frequency, the rule in Europe and the United States, too. Whether Third World or World Bank, that rule is 'mine, first.'

It's also one of the two default states of mankind. The other is 'me first.' This latter occurs, for example, when environmentalist Cape Cod liberals invoke 'Not In My Back Yard' to prevent the construction of energy saving windmills.

We are, each of us, descended from people who decided, generation upon generation, that their gene pool came first. The sociologists' term for it is 'amoral familism.' Note that that's 'amoral,' not necessarily 'immoral.' It's difficult to call something 'immoral' that's in our very genes.

Nor is this amoral familism by any means arbitrary. The connection to family is real. It is natural. It is, moreover, reinforced by close and intimate personal knowledge. It is also within the very natural human limit of what any person can really know or personally care about.

On the other hand, it's even more difficult to call the Annans' tax fraud and coverup moral behavior. Still less so Soros' raid on the Bank of England, mandatory kickbacks and bribes to line the pockets of dictators' and bureaucrats' nephews, and—not least—the fraudulent scamming of little Maritza's twenty-seven cents. This is so, even though it may be in the genes.

* * *

Camouflage is also in the genes, for some species of predators. The predator, Man, being rather white or black or brown or yellow or red and, in any case, generally shiny and of regular shape, has to create his own. Some human predators, descended no less than we from Og, the caveman, have to disguise themselves no less than did Og, if they, the wives and the kiddies are going to eat (and live in that Darien mansion or Manhattan penthouse).

For many of these, Cosmopolitanism is a cloak, the cloak behind which they can hide tax frauds and currency raids, insider trading and charity scams, graft and corruption and nepotism.

This doesn't mean that every cosmopolitan is a lying, scheming, greedy, hypocritical, dishonest predator. No doubt many are sincere, honest, selfless and, at a personal level, generally admirable in the conduct of their own lives. They sincerely believe that any distinction between peoples is arbitrary and therefore illegitimate. It may even be true, though it is no doubt rare, that they give no preference to their own little families over the Family of Man.

'By conceding that a morally arbitrary boundary such as the boundary of the nation has a deep and formative role in our deliberations, we seem to be depriving ourselves of any principled way of arguing to citizens that they should in fact join hands across these other barriers.'

—Martha Nussbaum[7]

Arbitrariness appears to be one of the three core principles of cosmopolitanism; the others being, let us say, the complementary 'Wouldn't it be nice?' and 'Isn't it so awful?' When those for whom cosmopolitanism is more than camouflage ask those questions, in one form or another, they do have a point: it (life, the universe and everything) can be pretty awful and perhaps a more cosmopolitan world might be nice. Dull? Yes, probably, but that's not the worst imaginable world, is it?[8]

To concede those things, however, is not to concede much, for 'Isn't it so awful?' does not mean it can't be or won't become worse, anymore that 'Wouldn't it be nice?' proves that it will or even can be better.

Those we will take up later. For now, let's look into the concept of arbitrariness.

It really is wrong, you know, to hate people on sight merely because they look a little different. It is as wrong to hate people just for being born on one side of a border rather than another. It doesn't follow from those, however, that it is morally obligatory to love them on sight merely because they look a little bit the same or were born on the same side of the border as you. One reason why it isn't morally obligatory to love all of mankind for looking a little bit the same is that it isn't really possible to do so. Love, if it's to mean anything, is a fairly intense emotion and there's only so much of it any