4 - A pioneering people

Summary

Back in the USA

There are many reasons to object to the normative direction mapped out in the previous chapter. A world of moderate political peoples in which multiple, overlapping memberships are common, in which powers are assigned to many governments at many levels, and in which transnational arrangements seek to secure human rights, risks being a world of constantly conflicting authorities, of instability and disorder. It might therefore be one in which few regimes can provide effectively for the needs of their members. And insofar as power is transferred to larger and larger federations and international tribunals, it may also be a world that is in practice strikingly undemocratic, despite widespread professions of democratic commitments and formal opportunities to choose allegiances. Insofar as it actually becomes a stage for multiple, relatively fluid political memberships, moreover, such a world might also be condemned as one in which people do not have the sorts of truly deep and abiding senses of community and belonging that may be desirable for the development of many virtues.

In any case, such a world may simply not be practically attainable. It may appear particularly utopian if its societies feature political contests that involve clashes between competing ethically constitutive accounts of the society's common identity and those of the groups that partly comprise it and surround it.