I want to thank Peter for inviting me to participate in this discussion. It has been very useful and clarifying. I will close with a few thoughts. Peter's book addresses what will become the major issue of world politics in the 21st century and I'm grateful for his efforts. He has made a strong descriptive case (as has Alex and...
We have talked a little bit about assimilation. What I believe is important for strengthening our democracy is what I call "patriotic assimilation. I'm going to sketch this out a little. What is “patriotic assimilation”? First, it does not mean giving up all ethnic traditions, customs, cuisine, and birth languages. It has nothing to do with the food one eats,...
One very quick point on Alex's argument (discussed by Peter in the post,"Translating citizenship outside the State") that, in effect, "citizenship will move up the territorial chain." I agree with Alex descriptively that new kinds of post-national citizenship would be established with new political entities, norms, coercive authority and the like. My problem is normative. It has not been explained...
A quick point to Cristina. Even strong supporters of the European Union recognize that the institution has a "democracy deficit." For decades most of the power and authority of the EU has been exercised within the European Commission (EC), the bureaucracy in Brussels. Legislation is initiated by the EC, not the Parliament or the Council of Ministers which can...
Just returned from Peter's talk at the Woman's National Democratic Club. Peter gave a fine talk and it was a very enjoyable event. The questions were submitted in writing and my question wasn't asked, so I will ask it now. Is it possible to have democratic self-government without a nation-state or some other entity like a city-state, that has restrictions...
[John Fonte is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for American Common Culture at the Hudson Institute.] Thanks to Peter for inviting me to participate. I am off to see Peter speak here in Washington at the Woman's National Democratic Club in about thirty minutes and will comment more when I come back. But first let me put forward a...
