What’s Dark or Dangerous about Of the People, By the People and For the People?

What’s Dark or Dangerous about Of the People, By the                                     People and For the People?

    Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal 11/11/17

Pundits are calling it populism, nationalism, and when they really wish to diminish it, nativism and tribalism.  Whatever it’s called, the growing movement in America and Europe that argues for putting national interests before globalism is well afloat.

“Globalism” has always sounded trendy and non-substantive.  It is the political term for the ideology that is in a struggle with nationalism.  It is expressed musically by the jingle, “We are the world / we are the people.”  Google it and hear the jingle’s pleasant tones.  Wallow in its love and goodwill.

There’s nothing wrong with Stevie Wonder, Kenny Rogers and others bunching up to sing about peace and brotherhood.  There’s everything wrong with governmental policy that benefits cronies and destroys jobs.

Let’s back up and grant “globalism” a measure of credibility.  We doubtlessly live in an interconnected world.  Free trade, which all Americans benefit from, requires signing trade deals with other nations.  International commerce has helped build America. 

Even so, America and Europe’s populist outrage, their cries for their governments to attend to national needs first, and their demand for secure borders all indicate that the globalist outlook has extended too far.  Surely this is the chief reason that Trump’s slogan, “America First,” took hold.

This slogan has merit.  To have national sentiments is natural.   Why the media denigrates such sentiments is a puzzle.  Or maybe it isn’t.

Why can’t television’s talking heads understand that tribes preceded nations and that families preceded tribes?  Maybe they didn’t take Sociology 101.  But could they not read a little bit of history and ponder human nature?

Here are a few questions for those who consider President Trump’s “America First” policies dark and dangerous.  Why did Britain exit the European Union?  Why the Catalonian effort to exit Spain?  Why the secession of America’s southern states?  The separation of the colonies from Britain? Why the eternal Quebec question in Canada or the breakup of Yugoslavia into at least 5 tiny nations?  Etc., etc.

It’s secession for self-determination, dude!  It’s that birds of a linguistic, ethnic, and creedal feather flock together.  Globalists, a la Stevie Wonder and friends, central bankers, tech titans, corporation CEO’s, and many politicians seem not to understand that the rest of us understand that nobody is a citizen of the world. “The world” doesn’t grant citizenship or zip codes.  Our citizenship is in nations.

Donald Trump didn’t fire up the nationalist/populist locomotive.  He only acknowle stoked the fire, asked to be the engineer/conductor, and was granted his wish.  In doing so he confounded our political terminology (liberal vs. conservative), turning our eyes and emphasis to globalism versus nationalism.  He raised high the poetic line of Robert Frost, “Good fences make good neighbors.”  He also signaled either a post-party era in American politics or at least an identity crisis in both parties.

Ironically, Trump was a Democrat turned Republican, a fact that didn’t seem to bother Rust Belt union members or evangelical Republicans.  Since 63 million voters ain’t no chicken feed, it’s obvious he struck a chord with the vast middle class.  This is populism, the result of one of Trump’s earliest speeches in which he said, “The GOP will be the party of the American worker.”  Currently the employment rate testifies to his claim.

No wonder the media and Democrats have shifted from shock to anger to daily efforts to stymie a duly-elected president.  Embarrassed, they now tout polls that claim he is not liked.  If the polls were so wrong about his chances of election, however, why should we believe what they say about his favorability rating?

Globalism has been good for the globalists, but a job-sucking monster for Joe Lunchbox. Manufacturing, where art thou?   Globalists need not ask for whom the bell tolls.  It tolls for them.  Trumpism is making sure of that.

America is a creedal nation.  Our creed is enshrined in law books, documents, on plaques, and on statues, or on those not pulled down.  Among other great ideals, that creed says E pluribus Unum, or “Out of many, one.”  To that we can now add Vox populi, or “the voice of the people.”  That’s populism too.  And it is not a cloak for anyone’s ethnic or religious bigotry as the talking heads claim. 

It’s simply a re-claiming of what Lincoln said 154 years ago.  It’s a reflection of a poem penned by a Lincoln admirer, Walt Whitman: “The People, Yes!”

Roger Hines

11/8/17