Nationalism vs. Cosmopolitanism

Charles Simic, with pointed observations on Serbian nationalism in the late 1980s, that are more than relevant to today's pro-torture GOP:

Of course, I was naive. I didn't realize the immense prestige that inhumanity and brutality have among nationalists. I also didn't grasp to what degree they are impervious to reason. To point out the inevitable consequences of their actions didn't make the slightest impression on them, since they refused to believe in cause and effect.

The infuriating aspect of every nationalism is that it doesn't understand that it is a mirror image of some other nationalism, and that most of its pronouncements have been heard in other places and at other times. Smug in their own ethnocentricity, indifferent to the cultural, religious, and political concerns of their neighbors, all they [need is] a leader to lead them into disaster.

.Along the same lines of reasoning, there's a helpfully reductionist article in the current World Policy Journal that argues that the red-state/blue-state divide is actually a nationalist/cosmopolitanist divide, and in fact is a division that cleaves the heart of every modern polity.