Who is thy neighbor?

Ralph Peters writing in the Weekly Standard believes we are witnessing a widespread opposition to political and cultural globalization. Faiths and identities will not die. On the contrary: "even as they change their names, the old gods live, and our attempts to export Western ideas and behaviors are destined to end in similar mutations."

Rather than being the rule, America is the anomaly.

Still, the success of the United States in breaking down ancient loyalties is remarkable--and anomalous ... not even Rome came remotely so close to forging a genuinely new, inclusive identity. Our peculiar success blinds us to failures abroad. Not only have other states and cultures failed to integrate Einwanderer or to agree upon composite identities, they do not desire to do so. The issue of who and what a Frenchman or German is appeared to idealists to have been resolved a century ago. It wasn't. Now, newly forged (in both senses of the word) identities in the developing world are dissolving in fits of rage.