Peter: The truly peculiar thing is, that a supra-national megastate like the EU should be coming into existence in this present age, one of whose outstanding characteristics is the increasing unwillingness of different ethnies to share nations with each other.

Vicious ethnic strife is the keynote of our age, with separation apparently the only lasting solution. Yugoslavia is the star exhibit, of course; but the French and Flemish in Belgium seem to be negotiating a divorce, the Luo and Kikuyu in Kenya are at each other’s throats, the Bolivians of the plains (mostly European-ancestry) want to secede from the mountain Bolivians (mostly Amerindian), Iraq is settling down now that Sunnis and Shias have ethnically cleansed each other’s neighborhoods, and Foreign Affairs is running articles on ethnonationalism. All we’re waiting for now is for New Aztlan (formerly “California”) to launch its own secession bid.

With multiculturalism cracking up everywhere, why do Italians, Irish, Portuguese and Poles wnat to submit their public affairs to a common bureaucracy? I don’t get it.