Cosmopolitanism, tribalism, and Catholicism

I thought this piece, by Ross Douthat, was excellent.   My own sense is -- and the post-Brexit commentary has pretty much confirmed this sense -- that Catholics (or, Catholic intellectuals anyway) tend to be at least warm to, and even enthusiastic about, trans- and international groups, structures, and initiatives (e.g., the United Nations, the E.U., etc.) and so are often concerned about what they perceive as particularistic nationalism (which can, certainly, sometimes be cause for concern).  Still, I think Douthat is spot-on when he says (and this is just a taste of the piece): 

. . . Genuine cosmopolitanism is a rare thing. It requires comfort with real difference, with forms of life that are truly exotic relative to one’s own. It takes its cue from a Roman playwright’s line that “nothing human is alien to me,” and goes outward ready to be transformed by what it finds.

The people who consider themselves “cosmopolitan” in today’s West, by contrast, are part of a meritocratic order that transforms difference into similarity, by plucking the best and brightest from everywhere and homogenizing them into the peculiar species that we call “global citizens.”

This species is racially diverse (within limits) and eager to assimilate the fun-seeming bits of foreign cultures — food, a touch of exotic spirituality. But no less than Brexit-voting Cornish villagers, our global citizens think and act as members of a tribe. . . .

I'll only add, echoing Douthat, that I experience more of what seems like genuine human diversity through my (beloved) youth baseball-softball program (rec league, not "travel") than I do at academic conferences in our global super-cities.