Cochea, Balboa, 11/7/471
Flames arose from torches on the green.
Lourdes had not been invited. "Love, in this one thing, you cannot be witness," Carrera had told her.
Her eldest was there, the boy Hamilcar Carrera-Nuñez. The boy was wide eyed, half at the spectacle and half at being led kindly by the hand by his father. They walked along a path marked with the flaming torches towards the marble obelisk that marked the grave—though it was more memorial than grave, really—of his dead siblings and their mother.
Before moving to the memorial Carrera had shown the boy pictures of Linda and their children, explaining their names and telling him stories about them in life. He'd also told the boy how they'd been murdered.
"That's why I spent so much time away from home, Son," the father explained, "hunting down the men responsible."
"I understand, Dad," the boy said.
Perhaps he did, too. He was a bright lad, extremely so. Carrera expected great things of him. Kid will likely be tall, too, given that his mother's 5'10."
Around the obelisk were several close friends: Kuralski, Soult and Mitchell, as well as Parilla. Jimenez, McNamara and Fernandez were in Pashtia, Jimenez commanding the field legion in Carrera's absence. Those present were uniformed and stood at parade rest as Carrera led the boy forward by the hand.
Soult brought out a bible, which he handed to Carrera. Releasing Hamilcar's little hand, the father knelt down beside him, holding out the book and saying, "Place your left hand on this and raise your right. Now repeat after me."
"I, Hamilcar Carrera-Nuñez . . . "
"I, Hamilcar Carrera-Nuñez . . . "
" . . . swear upon the altar of Almighty God . . . "
" . . . swear upon the altar of Almighty God . . . "
" . . . undying enmity and hate . . . to the murderers of my brother and sisters . . . and the murderers of their mother, my countrywoman . . . and to the murderers of all my country folk . . . and to those that have aided them . . . and those that have hidden them . . . and those who have made excuses for them . . . and those that have funded them . . . . and those who have lied for them . . . wherever and whoever they may be . . . and whoever may arise to take their places. I swear that I will not rest until my fallen blood is avenged and my future blood is safe. So help me, God."
"Very good, Son," Carrera said, handing the bible back to Soult and ruffling Hamilcar's hair affectionately. "Now we are going to have dinner with my friends, back at the house. The day after tomorrow we go back to getting ready for the next war."
Afterword
Warning: Authorial editorial follows. Read further at your own risk. You're not paying anything extra for it so spare us the whining if your real objection is that it is here for other people to read. If you are a Tranzi, and you read this, the author expressly denies liability for your resulting rise in blood pressure, apoplexy, exploding head or general icky feelings. (I am indebted to my former law partner, Matt Pethybridge, for his contributions to this afterword. Matt joins me in this dissent.)
"Do I hate cosmopolitans?" you ask. Why, no, of course I don't hate them. That would be like hating sex . . . or drugs. Cosmopolitanism is like sex and drugs, you know; it just makes you feel all gooey and great inside. It's like sex and drugs in another way, too. I'll cover that later.
Okay, I'll be serious now.
Imagine, just for now and just purposes of illustration, some solid geometric figure; a cube will do. One side of the cube is labeled "progressivism." Another might be "pacifism." Still another might be "multiculturalism." Then there's "humanitarianism" and "environmentalism" and "cosmopolitanism." What's inside the cube, if it is a cube, I can't tell you, but surely it's something that holds those six (or probably more) together. After all, scratch a cosmopolitan; wound a multiculturalist. Kick a progressive and set an environmentalist to screaming.
Some might say that what's inside the cube is communism. I'm not so sure it's that sophisticated. Really, I suspect there's not a lot more holding all those –isms together than a mix of arrogance, envy, hate, and rage. Oh, and greed. Greed's often very important, too. Still, I don't know what's inside. The cube—if, again, it is a cube—is not that opaque.
I know only what's on the outside. One of those things is cosmopolitanism. And yes, that's what I'm going to talk about right now.
There are a number of different kinds of cosmopolitanism, most of which are not really all that cosmopolitan. We have the religious versions, notably the Islamic and Christian ones. There's also a communist cosmopolitanism. And then there's what one might call "true cosmopolitanism," the kind put forth by Immanuel Kant and, more recently, Martha Nussbaum. For the most part, I'm going to talk about "true cosmopolitanism," hereinafter, just plain "cosmopolitanism." To do that, though, we need to at least glance over the others.
"All wars are civil wars because all men are brothers."
—Francois Fenelon, Archbishop of Cambrai[1]
Cosmopolitan religions typically allow anyone to join in; they are open to anyone who will accept their tenets, laws and philosophies. That's as far as it goes, though. If one has not joined in the circle of the given religion, and that religion means anything to its adherents, one is outside it. I don't think I'm doing any violence to cosmopolitan thought by saying that religious cosmopolitanism is different, that drawing the kind of circle cosmopolitan religions do—us and them, in and out—is not really cosmopolitanism.
Communist cosmopolitanism, on the other hand, starts with the premise of ins and outs. It may cut across nations and ethnicities, but communist cosmopolitanism cannot avoid the distinction of class. It exists because of the distinction of class. Class is a bright line circle drawn around some men, and excluding others.[2]
Cosmopolitanism, on the other hand, permits no circles. It would allow no "us and them." It insists, to take Fenelon's words, that "all men are brothers." Of course, if all men are brothers then we are all part of the Family of Man.[3] To cosmopolitanism, this is so, the merest truth. Any distinctions drawn, any circle that doesn't include the entire human race, is arbitrary and illegitimate. Keep that—"arbitrariness"—in mind for later.
For now, let's look into families, shall we?
"No matter how much I care about progressive politics, at the end of the day, it's my family and their well-being that's going to come first."
—Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, Kos
Kos here doesn't mean the "Family of Man." He means his own. One doesn't usually get that much honesty from anyone, let alone from the Left. (Applause—sincere applause—to Kos.) But do they act that way? Do they act as if their families came first? Of course they do, even though they usually hide behind any number of high sounding phrases: "Family of Man," "Human Rights" . . . "Progressivism."
When Kofi Annan abetted his son, Kojo's, tax fraud, that was putting his family and their well-being first. It was the same with the post-tax fraud cover up. It's there, too, in Benan Sevan's use of his aunt as a notional posthumous money launderer for his little profits from the "Oil for Food" scam. It's written in the lines of every Darien, Connecticut mansion or Manhattan penthouse owned or rented by the head of some humanitarian non-governmental organization.[4] It is implicit in the very generous educational benefits the fund-starved United Nations grants to the children of its bureaucrats for the sacrifice, if that's quite the word, they undergo of earning, if that's quite the word, fifty or one hundred times more than most of them could hope to in their own lands. It is George Soros raiding the Bank of England and doing insider trading with the French Société Générale for his own personal benefit. It is a highway in Africa which is never built to standard and washes away with the first hard rain because the money for material went to line someone's nephew's pockets.