Former President George W. Bush’s speech today was an important one. I’m skeptical that it will change anything, but this was a speech about very big (and pressing) ideas, coming from the last Republican president, and quite pointedly (if not explicitly) directed toward the current Republican president.

Since everyone will make the obvious points (mainly how refreshing it is for someone of his stature to talk about values and to reject the evils of bigotry and white supremacy), a larger discussion is in order. To facilitate this, I will refer to a few quotes from his speech.

“Our identity as a nation, unlike other nations, is not determined by geography or ethnicity, by soil or blood,” Bush averred. Here, Bush echoed remarks made this week by Sen. John McCain.

Bush is correct, of course, but the siren call of identity politics is growing louder for one simple reason: Arguing that America is a creedal nation united by shared ideas feels esoteric—especially in a world where we have fewer and fewer shared values, and where tribal identity is increasingly the greatest predictor for where you will come down on any given issue. Bush does suggest the remedy of “civic learning,” which makes sense to me.