(no subject)
Tony Judt, "Edge People," The New York Review of Books, March 25.
"We are entering, I suspect, upon a time of troubles. It is not just the terrorists, the bankers, and the climate that are going to wreak havoc with our sense of security and stability. Globalization itself- the "flat" earth of so many irenic fantasies- will be a source of fear and uncertainty to billions of people who will turn to their leaders for protection. "Identities" will grow mean and tight, as the indigent nd the uprooted beat upon the ever-rising walls of gated communities from Delhi to Dallas. Being "Danish" or "Italian" "American" or "European" won't just be an identity; it will be a rebuff and a reproof to those whom it excludes. The state, far from disappearing, may be about to come into its own; the privileges of citizenship, the protections of card-holding residency rights, will be wielded as political trumps. Intolerant demagogues in established democracies will demand "tests"- of knowledge, of language, of attitude- to determine whether desperate newcomers are deserving of British or Dutch or French "identity". They are already doing so. In this brave new century, we shall miss the tolerant, the marginals; the edge people. My people."
"We are entering, I suspect, upon a time of troubles. It is not just the terrorists, the bankers, and the climate that are going to wreak havoc with our sense of security and stability. Globalization itself- the "flat" earth of so many irenic fantasies- will be a source of fear and uncertainty to billions of people who will turn to their leaders for protection. "Identities" will grow mean and tight, as the indigent nd the uprooted beat upon the ever-rising walls of gated communities from Delhi to Dallas. Being "Danish" or "Italian" "American" or "European" won't just be an identity; it will be a rebuff and a reproof to those whom it excludes. The state, far from disappearing, may be about to come into its own; the privileges of citizenship, the protections of card-holding residency rights, will be wielded as political trumps. Intolerant demagogues in established democracies will demand "tests"- of knowledge, of language, of attitude- to determine whether desperate newcomers are deserving of British or Dutch or French "identity". They are already doing so. In this brave new century, we shall miss the tolerant, the marginals; the edge people. My people."