I was a confirmed cynic.
After all, how could a country be stronger because of divisions? How could a people seemingly so fragmented long survive in a world where other countries appeared much more united?
As I mentioned earlier, I spent my summer in Vienna, Austria. It's a charming city, with beautiful tree-lined boulevards and music literally in the air. The people are generally friendly and hospitable enough. They also all look the same.
When I and my fellow students grew bored, we traveled to Prague, Budapest and Bratislava. These cities were likewise beautiful. And there were certainly minority groups present, such as the Gypsies in Hungary.
These groups, however, were generally marginalized from mainstream society.
What really brought home the idea that differences are to be celebrated and learned from was the group's two-week excursion to Bosnia-Herzegovina. In the early 1990s that area's politicians exploited the fears of the population to the point that neighbors raped and killed neighbors and families of mixed parentage were literally ripped apart. Groups accused one another of eating babies, wanting to take all the land for themselves and other outrages.
These terrible events happened in part because the politicians were able to convince their ethnic groups that their culture could not be protected in a unified country, so they must fight to create new, pure nations.
Things that were not Serbian, or Croat, or Bosniac, were bad -- just as today in this country some seek to label things as "un-American," and therefore bad.
The result was a war that killed tens of thousands and Europe's worst ethnic cleansing since the Holocaust. This is not just academic. Today you can walk through Sarajevo and see the effects. Many of the women there will never have the chance to build a life with their childhood sweethearts because so many were killed in the fighting.
