The law granting Greek citizenship to a significant number of foreign immigrants and their children was recently passed and this is a very positive thing. As was to be expected the project stirred up a lot of discussion marked as usual by intense ideological partis pris. In itself this is not something to be lamented, except that it ought to be accompanied by a second order of discourse steeped in judicious discrimination and deep historical awareness. But, it was precisely this latter tier that was lacking. The debate quickly gelled into two opposed extremes, one permeated by xenophobic bigotry and antediluvian nationalism, the other by a dogmatic aversion to the idea of the nation in itself and all historical and cultural experiences associated with it. True to a tradition that goes back to degenerate Byzantinism and its penchant for comprehending all issues in theological terms, the field was taken over by two rival mujaheddin brigades with simplistic world views.

In the midst of this an article by P.M. Kitromilides, the foremost historian of modern Greek ideas, stirred controversy, precisely in its attempt to approach the subject in a reasoned and cool-headed way. PMK has for a generation now been the chief critic of the fake verities of local nationalist cant. He has been instrumental in introducing the theoretical problematic of E. Kedourie and B. Anderson in the analysis of the modern Greek national consciousness, in itself a radical interpretive reorientation that shook the foundations of the hitherto dominant paradigm of the "eternal nation".

But his recent intervention drew fire precisely from those that had misunderstood him as the theoretical exponent of their own blanket anti-national agenda -a misinterpretation based on the political expediencies they were serving and their failure to delve in his work and its sources. He was now accused of fudging, or even betraying, his previous views by pursuing an unspoken opposition to the proposed law. This is clearly unfair, for the effective integration of the immigrant population is unequivocally declared in the article to be an urgent and desirable task. But apart from this, he continues, the issue must not be handled in a haphazard fashion under the pressure of current party-political exigencies. The proper cultural and educational framework must be set up in order to accommodate the newly enfranchised groups with the aim of assuring both the cultural self-expression of the immigrants as well as the shaping of a coherent collective consciousness around certain core values and historical references.

This is indeed a plea for a pluralistic public space, and not at all a demand for the homogenization of the public mind in a way that expunges cultural and ethnic difference. It is simply a matter of erecting barriers against the deleterious slippery slope of "identity politics", i.e. against the fashionable "post modernist" agenda that quite deliberately aims at breaking up the social whole into a multitude of incompatible, and even mutually hostile, world and life perspectives, each with absolute beliefs and ethical stances contemptuous of all others. Such a development would most certainly constitute a threat to institutional liberty and social civility, because it would brutally undermine the core requirement for mutual recognition and respect even in the presence of radically diverging interpretations of existence which is the precondition for a free order of life.

An immigrant community coming to live in the midst of a long established historical nation does certainly have the right to demand that the cultural majority recognize its distinct personality and grant it the political freedom to exercise its unique mode of existence (cultivate its language, religion, customs etc.). But the reverse is also of the essence: the minority community that properly enjoys the aforesaid rights and freedoms also owes to the preponderant national group sincere recognition and respect of the latter's self-definition and self-understanding.

The requirement for coexistence under freedom can only be that the late comers find their own distinct place within the historical culture that preceded them in the geographical area in question as well as within the institutional framework there erected through the long historical labor of the dominant community.

It is indeed a very perverse notion of equality that demands the deletion of pre-existent historical experiences and the commencement from point zero of a radically new enterprise of nation building. It would also be another notch up in the scale of perversity to demand a right for the minority immigrant community to hate and/or destroy the culture and the history of the host nation. If there is indeed such hatred, why did they bother to move to the new destination in the first place? It is precisely this unnatural and inhuman demand which incites the xenophobic racism of the extreme right.

All this does not mean that the dominant culture is somehow sacrosanct. It is not. It is subject to historical change, and the accommodation within the frame of its national life and thought of the distinct identity of the minority communities is a huge transformation in itself, especially as regards such an insular collective consciousness as the modern Greek one. Progressive re-ordering of the national system is indeed the order of the day -and the new law is proof that it is indeed taking place.

But this in no way implies either the erasure of the traditions and historical memories of the dominant group (laden with myths and prejudices though they be) or the maintenance of some "pure" and absolutely self-referential identity on the part of the minority communities (replete with female genital mutilations and other oppressions of the female sex for instance). This would be to understand the problem of human coexistence as a zero-sum game in the form of the vaunted "clash of civilizations", and it is particularly disheartening to see the left adopting this kind of language and mode of thinking disguised under "anti-imperialist" claptrap. This is not a vision of acceptance of the Other as the pieties of postmodernism would have it. It is a war cry for the Other's destruction on the pretext of the real or alleged injustices suffered by the various minorities claiming for themselves this absurd and murderous "right to destroy".