Remember the old (but probably apocryphal) Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times.
The middle years of the second decade of the 21st century are turning out to be very interesting indeed.
Donald Trump is leading in Iowa and has now hit a stratospheric 40 percent in New Hampshire against more than a dozen opponents. In the U.K., left-wing Jeremy Corbyn defied every voice of conventional wisdom by decisively wresting control of the Labour Party from the centrist Blairites who've run things since the mid-1990s. Meanwhile, anti-immigrant, anti-EU parties are surging across Europe, from Sweden and Denmark to France and Hungary.
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Why is it happening? At the broadest level, it's an expression of discontent with technocratic pragmatism combined with a visceral sense, throughout the Western world, that democratic institutions are failing to represent the opinions and interests of the people.
At a more granular level, the issue that has inspired the greatest outpouring of discontent in the U.S. and several European countries is immigration. For many members of the elite classes in these countries, this expression of ethnic-linguistic solidarity and exclusivity has been mortifying, an embarrassment, a manifestation of atavistic prejudice, racism, and incipient fascism.
That reaction may be a big part of the problem.
Events of the past few weeks in Europe have been illustrative — and ominous.
As Adam Garfinkle reports in a must-read essay for The American Interest, Germany's political establishment has taken considerable pride in spearheading Europe's response to the refugee crisis. In order to expiate the nation's historical sins and demonstrate its embrace of post-national multiculturalism, these elites want to show the world that Germany is willing to undertake the noble sacrifice of taking in hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria and other countries across the Middle East and North Africa. It also wants to show that, thanks to its leadership (or rather, its arm-twisting), other members of the European Union are prepared to do the same.
Except that a number of those nations have been reluctant to go along from the beginning, and now even Germany itself has had to close its borders to slow the unending flood of refugees streaming into the country. Does this mean that the government of Angela Merkel is now guilty of atavistic prejudice, racism, and incipient fascism, too?
On the contrary, it means that the German chancellor has finally been forced to face reality.
Garfinkle is right to diagnose the problem as Kantian moralism run amuck. Germany's response to the refugee crisis has been Kantian in at least two respects: It sees morality as a matter of universal humanitarianism (one placeless and purely rational being acting to benefit another placeless and purely rational being); and it focuses entirely on good intentions while dismissing a concern with consequences as an undignified expression of selfishness.
Both of these assumptions, expressions of what Garfinkle calls a "derangement of moral reasoning," are false and dangerous.
Morality in some forms inclines toward universalism, but politics has always been and shows every sign of remaining a matter of one specific, bounded, particular community deciding how to constitute, define, perpetuate, and govern itself. Each nation within the EU has a distinct language, culture, history, balance of ethnic and religious differences, default level of social trust, assumption about rates of taxing and spending, track record of economic outcomes, and expectation for government benefits. Throwing thousands — let alone hundreds of thousands — of refugees with very different linguistic, cultural, ethnic, religious, educational, and economic backgrounds and needs into the mix is almost certain to prove enormously destabilizing.
The dark paradox of political life is that the more a nation's leaders seek to dissolve political attachments in favor of a universal concern for "humanity," the more likely it is that they will provoke a nationalist backlash.
And that brings us to the consequences.
Even before the massive influx of refugees this summer, right-wing anti-immigrant parties were riding high in several European countries. Merkel's government seems to think Germany and Europe should do the right thing without consideration for whether those parties are likely to benefit from admitting hundreds of thousands of refugees. But that's simply not a serious response. Politics doesn't reward purity of motives. Consequences, above all else, are what count. And as Garfinkle points out, the consequences in this case are likely to be "the biggest boon for right-wing xenophobes since the 1930s."
Yes, the suffering of the refugees is heart-wrenching. It's understandable and even admirable that many Europeans, especially those currently in positions of power, long to help. But that's not good enough. Doing the right thing in political life requires reflecting on the likely results of one's actions and using those considerations to temper the urge to fulfill collective categorical imperatives.
Cursed are the do-gooders, for they will make a mess of things.
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