The idea suggests an allegiance to a borderless collective that offers students the illusion of moral superiority while absolving them of the hard work of civic engagement in their own backyard.
If what you say regarding the ubiquity of a global citizenship initiative in our schools is true, I would have to agree with you, but I see no evidence of that in this essay. Without such grounding within an actual state of affairs, many of these broad statements seem more like a staw man argument. Instead of addressing the problem of global citizenship in the classroom, the essay uses this as an excuse to assert that the purpose of education is to make good citizens. (This is how I am reading "educate citizens" within the context of the full essay.) I cannot accept this as education's primary purpose. Schools should educate students on how political society functions just as they should education students on how their language or their body functions because education should illuminate as much as possible the forms of life that students are thrown into, so to speak, but I don't think "citizen" should be the principle around which these forms of life are organized. Teaching the mechanics of local government does little good if a student doesn't acknowledge a more fundamental human commitment to his/her neighbors. The essay introduces an issue that deserve serious discussion, but it doesn't invite that discussion.
Another reflection on global citizenship, if anyone is listening. Last night, March 5th, actress Gal Gadot received the ADL's International Leadership Award. Here is an excerpt from her speech:
“My name is Gal. I’m a mother, a wife, a sister, a daughter, an actress. I am Israeli and I’m Jewish. I’m going to say it again: My name is Gal, and I’m Jewish. Isn’t it crazy that just saying that, just expressing such a simple fact about who I am, feels like a controversial statement? But sadly, this is where we’re at today.”
Later on in the speech, the movie star said that she has long tried to avoid talking politics “because no one wants to hear celebrities talking about political issues, but also I regarded myself as a citizen of the world… I never thought of myself as being where I came from; it was an aspect of who I am, but it didn’t define me. And then Oct. 7 happened.”
This is a well-articulated piece, which touches on the educational aspect of cosmopolitan ideology, similar to my initial piece about the identity and structure of cosmopolitan consumption.
Your essay raises interesting questions about the emphasis on global citizenship in modern education, and I appreciate the attention to the potential drawbacks of detaching young people from their local obligations. However, I would argue that the essay overlooks two critical points: the primacy of a higher allegiance beyond the nation-state and the potential for global and local citizenship to be complementary, rather than mutually exclusive.
You imply that allegiance to the nation-state is one of the highest forms of allegiance, claiming, “A student who is well-grounded in the principles of American citizenship will be far better equipped to make meaningful contributions to the world than one who has been taught to think of himself as a ‘citizen of nowhere.’” I respectfully disagree. The Christian tradition, for example, teaches that allegiance to the Kingdom of God supersedes all other allegiances, including to one’s nation. Throughout the Bible (and quite explicitly in 1 and 2 Peter), the Church is referred to as “exiles” and “sojourners.” They were castigated by their countrymen for placing the Kingdom of God ahead of Roman nationalism, “defying Caesar's decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus.” This did not stop the church from making dramatic contributions to the world. Indeed, they utterly reshaped it. Tom Holland’s Dominion argues that the Church’s care for the poor and destitute was the engine of this revolution. This care extended beyond their national and sociocultural boundaries, as the story of the Good Samaritan illustrates, and sometimes with global consequences. In the 4th century, Julian the Apostate redirected supplies from Rome to Galatia (modern day Turkey) because it was “disgraceful…when…the impious Galileans support our poor in addition to their own…" This demonstrates the impact that "citizens of nowhere" can have even on such weighty issues as trans-imperial economics. Compared to an eternal kingdom, a nation is far too fleeting of a thing to deserve much allegiance.
You suggest that global citizenship and local citizenship are mutually exclusive, writing, “When young Americans are conditioned to think in abstract, global terms, they become disconnected from the concrete realities of their own society.” I would argue that these two forms of citizenship are not at odds but can be complementary. As the world becomes more interconnected, local actions can have far-reaching consequences, and global issues often have local solutions. State policies on fertilizer use, for example, can have dramatic effects on algae blooms on the other end of the continent when farm runoff enters major waterways. The first world generates millions of tons of pollution each year, which have disproportionate effects on third world countries that are less able to mitigate these effects. Yet, we have local agency over many of these global problems. A concern for the global issue of child slavery might result in choosing to shop from local boutiques rather than buying mass-produced clothing, providing local stimulus. We can impact the very real problem of climate change by local decisions to compost and purchase our food from local farms, purchase energy efficient products, and importantly, elect leaders who care just as much (or more) about their planetary home as they do about the GDP.
Global citizenship, when properly understood, is a force for good both at home and abroad. Without an emphasis on it, we risk falling into the very mindset you claim to reject—an isolationist, "America First" perspective that disguises self-centeredness as "localism." While we may have to agree to disagree on that point, I believe there is a more insidious theme beneath the stated aim of your article —one where we might find common ground. The problem is not global citizenship itself but rather abstraction, or what Jake Meador calls “The Opining Life.”
In a recent essay, Meador explored the Aquinian concepts of the Contemplative Life and the Active Life. The Contemplative Life, according to Aquinas, is one that is intent on the contemplation of the Truth and particularly on the love of God. It is life-giving thought that seeks the good, the true, and the beautiful. The Active Life is the life that goes about producing that which is good, true, and beautiful. Meador argues that we have created a third life that is a grotesque parody of these two, the “Opining Life.” It is “life lived by a disembodied head on a stick spouting opinions about the events of the day…there might be a superficial similarity [to the contemplative life] in as much as both likely involve the reading of books and essays and times of thought. But the ends are radically different.” Likewise, the Opining Life differs from the Active life because “the ‘politics’ pursued via the opining life are not chiefly about the persuasion of one’s fellow citizens for the sake of common collective action across differences for the sake of the common good” but is “usually little more than an attempt at digital identity creation and promotion of one’s digital self within online networks.” Rather than being either contemplative or active, the Opining life serves as an inoculation to both, providing the comforting illusion of having thought deeply and acted rightly, while in reality having done neither.
Global citizenship, at its best, acknowledges that “the Earth is the Lord’s and everything in it,” an idea that should spur action at local, national, and global levels. On the contrary, I submit that the Opining Life is the chief scourge of our age and the “fantasy” against which our ire should be directed.
Thank you for your astute observations and feedback. Of course, there should exist a delicate, perhaps even noble, reciprocity between the contemplation of “global issues” (that shimmering abstraction, so frequently invoked yet so rarely interrogated) and the more visceral, boots-on-the-ground engagement with the immediate, the tangible, the fellow human standing right in front of you, who, inconveniently for the theorists, still requires a name, a face, an actual claim upon one’s attention. And yet—your instincts are correct—I suggest, perhaps too slyly, that this balance has long since fractured, if indeed it ever existed outside of brochures and the TED-talk circuit. Nearly two decades marooned in the bureaucratic archipelago of modern education have acquainted me, in intimate and exhausting detail, with the phenomenon of “global citizenship”—that perennial buzzword, less an idea than a glossy veneer, promising enlightenment while quietly eroding the ancient, harder-won understanding of duty, allegiance, and the concentric rings of loyalty that spiral outward from family to neighborhood to nation. That this assertion might rankle many where controversy itself has been industrialized, does not so much surprise as depress me; that it should even require defense, however, is something closer to the absurd.
I believe that philosophers call equating caring about people wherever they live and “global citizenship” a “category error.”
Decades ago, people pushing so-called bilingual education for elementary school children would challenge skeptics, “Don’t you want your children to learn a second language?” This was very motte-and-bailey. What they were actually advocating was allowing non-English-speaking children to receive their entire elementary education in a language other than English. Two different things. Yes, I did want my kids to learn a second language. And, no, allowing children to receive a titular education without becoming fluent in English will leave them severely handicapped in the job market. When I moved to Germany in the ‘80s I learned quickly that success would require me to speak German.
Further the straw man dichotomy – “global citizen” vs. “isolationist ‘America First’ perspective” – is both incorrect and insulting. One can have allegiance and love for one’s home country while caring for those beyond its borders.
As a Catholic, I believe in the history of a chosen people in a specific place at a specific time: the Israelites. Not chosen because of merit, as the Old Testament amply documents. A specific man, Jesus Christ, was born into a specific people and nation. He did not admonish his followers to create a world-spanning state. He was offered one and refused it. He did tell them to go out to the nations with the Gospel. The Old Testament psalm reads, “Lord every nation on earth will adore you.” It does not read, “Lord, let’s create one nation.”
Our focus and allegiance of practical necessity spread out from the very local – our families. This does not mean that we don’t care about non-family, only that we care differently.
Nearly two decades ago my youngest brother died suddenly. I was devastated. In some ways I still am. If I felt even a fraction of those feelings for every death globally, I couldn’t function.
In the recent DC airplane crash, a dear friend of mine knew many of those killed. She is living an altogether different kind of pain and sadness. Not only different in degree, but different in kind. My own experience and attitude toward those deaths are different from, say, those lost in the LA fires.
The parable of the Good Samaritan does not call for a global governance. It calls for generous compassion and assistance. My wife and I support both Peter’s Pence and a mission in Haiti. My son traveled to Peru to help build a school. My daughter participated in World Youth Days in Barcelona and Warsaw, and works in the non-profit world.
Christ told us that we will always have the poor. This is both a caution and a challenge. A caution because no human action, particularly political, can create Utopia (“no-place”). A challenge to compassion and caritas.
Citizenship implies a state or nation to which one owes allegiance. Such a state would have laws and governance. I believe this was tried in… Shinar, no? (Genesis 11) The Lord didn’t think too much of the idea. Who would lead it? Promulgate what rules? What tax rates? In a world of finite resources, who will make the tradeoffs? Who will enforce those decisions? How? Would it choose to fund universal healthcare? Cars for all? Bicycles? Using what types force? Should we fund a cure for malaria or diabetes? Look to China’s “social scoring” surveillance system to see where these ideas lead.
One need only contemplate the Club of Rome, the silly (and dangerous) EU-crats in Brussels or the Davos-is-smarter-than-you crowd to get a sense for where this might lead.
As you point out, too, the “global citizen” label frequently becomes a license for complaining and inaction. I believe that we’re experience climate change. Humans have damaged the environment. I can throw paint at the Mona Lisa, or I can do “the next right thing” in my local community. Global citizens too often become impresarios of the hashtag.
For more cogent and insightful thoughts on the topic, check out recent essay by Rusty Reno in First Things, “The Age of De-Globalization,” and Peter Robinson’s Uncommon Knowledge podcast hosting Peter Thiel (11/18 and 12/6/2025). They make more sense than I do.
I find it's easy to dismiss global citizenship as an ephemeral concept when one dares not look too closely to observe its actual substance. I've been fortunate to work alongside many who have dedicated themselves to the real thing, not the buzzword. Take, for example, my friend, “A,” who works for International Justice Mission, an organization that takes "boots on the ground engagement" literally – kicking down brothel doors to rescue women sold into sex slavery. Or my friend, “R,” who has worked as a missionary in an impoverished country for the past 20 years, building churches in villages that lack basic plumbing. Both individuals are inspired by ideals far more substantial than petty nationalism.
Without a proper diagnosis, there can be no effectual cure. I submit again that the issue lies not with globalism or a lack of concern for what is out one’s front door, but with the "performative life" – one concerned with the appearance of virtue rather than its reality. This, I fear, does not disappear when our view is narrowed to our next door neighbor, as the Priest and the Levite can attest. One cannot cure "homo incurvatus in se" by turning one's gaze further inward.
Ah, but isn’t this the old bait-and-switch, the rhetorical three-card monte where one is made to feel small—provincial, parochial, pedestrian—simply for daring to locate one’s obligations in the soil beneath one’s feet rather than the ether of abstract moral grandstanding? To question the sacrosanct vision of “global citizenship” is not to dismiss the authentic, the true boots-on-the-ground doers of the world—your friends “A” and “R” among them—but to wonder aloud whether the concept itself has become little more than a branding exercise, a virtue-laden logo stamped on the passport of the spiritually enlightened, whose jet trails sketch out their moral superiority in the sky.
The problem, which I have perhaps failed to articulate in a manner sufficiently pleasing to the sentinels of the cosmopolitan ideal, is that what now passes for “global scholarship” or “global awareness” is so often an opiate of the managerial class, a marketing ploy designed to make its adherents feel as though they have transcended the paltry confines of nationhood, citizenship, or—God forbid—place. To “bloom where one is planted” is now the mark of the unenlightened, a failure of imagination, an ethical and intellectual faux pas. But tell me—who actually pays the bill for this grand enlightenment project? Who underwrites the assumption that one can hover above the world untethered, owing allegiance to no particular place, no particular people, no particular tradition?
Of course, missionaries are great, and those who dedicate their lives to true service should be honored, not trotted out as mascots for an ideology that, for most of its practitioners, remains a costume rather than a creed. I have lived in four countries myself, yet am a citizen of one. It is that nation which grants me my rights and expects my responsibilities in return, that particular polity to which I owe my civic and moral obligations. Not some spectral “humanity” in the abstract, nor the vague, borderless utopia sketched in NGO brochures and LinkedIn posts about “expanding our global mindset.”
The Priest and the Levite, in their careful sidesteps, might well have attended a seminar on global competence, while the Samaritan—a man of place, of a particular people, with particular loyalties—was the one who actually stopped. The problem is not that our view is too narrow but that it is too diffuse, too enamored with its own magnanimity, too willing to exchange the real for the performative. And so I say again: beware the allure of that which floats untethered, that which prides itself on being “everywhere,” for it is often, in truth, nowhere at all.
I love Scooby-Doo. In fact, I would argue that Scooby-Doo should be required viewing for every child of the modern era. In every episode, there's a big, scary monster that looks terrifying from afar. But with a bit of sleuthing, the Gang discovers there’s no monster after all—just old Mr. So-and-So, upset about the new development going up next door. The moral for today’s youth? When someone tells you about a bogeyman, do some sleuthing. More often than not, behind all the theater and grandstanding, you’ll find people who are simply uncomfortable with how the world is changing around them.
It seems that “the fantasy of global citizenship” is this kind of bogey. Your initial argument was that these initiatives create individuals with their heads in the clouds, disconnected from the realities in front of them. But when I provide examples of how global citizenship makes a tangible impact, you backtrack with, “Oh, well, not *that* kind of global citizenship. I mean the *other* kind.” So let’s climb into the Mystery Machine and see what we can uncover about this "other kind."
In your essay, you highlight four global citizenship programs in Ohio. Let’s examine them and ask whether they make people more—or less—grounded in the real world:
- St. Ignatius: High school students participate in mission trips, both nationally and internationally, to the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Appalachia, Louisville, and the Mexican border. These trips “are work-intensive, as students assist with community projects as part of their immersion and relationship-building with the people they encounter.”
- Columbus Global Scholars Diploma: A three-year high school program that focuses on exposure, skills development, and community action, partnering with local immigrant and refugee relief programs. It culminates in a final project where students select a global issue and pursue leadership opportunities to address it at a local level.
- St. Xavier: High school students take coursework on global themes (e.g., world literature, environmental science) and develop relationships with a specific organization or people group to foster intercultural dialogue.
- UC Honors Program: A general honors program that emphasizes global citizenship. While its curriculum isn’t explicitly outlined, they highlight a student using his engineering background and human-centered design approach to improve chicken farming practices in Tanzania.
All four programs you cited appear to produce tangible outcomes. Some are certainly stronger than others (UC, I'll grant, seems vague though still appears to be producing valuable output), but overall, I’m impressed—particularly by the Columbus program. A 3 year program for high schoolers that gets them engaged in local solutions to global problems while providing leadership opportunities? Incredible! I'd love to have my kids' school offer something like that!
When we pull the mask off this supposed menace, we don’t find a globalist conspiracy designed to poison children’s minds against their country, nor do we find some airheaded program designed by a management consultant to cram as many buzzwords as possible into a website description. That's not to say that type of sloganizing doesn't exist - it does - but it's the exception rather than the rule. No, when we actually take the time to look, we mostly find passionate individuals dedicated to learning from other cultures and taking meaningful action to solve real-world challenges. Our tour in the Mystery Machine has ended, and we have found that this "other kind" of global citizenship, this ill-defined foe that, in the telling, seems to vacillate between dastardly and airheaded, between devious and vacuous, is in fact not too dissimilar from the first: a group of people doing their darndest to make the world a little better.
I hope we can agree on at least one thing: the rise of the Opining and Performative Lives—where people are more concerned with curating the perfect Instagram image than engaging with reality—is the real monster, the one devastating our society. Perhaps what our kids need most is exposure to real problems and challenges, the kind they won’t see in a comfortable suburban environment. Whether these experiences happen at home or abroad matters less than whether they cultivate hearts and minds that genuinely (and practically) care for their neighbors—wherever those neighbors may be.
Excellent. Everyone needs to know exactly how the various departments of local councils and government work and interact. We are all the poorer for these lacks.
I appreciate the concern you are showing in this post for civic engagement and I share it very much. But you seem to be assuming that local/global civic engagement is an either-or proposition. We are all members of ever-expanding communities (though not necessarily officially so): family, friends, city, county, state, country, world. One *could* argue that going away to college and then taking up a job in another city is a misplacement of priorities. We all have to make these decisions, though, and some people manage to import the things they learned from their families and hometowns into new communities, and they can often bring back ideas and customs to their local communities. I see the same possibility for global citizenship, which by the way is not a new concept: the term "cosmopolitan" is at least as old as the 16th century and seems to have been similarly fraught as it is now. There's a quote in the OED from Tennyson in 1885, "That man's the best Cosmopolite, Who loves his native country best." He seems to think it's possible to have it both ways. Moreover, the concept seems to have a Christian association, the idea being that a good Christian is also a citizen of the world.
Also, many of your claims would seem to admit of a basic survey, for example, "This misplacement of priorities creates disengaged citizens. When young Americans are conditioned to think in abstract, global terms, they become disconnected from the concrete realities of their own society." Isn't this the kind of claim that we could pretty easily test by asking which students most identify as global citizens and then see if there's a correlation (or not) to their involvement in their own society?
From my albeit anecdotal understanding of my students at Howard University many of them are deeply engaged as global citizens, in the sense that they are interested in solving problems in Africa and throughout the world, but they also do very engaged activities like alternative spring break throughout the country, where they build houses, teach classes, and serve people in local communities. It may well be that people who care about global problems also care about local problems, and that the two experiences inform each other. In any case most of the students I am familiar with do not end up living in the countries they practice global citizenship in. They come back to the US and often return to their hometowns. But, as I say, this seems to be the kind of thing that could be explored better by a statistical study and probably a series of case studies. I couldn't tell from your post if you have any case experience with global citizenship.
Finally, I see from the title of your Substack that you are into all things "classical." One of the most famous global citizens in Greek mythology is Odysseus, "who saw the cities of many men and got to know their minds" (Odyssey 1.3). And of course another global citizen was the historian Herodotus. I don't think we know anything about his civic engagement in Halicarnassus, but I think he did humanity an eternal good deed by getting to know the customs of other cities and nations and reporting them to his Greek audience.
Odysseus ultimately returned home. His intention from the start of his travels. Where he put a bad situation to right.
Late in Return of the King, Tolkien records this exchange between Gandalf and the hobbits:
“Well, we’ve got you with us,” said Merry, “so things [in the Shire] will soon be cleared up.”
“I am with you at present,” said Gandalf, “but soon I shall not be. I am not coming to the Shire. You must settle its affairs yourselves; that is what you have been trained for. Do you not yet understand?”
In his letters, Tolkien once referred to this as the most important line in the three books. Why? The hobbits had just helped “save Middle Earth.” Quite the accomplishment. Yet, the whole point was to prepare them to liberate their own small land? Hmmm.
I find the arguments here a bit at cross purpose, as I’ve noted elsewhere. If by “global citizen” one simply means “shows true care for people regardless of where they live,” well, that’s good.
If, however, by “global citizen” one posits a globe-spanning state to which one owes allegiance. Then count me out.
Christ was offered one while fasting in the desert. He categorically rejected it. God, too, weighed in when in Shinar people started a shared building project.
I look at the clowns in Brussels, my “betters” at Davos and the Club of Rome and respond, “A pox on them all.”
I’m just a hobbit. I love best what I know best. I don’t think that makes me a bad person. A cranky old man, maybe.
C.S. Lewis was on the nail as ever: "It is a great deal easier to be enthusiastic about Humanity with a capital 'H' than it is to love individual men and women, especially those who are uninteresting, exasperating, depraved, or otherwise unattractive. Loving everybody in general may be an excuse for loving nobody in particular."
If what you say regarding the ubiquity of a global citizenship initiative in our schools is true, I would have to agree with you, but I see no evidence of that in this essay. Without such grounding within an actual state of affairs, many of these broad statements seem more like a staw man argument. Instead of addressing the problem of global citizenship in the classroom, the essay uses this as an excuse to assert that the purpose of education is to make good citizens. (This is how I am reading "educate citizens" within the context of the full essay.) I cannot accept this as education's primary purpose. Schools should educate students on how political society functions just as they should education students on how their language or their body functions because education should illuminate as much as possible the forms of life that students are thrown into, so to speak, but I don't think "citizen" should be the principle around which these forms of life are organized. Teaching the mechanics of local government does little good if a student doesn't acknowledge a more fundamental human commitment to his/her neighbors. The essay introduces an issue that deserve serious discussion, but it doesn't invite that discussion.
Good feedback. Appreciated!
Well said
“the essay uses this as an excuse to assert that the purpose of education is to make good citizens.”
It seems to me that a proper education is one that produces good citizens, not as an objective, but as a result by which it can be measured.
Another reflection on global citizenship, if anyone is listening. Last night, March 5th, actress Gal Gadot received the ADL's International Leadership Award. Here is an excerpt from her speech:
“My name is Gal. I’m a mother, a wife, a sister, a daughter, an actress. I am Israeli and I’m Jewish. I’m going to say it again: My name is Gal, and I’m Jewish. Isn’t it crazy that just saying that, just expressing such a simple fact about who I am, feels like a controversial statement? But sadly, this is where we’re at today.”
Later on in the speech, the movie star said that she has long tried to avoid talking politics “because no one wants to hear celebrities talking about political issues, but also I regarded myself as a citizen of the world… I never thought of myself as being where I came from; it was an aspect of who I am, but it didn’t define me. And then Oct. 7 happened.”
Place matters!
This is a well-articulated piece, which touches on the educational aspect of cosmopolitan ideology, similar to my initial piece about the identity and structure of cosmopolitan consumption.
Your essay raises interesting questions about the emphasis on global citizenship in modern education, and I appreciate the attention to the potential drawbacks of detaching young people from their local obligations. However, I would argue that the essay overlooks two critical points: the primacy of a higher allegiance beyond the nation-state and the potential for global and local citizenship to be complementary, rather than mutually exclusive.
You imply that allegiance to the nation-state is one of the highest forms of allegiance, claiming, “A student who is well-grounded in the principles of American citizenship will be far better equipped to make meaningful contributions to the world than one who has been taught to think of himself as a ‘citizen of nowhere.’” I respectfully disagree. The Christian tradition, for example, teaches that allegiance to the Kingdom of God supersedes all other allegiances, including to one’s nation. Throughout the Bible (and quite explicitly in 1 and 2 Peter), the Church is referred to as “exiles” and “sojourners.” They were castigated by their countrymen for placing the Kingdom of God ahead of Roman nationalism, “defying Caesar's decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus.” This did not stop the church from making dramatic contributions to the world. Indeed, they utterly reshaped it. Tom Holland’s Dominion argues that the Church’s care for the poor and destitute was the engine of this revolution. This care extended beyond their national and sociocultural boundaries, as the story of the Good Samaritan illustrates, and sometimes with global consequences. In the 4th century, Julian the Apostate redirected supplies from Rome to Galatia (modern day Turkey) because it was “disgraceful…when…the impious Galileans support our poor in addition to their own…" This demonstrates the impact that "citizens of nowhere" can have even on such weighty issues as trans-imperial economics. Compared to an eternal kingdom, a nation is far too fleeting of a thing to deserve much allegiance.
You suggest that global citizenship and local citizenship are mutually exclusive, writing, “When young Americans are conditioned to think in abstract, global terms, they become disconnected from the concrete realities of their own society.” I would argue that these two forms of citizenship are not at odds but can be complementary. As the world becomes more interconnected, local actions can have far-reaching consequences, and global issues often have local solutions. State policies on fertilizer use, for example, can have dramatic effects on algae blooms on the other end of the continent when farm runoff enters major waterways. The first world generates millions of tons of pollution each year, which have disproportionate effects on third world countries that are less able to mitigate these effects. Yet, we have local agency over many of these global problems. A concern for the global issue of child slavery might result in choosing to shop from local boutiques rather than buying mass-produced clothing, providing local stimulus. We can impact the very real problem of climate change by local decisions to compost and purchase our food from local farms, purchase energy efficient products, and importantly, elect leaders who care just as much (or more) about their planetary home as they do about the GDP.
Global citizenship, when properly understood, is a force for good both at home and abroad. Without an emphasis on it, we risk falling into the very mindset you claim to reject—an isolationist, "America First" perspective that disguises self-centeredness as "localism." While we may have to agree to disagree on that point, I believe there is a more insidious theme beneath the stated aim of your article —one where we might find common ground. The problem is not global citizenship itself but rather abstraction, or what Jake Meador calls “The Opining Life.”
In a recent essay, Meador explored the Aquinian concepts of the Contemplative Life and the Active Life. The Contemplative Life, according to Aquinas, is one that is intent on the contemplation of the Truth and particularly on the love of God. It is life-giving thought that seeks the good, the true, and the beautiful. The Active Life is the life that goes about producing that which is good, true, and beautiful. Meador argues that we have created a third life that is a grotesque parody of these two, the “Opining Life.” It is “life lived by a disembodied head on a stick spouting opinions about the events of the day…there might be a superficial similarity [to the contemplative life] in as much as both likely involve the reading of books and essays and times of thought. But the ends are radically different.” Likewise, the Opining Life differs from the Active life because “the ‘politics’ pursued via the opining life are not chiefly about the persuasion of one’s fellow citizens for the sake of common collective action across differences for the sake of the common good” but is “usually little more than an attempt at digital identity creation and promotion of one’s digital self within online networks.” Rather than being either contemplative or active, the Opining life serves as an inoculation to both, providing the comforting illusion of having thought deeply and acted rightly, while in reality having done neither.
Global citizenship, at its best, acknowledges that “the Earth is the Lord’s and everything in it,” an idea that should spur action at local, national, and global levels. On the contrary, I submit that the Opining Life is the chief scourge of our age and the “fantasy” against which our ire should be directed.
Thank you for your astute observations and feedback. Of course, there should exist a delicate, perhaps even noble, reciprocity between the contemplation of “global issues” (that shimmering abstraction, so frequently invoked yet so rarely interrogated) and the more visceral, boots-on-the-ground engagement with the immediate, the tangible, the fellow human standing right in front of you, who, inconveniently for the theorists, still requires a name, a face, an actual claim upon one’s attention. And yet—your instincts are correct—I suggest, perhaps too slyly, that this balance has long since fractured, if indeed it ever existed outside of brochures and the TED-talk circuit. Nearly two decades marooned in the bureaucratic archipelago of modern education have acquainted me, in intimate and exhausting detail, with the phenomenon of “global citizenship”—that perennial buzzword, less an idea than a glossy veneer, promising enlightenment while quietly eroding the ancient, harder-won understanding of duty, allegiance, and the concentric rings of loyalty that spiral outward from family to neighborhood to nation. That this assertion might rankle many where controversy itself has been industrialized, does not so much surprise as depress me; that it should even require defense, however, is something closer to the absurd.
I believe that philosophers call equating caring about people wherever they live and “global citizenship” a “category error.”
Decades ago, people pushing so-called bilingual education for elementary school children would challenge skeptics, “Don’t you want your children to learn a second language?” This was very motte-and-bailey. What they were actually advocating was allowing non-English-speaking children to receive their entire elementary education in a language other than English. Two different things. Yes, I did want my kids to learn a second language. And, no, allowing children to receive a titular education without becoming fluent in English will leave them severely handicapped in the job market. When I moved to Germany in the ‘80s I learned quickly that success would require me to speak German.
Further the straw man dichotomy – “global citizen” vs. “isolationist ‘America First’ perspective” – is both incorrect and insulting. One can have allegiance and love for one’s home country while caring for those beyond its borders.
As a Catholic, I believe in the history of a chosen people in a specific place at a specific time: the Israelites. Not chosen because of merit, as the Old Testament amply documents. A specific man, Jesus Christ, was born into a specific people and nation. He did not admonish his followers to create a world-spanning state. He was offered one and refused it. He did tell them to go out to the nations with the Gospel. The Old Testament psalm reads, “Lord every nation on earth will adore you.” It does not read, “Lord, let’s create one nation.”
Our focus and allegiance of practical necessity spread out from the very local – our families. This does not mean that we don’t care about non-family, only that we care differently.
Nearly two decades ago my youngest brother died suddenly. I was devastated. In some ways I still am. If I felt even a fraction of those feelings for every death globally, I couldn’t function.
In the recent DC airplane crash, a dear friend of mine knew many of those killed. She is living an altogether different kind of pain and sadness. Not only different in degree, but different in kind. My own experience and attitude toward those deaths are different from, say, those lost in the LA fires.
The parable of the Good Samaritan does not call for a global governance. It calls for generous compassion and assistance. My wife and I support both Peter’s Pence and a mission in Haiti. My son traveled to Peru to help build a school. My daughter participated in World Youth Days in Barcelona and Warsaw, and works in the non-profit world.
Christ told us that we will always have the poor. This is both a caution and a challenge. A caution because no human action, particularly political, can create Utopia (“no-place”). A challenge to compassion and caritas.
Citizenship implies a state or nation to which one owes allegiance. Such a state would have laws and governance. I believe this was tried in… Shinar, no? (Genesis 11) The Lord didn’t think too much of the idea. Who would lead it? Promulgate what rules? What tax rates? In a world of finite resources, who will make the tradeoffs? Who will enforce those decisions? How? Would it choose to fund universal healthcare? Cars for all? Bicycles? Using what types force? Should we fund a cure for malaria or diabetes? Look to China’s “social scoring” surveillance system to see where these ideas lead.
One need only contemplate the Club of Rome, the silly (and dangerous) EU-crats in Brussels or the Davos-is-smarter-than-you crowd to get a sense for where this might lead.
As you point out, too, the “global citizen” label frequently becomes a license for complaining and inaction. I believe that we’re experience climate change. Humans have damaged the environment. I can throw paint at the Mona Lisa, or I can do “the next right thing” in my local community. Global citizens too often become impresarios of the hashtag.
For more cogent and insightful thoughts on the topic, check out recent essay by Rusty Reno in First Things, “The Age of De-Globalization,” and Peter Robinson’s Uncommon Knowledge podcast hosting Peter Thiel (11/18 and 12/6/2025). They make more sense than I do.
I find it's easy to dismiss global citizenship as an ephemeral concept when one dares not look too closely to observe its actual substance. I've been fortunate to work alongside many who have dedicated themselves to the real thing, not the buzzword. Take, for example, my friend, “A,” who works for International Justice Mission, an organization that takes "boots on the ground engagement" literally – kicking down brothel doors to rescue women sold into sex slavery. Or my friend, “R,” who has worked as a missionary in an impoverished country for the past 20 years, building churches in villages that lack basic plumbing. Both individuals are inspired by ideals far more substantial than petty nationalism.
Without a proper diagnosis, there can be no effectual cure. I submit again that the issue lies not with globalism or a lack of concern for what is out one’s front door, but with the "performative life" – one concerned with the appearance of virtue rather than its reality. This, I fear, does not disappear when our view is narrowed to our next door neighbor, as the Priest and the Levite can attest. One cannot cure "homo incurvatus in se" by turning one's gaze further inward.
Ah, but isn’t this the old bait-and-switch, the rhetorical three-card monte where one is made to feel small—provincial, parochial, pedestrian—simply for daring to locate one’s obligations in the soil beneath one’s feet rather than the ether of abstract moral grandstanding? To question the sacrosanct vision of “global citizenship” is not to dismiss the authentic, the true boots-on-the-ground doers of the world—your friends “A” and “R” among them—but to wonder aloud whether the concept itself has become little more than a branding exercise, a virtue-laden logo stamped on the passport of the spiritually enlightened, whose jet trails sketch out their moral superiority in the sky.
The problem, which I have perhaps failed to articulate in a manner sufficiently pleasing to the sentinels of the cosmopolitan ideal, is that what now passes for “global scholarship” or “global awareness” is so often an opiate of the managerial class, a marketing ploy designed to make its adherents feel as though they have transcended the paltry confines of nationhood, citizenship, or—God forbid—place. To “bloom where one is planted” is now the mark of the unenlightened, a failure of imagination, an ethical and intellectual faux pas. But tell me—who actually pays the bill for this grand enlightenment project? Who underwrites the assumption that one can hover above the world untethered, owing allegiance to no particular place, no particular people, no particular tradition?
Of course, missionaries are great, and those who dedicate their lives to true service should be honored, not trotted out as mascots for an ideology that, for most of its practitioners, remains a costume rather than a creed. I have lived in four countries myself, yet am a citizen of one. It is that nation which grants me my rights and expects my responsibilities in return, that particular polity to which I owe my civic and moral obligations. Not some spectral “humanity” in the abstract, nor the vague, borderless utopia sketched in NGO brochures and LinkedIn posts about “expanding our global mindset.”
The Priest and the Levite, in their careful sidesteps, might well have attended a seminar on global competence, while the Samaritan—a man of place, of a particular people, with particular loyalties—was the one who actually stopped. The problem is not that our view is too narrow but that it is too diffuse, too enamored with its own magnanimity, too willing to exchange the real for the performative. And so I say again: beware the allure of that which floats untethered, that which prides itself on being “everywhere,” for it is often, in truth, nowhere at all.
I love Scooby-Doo. In fact, I would argue that Scooby-Doo should be required viewing for every child of the modern era. In every episode, there's a big, scary monster that looks terrifying from afar. But with a bit of sleuthing, the Gang discovers there’s no monster after all—just old Mr. So-and-So, upset about the new development going up next door. The moral for today’s youth? When someone tells you about a bogeyman, do some sleuthing. More often than not, behind all the theater and grandstanding, you’ll find people who are simply uncomfortable with how the world is changing around them.
It seems that “the fantasy of global citizenship” is this kind of bogey. Your initial argument was that these initiatives create individuals with their heads in the clouds, disconnected from the realities in front of them. But when I provide examples of how global citizenship makes a tangible impact, you backtrack with, “Oh, well, not *that* kind of global citizenship. I mean the *other* kind.” So let’s climb into the Mystery Machine and see what we can uncover about this "other kind."
In your essay, you highlight four global citizenship programs in Ohio. Let’s examine them and ask whether they make people more—or less—grounded in the real world:
- St. Ignatius: High school students participate in mission trips, both nationally and internationally, to the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Appalachia, Louisville, and the Mexican border. These trips “are work-intensive, as students assist with community projects as part of their immersion and relationship-building with the people they encounter.”
- Columbus Global Scholars Diploma: A three-year high school program that focuses on exposure, skills development, and community action, partnering with local immigrant and refugee relief programs. It culminates in a final project where students select a global issue and pursue leadership opportunities to address it at a local level.
- St. Xavier: High school students take coursework on global themes (e.g., world literature, environmental science) and develop relationships with a specific organization or people group to foster intercultural dialogue.
- UC Honors Program: A general honors program that emphasizes global citizenship. While its curriculum isn’t explicitly outlined, they highlight a student using his engineering background and human-centered design approach to improve chicken farming practices in Tanzania.
All four programs you cited appear to produce tangible outcomes. Some are certainly stronger than others (UC, I'll grant, seems vague though still appears to be producing valuable output), but overall, I’m impressed—particularly by the Columbus program. A 3 year program for high schoolers that gets them engaged in local solutions to global problems while providing leadership opportunities? Incredible! I'd love to have my kids' school offer something like that!
When we pull the mask off this supposed menace, we don’t find a globalist conspiracy designed to poison children’s minds against their country, nor do we find some airheaded program designed by a management consultant to cram as many buzzwords as possible into a website description. That's not to say that type of sloganizing doesn't exist - it does - but it's the exception rather than the rule. No, when we actually take the time to look, we mostly find passionate individuals dedicated to learning from other cultures and taking meaningful action to solve real-world challenges. Our tour in the Mystery Machine has ended, and we have found that this "other kind" of global citizenship, this ill-defined foe that, in the telling, seems to vacillate between dastardly and airheaded, between devious and vacuous, is in fact not too dissimilar from the first: a group of people doing their darndest to make the world a little better.
I hope we can agree on at least one thing: the rise of the Opining and Performative Lives—where people are more concerned with curating the perfect Instagram image than engaging with reality—is the real monster, the one devastating our society. Perhaps what our kids need most is exposure to real problems and challenges, the kind they won’t see in a comfortable suburban environment. Whether these experiences happen at home or abroad matters less than whether they cultivate hearts and minds that genuinely (and practically) care for their neighbors—wherever those neighbors may be.
Excellent. Everyone needs to know exactly how the various departments of local councils and government work and interact. We are all the poorer for these lacks.
I appreciate the concern you are showing in this post for civic engagement and I share it very much. But you seem to be assuming that local/global civic engagement is an either-or proposition. We are all members of ever-expanding communities (though not necessarily officially so): family, friends, city, county, state, country, world. One *could* argue that going away to college and then taking up a job in another city is a misplacement of priorities. We all have to make these decisions, though, and some people manage to import the things they learned from their families and hometowns into new communities, and they can often bring back ideas and customs to their local communities. I see the same possibility for global citizenship, which by the way is not a new concept: the term "cosmopolitan" is at least as old as the 16th century and seems to have been similarly fraught as it is now. There's a quote in the OED from Tennyson in 1885, "That man's the best Cosmopolite, Who loves his native country best." He seems to think it's possible to have it both ways. Moreover, the concept seems to have a Christian association, the idea being that a good Christian is also a citizen of the world.
Also, many of your claims would seem to admit of a basic survey, for example, "This misplacement of priorities creates disengaged citizens. When young Americans are conditioned to think in abstract, global terms, they become disconnected from the concrete realities of their own society." Isn't this the kind of claim that we could pretty easily test by asking which students most identify as global citizens and then see if there's a correlation (or not) to their involvement in their own society?
From my albeit anecdotal understanding of my students at Howard University many of them are deeply engaged as global citizens, in the sense that they are interested in solving problems in Africa and throughout the world, but they also do very engaged activities like alternative spring break throughout the country, where they build houses, teach classes, and serve people in local communities. It may well be that people who care about global problems also care about local problems, and that the two experiences inform each other. In any case most of the students I am familiar with do not end up living in the countries they practice global citizenship in. They come back to the US and often return to their hometowns. But, as I say, this seems to be the kind of thing that could be explored better by a statistical study and probably a series of case studies. I couldn't tell from your post if you have any case experience with global citizenship.
Finally, I see from the title of your Substack that you are into all things "classical." One of the most famous global citizens in Greek mythology is Odysseus, "who saw the cities of many men and got to know their minds" (Odyssey 1.3). And of course another global citizen was the historian Herodotus. I don't think we know anything about his civic engagement in Halicarnassus, but I think he did humanity an eternal good deed by getting to know the customs of other cities and nations and reporting them to his Greek audience.
Odysseus ultimately returned home. His intention from the start of his travels. Where he put a bad situation to right.
Late in Return of the King, Tolkien records this exchange between Gandalf and the hobbits:
“Well, we’ve got you with us,” said Merry, “so things [in the Shire] will soon be cleared up.”
“I am with you at present,” said Gandalf, “but soon I shall not be. I am not coming to the Shire. You must settle its affairs yourselves; that is what you have been trained for. Do you not yet understand?”
In his letters, Tolkien once referred to this as the most important line in the three books. Why? The hobbits had just helped “save Middle Earth.” Quite the accomplishment. Yet, the whole point was to prepare them to liberate their own small land? Hmmm.
I find the arguments here a bit at cross purpose, as I’ve noted elsewhere. If by “global citizen” one simply means “shows true care for people regardless of where they live,” well, that’s good.
If, however, by “global citizen” one posits a globe-spanning state to which one owes allegiance. Then count me out.
Christ was offered one while fasting in the desert. He categorically rejected it. God, too, weighed in when in Shinar people started a shared building project.
I look at the clowns in Brussels, my “betters” at Davos and the Club of Rome and respond, “A pox on them all.”
I’m just a hobbit. I love best what I know best. I don’t think that makes me a bad person. A cranky old man, maybe.
C.S. Lewis was on the nail as ever: "It is a great deal easier to be enthusiastic about Humanity with a capital 'H' than it is to love individual men and women, especially those who are uninteresting, exasperating, depraved, or otherwise unattractive. Loving everybody in general may be an excuse for loving nobody in particular."
The further from home, the more the Mrs. Jellyby.