Blowback A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump

by Miles Taylor

If you listen to the intellectual architects of the MAGA movement, openness is the enemy. The postwar focus on free trade, open travel, and political integration have created “the forgotten man.” Globalization has left working-class people behind and made Western nations soft. Manufacturing jobs have vanished, stolen away by developing nations. Immigrants have flooded democracies, undoing a white Judeo-Christian culture, and institutions like the European Union have weakened the West. The myth conveniently ignores crucial facts. In the same period, the West saw an explosion in economic prosperity (GDP per capita soared year over year), unprecedented levels of security (armed conflict among democracies declined), and a surge in political freedom (democracies went from a minority of the world to the majority of nations). Regardless, pro-Trump forces want to turn back the clock. They are urging U.S. allies to embrace anti-immigrant policies and economic protectionism, from Britain and France to Hungary and Italy. A select group of foreign leaders are eager to see this happen. They want the United States and its allies to retreat, put up their walls, and look inward. Those observers are not our friends.