Last July, with Donald Trump on the verge of sealing up the
Republican Party's presidential nomination, Ross Douthat authored a column in
the New York Times about the new political battlefield. "[P]erhaps
we should speak no more of left and right, liberals and conservatives,"
the token trad wrote.
"From now on the great political battles will be fought between
nationalists and internationalists, nativists and globalists."
Douthat's sentiment was echoed at the recent CPAC
gathering, where President Trump's chief strategist, Steven Bannon, explained
the difference between economic populists like himself and the jet-setting
Davos crowd. "[W]e're a nation with an economy," he preached to the crowd. "Not an
economy just in some global marketplace with open borders, but we are a nation
with a culture and a reason for being."
It's true that we in the West are undergoing a political
reorganization. The past two years have seen an explosion of nationalist political parties and
personalities. The terms "liberal" and
"conservative," in the popular context, are beginning to lose
relevance. What's replacing them isn't so much party difference, but
class.
The lines of separation between the elites and provincials
has never been clearer. On big, nation-defining issues – trade
agreements, wars, transnational partnerships, necessary credentials for high
office – the divide cuts evenly. Those moneyed, cloistered, and
comfortable welcome globalization and all its attendant benefits. Those
who aren't so well off don't.
But class separation doesn't get to the heart of the
difference between one end of the widening gulf and the other. The
nationalist-globalist frame stems from something different, something more
epistemological.
Politics really comes down to a value judgement: how does
society best organize its collective life?
For nationalists, love of country, its inhabitants, and its
unique character guides law-making. Government is formed solely for the
benefit of citizens. High-minded psalms to the brotherhood of man have
little place in policy.
The globalists are devoted to the biggest community on
Earth: worldwide humanity. To the globally minded activist, there is no
difference between the man next door and the man in a hut in Cambodia.
Each is due equal consideration when it comes to the law.
In his recent New York Times column, David Brooks hits on
this difference bysinging
a dirge to the enlightened
universalism he sees as the cornerstone of the West. "The
Enlightenment included thinkers like John Locke and Immanuel Kant who argued
that people should stop deferring blindly to authority for how to live,"
he explains. But the anti-enlightenment movements of today "don't
think truth is to be found through skeptical inquiry and debate."
Who are these intellect-eschewing dunderheads? Donald
Trump, of course. But also Nigel Farage and Brexit backers, Marine Le Pen
of France, Geert Wilders of the Netherlands, and Viktor Orbán of Hungary.
Each has cultivated popular support by appealing not to passionless
debate, but to deep love of country and, more pointedly, familiarity.
These decidedly anti-intellectual voters act based not on
cool reasoning. They go the polls not to impose their abstract philosophy
on the world. They protect what is theirs, what is close, what they
identify with.
To contrast this limited view of life with the liberal is
to compare soil with sky. Wide open and infinite, the sky is spaceless.
It doesn't shift and sift like dirt through your fingers. It can't
be seen and felt like solid earth.
The nationalist is necessarily parochial, attached to his
specific time and place. The globalist takes the opposite approach.
Not starting from below but above, he takes an all-encompassing view of
mankind and sets to reshape the world in its image. The leftist global
crusader is a firm believer in what Michael Brendan Dougherty calls "the idea of eternal human
progress and moral arcs bending across the universe."
The idea of unstoppable progression demands much from its
acolytes. Do national borders impede immigrants looking for a better
life? Then all barriers must be eliminated. Do some people prefer
those who share their faith, culture, skin color, and history to those who
don't? Then they must be made to take a more universal view toward man
and be shamed for their bigotry. Does the preservation of national wealth
deprive poorer countries of prosperity? Then wealth must be
redistributed, be it in the form of trade, military occupation, or direct
financial transfer.
On and on the reduction goes until all human distinctions
are replaced by the universal, homogeneous, and thus bland and uninteresting
man. When the liberal-globalist achieves this sterile paradise, he'll be
left with mannequins for men, able to recite facile tropes about joyful togetherness.
This "thin view of man," to use the words of Polish philosopher Ryszard Legutko,
can be an anti-civilizing force if left unchecked.
What is the contra to thin humanity? Thick,
obviously. And what does thick entail? It means an acceptance of
complexity, of the infinitudes of thought and emotion within every individual.
"Across a room," writes Ted McAllister, "a conservative
might spy a sack of rapidly degenerating amino acids, but rather than thinking
of the elements that make up the body he sees, he wonders about this creature's
past, its network of relationships, its relationship with books."
Here's where the paradox sets in: while the
nationalist-conservative takes a simple approach to living, his narrow vision
accepts the inner complexity of the individual. He doesn't purport to
have a theory for how all should be governed. Rather, the good he sees is
best for his family, his community, his country. Going any farther
impedes on the right of another nation-dweller to determine his future path.
The political clash before the West has its basis in
distance. How far a man is willing to go to impose his will usually
determines his political allegiance. For those who would stop at their
country's defined border, the influence is growing. How far it grows will
be determined by those who think of their persuasive power as limitless.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/03/the_shift_from_liberalconservative_to_globalistnationalist.html
