ABSTRACT
The idea of equality may be corrupted and bogged down in the search for not only equality, but for identity. The desire for equality might lead to an indistinction between orders, people, and values. The order of citizenship is based on a dual historical separation: that of the political and the religious, that of the civic and the ethnic, if by ethnic one designates solidarities founded on a shared language, culture, and collective memory. The evolution toward indistinction is contrary to the separation of powers and to the pluralism of collective life that characterize democracy. The possibility of exchanges among all its members is one of the dimensions of democracy's creative utopia. "Constitutional patriotism" that neglects social realities and the limits of the human condition seems to be more on the order of a utopia fostered by democracy than a concrete political project.
