The four friends meet for a walk along a beautiful lake. After a while, their conversation turns to the United States.

Researcher: When we speak of the United States of America, we are essentially speaking of a country of migrants. Perhaps we should call it that from now on—so instead of “United States,” simply “United Migrants”?

Philosopher: That is an amusing idea. I agree. The myth of unity is certainly stronger than the myth of origin, and thus it binds people’s souls more firmly. “States” suggests structure, order, power; “Migrants,” by contrast, suggests movement, need, longing. It was the migrants who created the states; in other words, the longing ones entered into a covenant that crystallized into structures of power. This is both the root of American success and a contradiction at the same time.

Theist: It is also a spiritual contradiction. Many who emigrated to America fled from religious persecution. They sought a promised land. And yet they transformed it into a land of temptation—of gold, success, self-redemption. I see in this both a new Exodus and a new Babylon.

Atheist: What astonishes me is how religious America has remained despite the Enlightenment. Europe has grown more skeptical, but not the U.S. Perhaps this stems from the migrant’s longing. Whoever leaves everything behind wants to believe in something. And if faith in God is absent, then one believes in oneself—the American Dream. But that, too, is a form of faith.

Researcher: Interesting. The American Dream as a secularized eschatology—the paradise at the end of toil. But what happens to the migrants who do not succeed? Who become lost in the vastness of America?

Philosopher: They become invisible. Their stories vanish in the shadows of skyscrapers, highways, and Hollywood narratives. America loves winners. There is the saying, “Go big or go home.” Yet every migrant begins as a wounded one. In this sense, they are also the “United Wounded of America.”

Theist: And perhaps therein lies the possibility of healing—when people cease to see themselves as masters of the land and instead as guests upon God’s earth. When they remember: we were all once strangers. In Egypt. In Europe. In America. We all descend from migrants.

Atheist: I agree with you—though without invoking God. I think it is a matter of humility, an ethics of arrival. Whoever is a migrant is never fully arrived—and precisely in this lies the truth about the human being. We are all wanderers, whether we wish it or not. We are living beings who have, over millions of years, evolved, changed, and settled across the entire planet.

Researcher: Perhaps the history of America should not be written merely as a national history, but as a global narrative of migration. Then we might understand: the world is not divided into nations but into paths, traces, encounters.

Philosopher: “The United Migrants of America”—that would be a more honest founding narrative. Perhaps even a more healing one. For only those who do not forget their origins can share their future with others.

Researcher: Speaking of forgetting—what leaves me speechless is precisely this historical blindness. A country built by migrants now denies entry to migrants and spreads hatred against them. It is as if a tree were to deny its own roots. And not only that—many who are already there are now being uprooted, with brutality.

Philosopher: That is an ancient reflex. When an empire senses its internal order collapsing, it seeks an external enemy. After the Soviet Union came the terrorists, and after the terrorists, migrants became the perfect scapegoats: visibly foreign, often without rights, powerless. The Romans acted this way toward the Germans; the Germans acted this way toward the Slavs. We know this game well... In Rome, in Byzantium, in Vienna, in London… I could name many centers of human history where it was played. Now it is being played in Washington. The paradox of the U.S. is that a young state, so obviously built by migrants, now, for lack of other enemies, sees new migrants as its scapegoats.

Theist: It is the fear of the Other—but also the fear of oneself. Migrants remind the settled that they, too, were once fleeing hunger, war, poverty. Yet later generations of Americans have suppressed this memory and replaced it with the myth of the victor: they are the strongest, the best, the winners. Those who repress their own story are often harsh toward those who live out the same story today. They do not empathize. How could they? Winners do not wish to identify with losers.

Atheist: I see here above all a psychological phenomenon: the fear of the majority of becoming a minority. The identity of the white Protestant middle class is dissolving. At that point, arguments no longer matter—only walls, deportations, slogans.

Theist: But walls are useless if an empire collapses from within. America has lost its moral narrative. Once it was the hope of freedom. Today it is the struggle for possession. Whoever sees themselves as an owner protects their property. Whoever sees themselves as a pilgrim shares their bread.

Researcher: This can also be traced historically. Empires fall when they cease to integrate. When China closed the Silk Road in the Middle Ages, it lost its world-connecting power. When the Roman Empire sealed its borders and ceased to admit “barbarians,” decline followed. Integration is not a luxury—it is a survival strategy.

Theist: Jesus said: “I was a stranger, and you welcomed me.” This was not merely a moral command—it was a metaphysical truth. Every stranger is Christ in the garment of the Other. Whoever expels him ultimately expels God himself. And Americans, generally speaking, are quite Christian…

Atheist: Or, in secular terms: whoever drives out the Other drives themselves into solitude. For without an external gaze, the soul of a nation withers. Yet the factories run, the economy booms, the U.S. still wants migrants—but only the “good” ones.

Philosopher: And therein lies the moral decay—whoever accepts people only as what they are forgets their capacity to become. Moreover, there is no identity without alterity. Only in the mirror of the stranger do I recognize myself. If America expels the “bad” foreigners, it also expels its own self-perception. That is the difference between governing a state and running a business: a business pursues a concrete goal and therefore needs people with certain skills; exclusion can thus be justified. But a state is life itself—it can function only if it allows the full spectrum of what life entails, and draws boundaries solely where someone threatens the safety of others—that is why we have prisons.

Researcher: It is paradoxical: the more globalized the world becomes, the louder the calls for isolation.

Theist: Perhaps this time is also a trial. A call to repentance. For what does it profit a person if they gain the whole world but lose their soul? America has gained much—but what of the souls of Americans?

Atheist: Perhaps that is the decisive question—not only for America but for all of us. What do we do with our power when we are afraid of compassion? Perhaps it is fear of evil, because we perceive ourselves so much as good that we can only project our darker aspects—our capacity for malice—onto others.

Philosopher: Perhaps we stand before the choice of whether to open a new chapter in human history—or to repeat the final chapter of empires. I, as a cosmopolitan, feel unhappy, for I am an earth-dweller without a state. When a world state becomes reality, then I will be a citizen of the earth. And do you know what else?

Researcher: Of course. In the world state there will be no borders, and thus no migrants—everyone will be human and citizen everywhere, and thus at home. The planet as home—yes, I too long for that future in which all people of the world begin to feel this way.

The friends laugh, continue for a while with private conversation, and then take their leave.