Overall history is not bending toward happy acceptance of ever-larger government at home. Nor toward submersion of national powers and identities into large and inherently undemocratic international organizations. The nation-state remains the focus of most peoples’ loyalties, and in a time of economic and cultural diffusion, as Yuval Levin argues in his recent book The Fractured Republic, big government policies designed for an age of centralization have become increasingly dysfunctional.
Barack Obama doesn’t seem to have noticed this, at least until some time between nine and ten o’clock election night. Shrewder center-left politicians who have shown they know how to win elections have. Bill Clinton urged his wife’s campaign managers to put her out in rural areas speaking to voters’ concerns. The thirty-something geniuses she installed in her trendy Brooklyn headquarters knew better.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, speaking in Washington this week, said, “We have to pay attention to culture and identity,” and argued that in response to Islamist extremism, “Political correctness can’t get in the way.”
Such advice suggests that a sharp shift in current leftist strategy, which includes “identity politics” appeals to minorities at home and obeisance to the wisdom of supranational entities like the Paris climate change conference and the European Union.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member