Eugene: What do you think about the European refugee crisis? Thomas: Europe’s current crisis is that it is increasingly forced to choose between its pretensions of liberal democracy—based on the idea of universal equality—and the fact that its provision of those rights is absolutely limited by territorial, political, legal, and economic borders. The real crisis is that one cannot have both. Thousands of years of history have demonstrated this thesis, but the 21st century will force us to realize it. What is happening right now in Europe demonstrates precisely my thesis that this will be the century of the migrant. The international nation-state system (UN) and now the infra-national nation-state system (EU) are unable to accomodate the figure of the migrant. What we are witnessing today in the brutal deaths of refugees coming to Europe via boat and Mexican migrants is the demonstration of this failure. The historical connection of contemporary migrants to the larger historical figure of the migrant has been explicit in the media. In the UK, the Guardian recently published an editorial comment on Europe’s crisis that ends by describing refugees as the “fearful dispossessed” who are “rattling Europe’s gates.” Although unfamiliar to some, others will know that the phrase “rattling the gates” refers to a very specific historical moment: the Barbarian invasion of Rome