reaucratic structure has sprung into being in France to lielp absorbrnincoming North Africans under the banner of “the rightsrnof man.” This bureaucratic network has also been chargedrnwith the “sensibilisation” of the French population, whoserndislike of the new immigrants is all too apparent. Of course, itrnis hard to imagine anv group that would clash with the Frenchrnmore dramatically than North African Moslems, with whomrnthey fought a long and bloody war in the postwar period andrnwho insist on bringing Moslem dress and religious practices intornFrench public schools. Though there is surging popularrnresistance, French journalists grouped around Le Monde, socialrnprofessionals, and human rights adocafes in the governmentrnhave protested any change in immigration policy. It is thernFrench, not the growing and largely unassimilable minority,rnthat are seen as being at fault. Democratic pluralists arc alwaysrnstressing the need for constant adaptation to alien andrneven shocking lifestyles. This adaptation, it may be inferred,rnwill have to continue until we have shed all established identitiesrnin favor of a coercively homogenized and burcaucraticallyrnsensitized world community.rnI remember a December morning in 1991, when I madernthe mistake of allowing my eyes to stray over breakfast coffeernonto a newspaper column by Richard Cohen. A human rightsrnmaven who ranted against a congressman for appearing inrnpublic with Pat Buchanan (whom he had personally excommunicated),rnCohen was exercised that morning over new insensitivities.rnThe United States was stubbornly refusing tornadmit 20,000 more Haitians; and this callous behavior madernhim think of how America had turned back German Jewsrnfleeing Hitler in 1940. What one situation has to do withrnthe other, save for the desire of various people in the 20thrncentury to enter our countrv, is, to mc at least, unclear. Certainlyrnthere is no reason to assume that Haitians who return torntheir homeland will meet a fate as dire as the one that overtookrnJews in Nazi Germany. But, even more to the point,rnare the Haitians whom Cohen and Jesse Jackson and their ilkrnencourage us to take in likely to yield the same types of citizensrnas the German Jews who were turned away in 1940?rnSuch an outcome seems highly improbable, on the basis ofrnwhat can be learned about both groups. But for Cohen andrnother democratic pluralists, such qualitative distinctions orrnthe unequal dangers faced by different refugees from differentrnsocieties are ultimately irrelevant. The issue comes down torndetermining how many diverse minorities we can stick betweenrnthe two oceans for social workers to assist and humanrnrights advocates to represent. There are no legitimate communities,rnnational or otherwise, in Cohen’s and Wieseltier’srnuniverse, except for designated victims, social therapists, andrnconcerned intellectuals. Unfortunately, these same lobbiesrnstand in the way of any attempt to restore real political communitiesrnor even a semblance of self-government in America.rnJUNE 1993/27rnrnrn