Refugees are not the problem. Nations are.
Nations can be decent. But their general demeanor is not encouraging. And I shall say here and now that Reinhold Niebuhr was correct in saying that aggregate actions are more harmful than cumulative actions which are individual in nature. Today large nations and many smaller ones are too evil to succeed. Which means that we need now more than ever to consider whether the category nation is one we wish to continue to affirm.
I am serious. We call the shots. Even if you believe in a deity, there is abundant evidence that such good or evil as is done on the planet is the province of human beings. Our freedom is awesome, scary and often denied. The burden of freedom is noted by Tacitus and Dostoevsky. It is a lot to carry around. But the structure of reality itself is based on a measure of freedom. Probability has limits. Certainty is ambient.
Nations must own their fallibility and patriotism must be seen as at least borderline idolatry. Proof of the incapacity of nations to generate transcendence is found in the growing disaffection of veterans for whom killing people who are more and more their mirror image helps produce enduring trauma.
The fact is we do not know how much freedom can bear. But we do know that the alternative, authoritarian governance, does not work. The best bet is to raise up the concept of local democracies, a sort of global network of smaller regions embracing still smaller communities.
