The premise of a basically unchanging human nature embedded in tradition, religion, community, and family—a fundamental component of the Western worldview that has grounded individual freedom and self-government for the past several centuries—no longer commands a general consensus among Americans or Europeans. This threatens to result in increasing polarization within the nations of the West and the weakening of the social solidarity on which our democratic freedoms rest. In the international arena, America's traditional concern for national sovereignty faces a challenge from a post-national vision of world order, championed largely in Europe, based on a new view of human nature and the possibilities of global politics. How can we find a new equilibrium that will sustain our democracies and provide a continuing foundation for transatlantic cooperation and partnership?
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About the speaker:
Todd Huizinga is a U.S. diplomat from 1992-2012. He served as deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Luxembourg, political counselor at the U.S. Mission to the European Union in Brussels, consul for political and economic affairs at the U.S. consulates in Hamburg and Munich, and consul for public affairs at the U.S. consulate in Monterrey, Mexico. He has also served in Dublin, Frankfurt and Costa Rica, and on the European Union Desk in the State Department in Washington, D.C.
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