Compatriots and Everyone

Diogenes called himself a citizen of the world. Cosmopolitans take him at his word: each person counts the same, and a border is a line on a map, not in morality. Martha Nussbaum pictures our loyalties as circles, with the whole of humanity outermost. Her task is to draw that outer circle inward.

David Miller answers for the nation. Compatriots share a public culture, a history and institutions they keep up together. That sharing makes special duties, as a family or a club does. We may put our own first, so long as we do no harm to outsiders and meet basic duties to everyone.

Both sides agree that strangers count. They differ on whether being born inside one set of borders adds to what we owe, and how much. Nussbaum calls the nation a morally irrelevant fact. Miller calls it the setting where justice gets done.

The hospital fund

Olamide runs a charity and has to split a fund. One half could go to a hospital in his own town. Or it could go to a clinic abroad, where the same money would treat four times as many people. His board member Rhian says the townspeople pay the taxes and volunteer the hours; the charity exists because of them.

Olamide says a sick child abroad is not less sick. They settle on a split, and both admit the argument did not end. Only the meeting did.

Try this today Notice one thing today that your country gives you and a stranger abroad lacks; ask whether you owe that stranger anything because of it.