In this week's elections, the war in Iraq and immigration stood out as two of the most important issues. Apparent in the dialogue pertaining to these concerns is a conspicuous hypocrisy in how we view international, as opposed to domestic, matters.
Specifically, standards of social fairness that apply domestically are all but absent in the official discourse on international policies. This should be alarming for anyone concerned with human well-being.
The immigration debate focused on whether the presence of illegal immigrants in the United States has a net positive or negative effect for Americans and the U.S. economy.
Likewise, the majority of the concerns voiced on Iraq deal solely with the welfare of the American soldiers sent there. In these and other political debates, a pattern of one-sidedness is evident, and it becomes clear the well-being of foreigners is of secondary concern to the U.S. populace.
This is no surprise, but the implied assumption is that Americans are intrinsically of higher worth and consideration than foreigners. Part of this attitude, reflecting a ""location bias,"" is a natural consequence of living among a group of people with whom we learn to identify.
However, it is important to understand the role social conditioning has in our culture. Teaching patriotism in public schools, for example, instills a strong sense of national identity from a very young age, and children quickly learn their country is incontestably the best.
This implies we are more deserving of basic rights simply by the geographical location of our birth. This is where patriotism and nationalism break down. If we can accept that station and location of birth are random—that is, not a result of individual merit—then it becomes absurd to accept discourse which implies inherent value of some over others.
But equality is a pretty impressive concept, the creation of which has been used extensively in justifying our own moral and cultural superiority, which again allows us to bypass the principle of equality when dealing with foreigners.
These attitudes contribute to an international regime where an actor with a preponderance of power does not recognize equal rights for those with whom it deals. As has already happened, U.S. economic interests determine the shape of the system through leveraging trade agreements and other concessions, such as restrictions on generic prescription drugs for AIDS victims in the world's poorest countries. The humanitarian implications of this type of action are disastrous.
It is necessary to understand that maximizing profit is the nature of private enterprise, but in the domestic sphere it is acceptable for the government to intervene when profit-maximizing behavior interferes with fairness, basic human rights or other social goals. Internationally, there is no such mandate and global governance has failed to keep pace with economic globalization.
Even if nation-states are less relevant units of government today than they were 300 years ago, the international system is most likely stuck with them and the biases they foster, including nationalism and xenophobia.
These ideas must be bypassed or eliminated in order to create some semblance of a fair global society embodying basic concepts of opportunity, human rights and distributive justice, which we take as given in the domestic sphere.
However, where to begin in amending deep-seated norms is not an easy question. Change in the official U.S. position on global government on its own is unlikely. Perhaps when people become willing to question what they have been taught and be aware of manipulation through rhetoric, change may come. But that when is a very big if.
