most as bad as American schools, and the Church? Well, as Inexplained to the Catholic rightist, the worst elements of Protestantismnnow appear to be controlling the Catholic Church,nat least in the United States, and I predicted that the successornAnticommunism was the principle that gavenlegitimacy to the postwar regimes of thenWest. The coming age is going to require newnprinciples of legitimacy and new measures ofnnational identity and national purpose.nto John Paul II will take the irony out of the expression, “morenCatholic than the Pope.”nE Finito il Dopoguerm (“It’s over, the Postwar”) took upnthe whole of an April cover of // Sabato (a prominent Catholicnweekly from Milan). Anticommunism was more than the gluenholding together social democrats (in the U.S. this includes socalled’liberalsnand neoconservatives) with classical liberals andnconservatives. Anticommunism was the principle that gavenlegitimacy to the postwar regimes of the West. The comingnage is going to require new principles of legitimacy and newnmeasures of national identity and national purpose. If we cannjudge from what is going on in Italy, France, Cermany, andnAustria, it will not be either democracy or capitalism that willnsupply the glue, either in the East or the West.nOne perennial source of political unity is conflict, the neednto put up a united front against a common enemy. Herein laynthe strength of anticommunism as a bond within and amongnWestern nations. In some European countries the commonnenemy appears to be the immigrants, particularly those who arrivenfrom the most exotic cultures. As Christians we mustndeplore any manifestation of unreasoning hostility toward outsiders,nbut as members of a nation we may be prepared to toleratena little xenophobia if the only alternative is some sort ofncosmopolitan helplessness. As civilized men and women wenturn up our noses at the lower orders who engage in Jap-bashingnor Paki-bashing, and we are right to hold ourselves to thenhighest standards. However, Western societies, as we all know,nare far from aristocratic. America, in particular, is a peasantnculture that can hardly be expected to display patrician virtues.nLower-class xenophobia is the price we pay for patriotism. Itncannot be helped. We boast much of the toleration that nownexists between Catholics and Protestants, but is this the fruit ofna deepening faith that is willing to overlook minor differencesnamong Christians, or rather a fungus growing on the decayingnstump of Christendom? When simple people believe in something,nthey are willing to die and to kill for what they believe,nand no one who regards patriotism as a virtue can afford tonshed crocodile tears over the increased level of xenophobicn”incidents.” If responsible statesmen can take the lead innsolving the problems of immigration, it will be possible tonavoid the violent solutions that will inevitably be imposed byndemagogues. Otherwise we may soon come to feel nostalgicnfor the amiable and moderate Jean-Marie Le Pen or the cosmetologizednklansman, David Duke.nThe French (like the Germans and the. Italians) are begin­n16/CHRONICLESnnnning to ask themselves several important questions: Who isnand who is not a Frenchman? Who can become one andnhow? The answers to these questions will be embedded, ultimately,nin immigration and nationalization codes. The morengenerous we are in admitting strangers into our midst, thenmore rigorous we must be in defining the moral and culturalncharacteristics of citizenship. The French and, to a still greaternextent, the Byzantines were generous in admitting strangers tonresidence and citizenship, but both.held up strenuous requirementsnfor assimilation. France and the Byzantine Empirenboth defined themselves more by culture than by race, and sonlong as a man absorbed the language, practiced the religion,nand fought for the nation he might be considered a citizen.n’ In America as in France, neither church nor army nornschools can unite our divided nation, and here we are notneven sure that we have English as a common bond. Most ancientncity-states were jealous of their citizenship rights, butneven so they defined full citizenship largely in terms of sharedneducational experience. Athenian boys, starting in the latenfourth century, had to go through a two-year period of militaryntraining and service in preparation for their lives as citizens, butnit was in Sparta where such a system was taken to extremenlengths. The Spartan agoge was a rigorous survivalist coursenthat was among the wonders of the ancient world. They occasionallynadmitted the sons of distinguished foreigners, andnthose who survived could become Spartan citizens.nIf the Spartans went overboard in the direction of severity,nwe have gone in the opposite direction with softness. If oursnmust be, as we are always told by. our betters, a multiracialnand multiethnic society, then we have no choice but to imposena common culture. But what sort of a culture should this be?nAm I recommending that we set up a national curriculum,nbased on “Western values” and democratic principles? This isnthe suggestion of Bill Bennett, Diane Ravitch, and CheckernFinn, who think that a few dozen good books combined withnthe celebration of Mr. King’s birthday can be made to inculcatenthe virtues of a new world order. The content of their curriculanis never more than a half-inch deep, because their pointnis not to introduce our young barbarians to civilization but tonindoctrinate them into universal principles. Oh, they say they ,nwill include Macbeth and Huck Finn along with Mayan epicsnand African work songs, but all of their proposals amount to littlenmore than liberalized versions of leftist multiculturalism.nTo describe this curriculum as neofascist, as I have done innthe past, is accurate only up to a point, since the architect ofnMussolini’s education reforms was the idealist philosophernGiovanni Gentile, and our own reformers could scarcely readnone of his books, much less write them.nThe only curriculum that will do us any good is a curriculumnthat will turn Mexicans and Japanese into Anglo-Americans.nSetting aside the importance of the classical curriculum—whichnis essential for our leadership class—everynpotential citizen, domestic or imported, ought to be given anthorough course, year after year, of English history and Englishnliterature as preparation for the comparatively short periodnof time in which we have played a part in the civilization ofnEnglish-speakers. It is only our common Englishness—in myncase, mostly assumed rather than innate—that can tie us together,nbut if the multiculturalists of left and right have theirnway, there will be nothing but the power and wealth of thenstate that binds us together in the iron chains of servitude.n<5>n