Instead, we view nationalism as the practical application of patriotism. The recent worldwide movement toward sovereignty reflects citizens revolting against the transnational structures that serve first the interests of elites like Macron. These arrangements, from the Paris climate accord to the World Trade Organization, have proven especially punitive to American workers — who used their vote in 2016 to demand that our national interests always supersede multilateralism.

Similar sentiments ascend from Britain to Brazil. Perhaps paradoxically, the world will actually achieve greater prosperity and harmony when each sovereign nation stands empowered to first seek its natural prerogatives rather than subservience to the allegedly wise designs of globalist bureaucrats. For example, regarding the Great War that we just commemorated, the actual lesson of history clearly warns that rational nationalism did not spur the violence. Instead, cross-border multilateral security guarantees became the tripwires that detonated global strife.

Nonetheless, a century later internationalist technocrats like Macron decry enlightened nationalism. For Macron, perhaps attacks on America and Trump serve to divert attention from his own disastrously low 21 percent approval ratings at home. Instead, he should embrace the Eastern European example of informed nationalism, evident especially in Poland, which on Sunday celebrated its own profound centennial anniversary of regained independence — largely thanks for America’s insistence during Versailles negotiations. Poland, unlike France and Germany, has resisted multilateral demands that it submit to unfettered migration, and has solidified its relationship with the United States. The ambassadors of Poland and America jointly wrote that that bilateral bond is “stronger than ever.”