  Often, though, the critic’s arguments about psychological possibility are actually run together with desirability claims. The critic says that the elimination of a special motivating attachment to fellow-citizens is not possible, but the critic means that the elimination of special motivating attachments to fellow-citizens will make a certain desirable form of political life impossible. To respond to this sort of argument, the cosmopolitan has two routes open. First, she can deny the claim itself. Perhaps the viability of politics as usual depends not upon certain beliefs that fellow-citizens deserve more of one’s service, but upon commitments to the polity itself. If strictly cosmopolitan patriotism is a possibility, it lives in a commitment to a universal set of principles embodied in a particular political constitution and a particular set of political institutions. If such commitment is enough for desirable politics, then the anti-cosmopolitan is disarmed. But second, the cosmopolitan can of course also deny the value of the form of political life that is posited as desirable. At this point, moral commitments run over into a discussion of political theory.