It’s the age old dilemma of going with your instincts which tell you to side with the familiar, the known and the safe, or going against that grain and testing the uncharted waters of what your intellect is telling you regarding a new issue. Many don’t trust their own intellect or don’t understand, or want to understand, the arguments for the new issue, in this case, change to cosmopolianism. They could care less if the job market is made more efficient by globalization, they only care if they have a job and that it pays them a good wage. They are very comfortable and perhaps even find a certain security in their anti-cosmopolitian world. Their views are subtly reinforced in all kinds of seemingly inocuous ways from sports team affiliations to patriotism. And they’ll point to all kinds examples how the people they are being asked to accept as equal fellow citizens by cosmopolitianism, don’t reciprocate with equal acceptance, which will be used as further justification for rejecting the notion. Having been blessed with being born in this country, many will feel that this blessing allows them the added right of feeling used by anyone who wants to also partake in our bounty, when they are actually responsible for doing very little to create that bounty even though they were born here. It also seems like folks invariablely choose short term benefits over short term sacrifice for long term benefits. Maybe that’s because they feel the short term is more gauranteed while the long-term might not be, who knows? Ironically, big business, normally considered the bastion of conservatism and republicanism, is probably doing more to advance cosmopolitianism than just about anyone except maybe education, even if some may argue that big business does it for the wrong reasons.

G