International events show that a transformation of modernity is at stake in the new ethnicity. In many places, there is rebellion against the culture of the managers and the commissars; there is a seeking of roots and moral wisdom. To many scholars look at ethnicity passively, as a bearer of illiberal forces; it is, in fact, an awakener, an activator, a fresh source of energy for the conscious liberal spirit. For the new ethnicity is, after all, a matter not of sociology but of politics; not of impersonal determinism but of personal freedom; not of some coercive pressure deriving from one's origins, but of free self-appropriation, of awakening from passivity and beginning to take up one's own responsibilities. The new ethnicity is not a matter of inherited obscurantism or dull habit, but of originality and singularity, of fidelity to self. Instead of blinding being led or blinding becoming a facsimile someone else, the new ethnicity invites individuals, one by one and in concert with others of good will, to intervene in history and to give in shape.
Michael Novak is the George Frederick Jewett Scholar in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy at AEI.
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