ABSTRACT
Biological humanism has yet to he compreht'11ded in practice e\'en by the left wing of the ecolol-,'Y movement. How else can one explain the f<tilure of America's Sierra Cluh, a leading nature-conservation organization, to take a position on the massi\'e immigration that has made the United States' population among the f~tstest growing of industrial countries? And what other explanation exists for the policy of Germany's Green Party to introduce large-scale continuous immigration to Germany in order to maintain the population level and thus keep the economy strong? 17 Germany is one of the world's most densely populated nations with attendant chronic problems of crowding, pollution, and environmental stress. Since the late nineteenth century it has also been a relatively generous w('ll~lf(' state, something fa\'oured hy the Left. Yet the Greens hehan~ as if immigration has no negati\'{' impact on ecology or welfare. Elsewhere, tht' Grt'ens behave in a manner consistellt with environmental ('oncerns, adnlCating policies that would benefit the environment at the cxpense or the economy. One of their policies has been to raise lhc petrol tax until owning petrol-fuelled cars becomes prohibitively expensiw. As a party of the Lefl, the Greens also support the maintenance of wt'alth rcdistrihution and carl' f(x the underprivileged. Yet in the area of immigration, they propose a policy arguably at odds with these lattn values and limdanwntally at odds with their ('ore value of cons(')Yation. Ecologically minded intellectuals are not unif(lfInly insensitiv(, to human social ccology. For cxample, thc Australian poet-cumecologist-acti\'ist, Mark O'Connor. links ..Iarge-scale immigration with thc destruction of Australia's li'agile ('cology. I"
I~lmily '.vith lin'-in se)yants.' I!I Th('s(' remarks art' intuiti\'(~, lacking a f()rmal theory cOI1lH'cting the sphere or kinship \\-ith the sphne or (,(bnicity. Perhaps intuition is how, despitc his dnl\\-ing parall('ls \)('t\\"('en natiol1 and f~unily, '''alzer rcmains strongly cOl1unitted to gClHTous wdlitre in multi-ethnic statt's: 'ITlhe citizens of a model'll industrial democracy O\\T a great deal to ont' another ... I q\Try political community must attend to thc nt'eds of its nH'I11\)t'rs as they collecti\Tly understand those necds ... I according to the
1711' f.'7.!011IIionary Df/ifil
, '"('[pm'. f.'t/lIIici{J' lind AltruislII
nationality is dim'rent by not being exciusiw'; it does not belong to ont> ethnic group. Here, Walzer secllls to (h-ili II-om the logic of his argument by accepting that the United Statl's is still a nation, albeit an ethnically diverse one and thus lacking status as a /la/ri/,. Hc thus n:jects the \'iew that a nation is necessarily a politicized ethnic group, allO\\'ing him to get hack on his original track that America is not a people but an idea. His use of the non-analytic term 'destiny' in the Ic)llowing quotation indicates Illrthcr recourse to intuition:
It isn't inconcei\'ahk that America will one day become an American nation-state, the many giving way to the one, but that is not what it is now; nor is that its destiny. Amcrica has no singular national destiny ,- and to be an 'American' is, finally, to know that and to be mort> or less content with it.,-)~i .
