As always I’m giddy from the diverse wave of impassioned responses that amass from such heavily touted events like Barack Obama’s speech in Berlin. In particular this age old concept of world citizenry has spawned a good deal of both gushing inspiration and serious parade raining. James Poulos offered this response to Obama coming to Berlin as “a fellow citizen of the world”,
In addition to being meaningless – the world is not a a polity, so citizenship in it is impossible- this is exactly the sort of redundantly empty rhetoric that does nothing to energize his base, nothing to allay the concerns of Middle America about his meta-attitude, and supplies the frantic and the furious on the right with a fresh tranch of attacks.”
then after an onslaught of comments, he contemptuously clarified with this
I consider the ‘citizen of the world’ trope flawed from the start, a dangerously mixed metaphor about the human yearning for solidarity with strangers which politics can never solve among free peoples.
Our yearning for pan-human solidarity is an absurdity, the absurdity of the human condition, and the most utopian of all utopian ideas is the idea of a Brotherhood of Man: because the human race is not a family, just like it isn’t one big polity. We are stuck with differentiation; there is no metaphor that allows us to redefine humanity as a closer relationship than it is. That doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. Indeed, theonly trope that allows us to develop closer amicable relationships with strangers is the trope of friendship, and the only way to close the relationship with a stranger is to make friends. Not to ‘make citizens’; not to ‘make brothers’. This is crazy European talk — the discredited language of the bloody French and German experiments in various kinds of border-busting solidarity.”
This strikes me as a comically over-analytical impression, wrought with assumptions, objective detachment and unprovoked impudence. I can’t wait to hear his review of the Declaration of Independence. In this referenced snippet of the speech, Obama is not literally alluding to the existance or calling for the formation of a global polity (ala the EU or The Star Trek Federation), but simply introducing his personal sense of identity while expressing the commonality he has with the people of this foreign country. He is a citizen of Chicago, then Illinois, then the United States of America, then the World, its an idiom used by many, from George H.W. Bush to Thomas Paine.
I find it ironic that Poulos takes such umbrage over the possibility of a global identity and proposes in its stead a “trope of friendship” as a compromise. To identify as a citizen means that you have a shared and vested interest in the well being of those you have commonality with. It’s the idea behind welfare programs, taxation, the military, NATO, and the United Nations. Friendship on the other hand is nuanced and much harder to attain, calling for a coalition of global friends sounds much more naive.
Further on in the speech Obama talks about the interconnectedness of world events, saying
The terrorists of September 11th plotted in Hamburg and trained in Kandahar and Karachi before killing thousands from all over the globe on American soil.
As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice caps in the Arctic, shrinking coastlines in the Atlantic, and bringing drought to farms from Kansas to Kenya.
Poorly secured nuclear material in the former Soviet Union, or secrets from a scientist in Pakistan could help build a bomb that detonates in Paris. The poppies in Afghanistan become the heroin in Berlin. The poverty and violence in Somalia breeds the terror of tomorrow. The genocide in Darfur shames the conscience of us all.”
As the world becomes smaller and more intertwined being a citizen of the world ceases to be a quaint and meaningless sentiment and becomes natural and urgent. It doesn’t take much imagination to see the dangers of an insular world view.
The “yearning for pan-human solidarity” is no more absurd than the desire of freedom, democracy, or equality. Differentiation exists in abundance in this country and yet with its impurities and triumphs a strong sense of citizenship still emerges, so what is world citizenry but an expansion of that.
The pessimist in me can relate to a frustration with Obama’s over-arching lofty rhetoric but this forced diagnosis of his merit based on such a widely held sentiment does nothing for the seriousness of your case.
L.Arnell
