Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart – Again

by Robert Kagan

although people can point to many recent, proximate causes of its latest manifestation as the Trump movement, the search for such causes misses the point. The problem is not the design of the American system. It is not the Electoral College, which not so long ago favored the Democratic Party much as it today favors Republicans. It is not political polarization per se, which has often shaped American politics. It is not the internet or Fox News. It is not the economy: these movements have flourished in good times as well as bad. It is not this or that war, or any particular foreign policy. The problem is and has always been the people and their beliefs. As in the past, millions of Americans are rebelling against the constitutional order and the liberalism it protects, and millions more, out of blind political allegiance, fear and hatred of the Democratic Party and “woke” culture, and out of ignorance or indifference to the consequences, are willing to go along with their party’s radical antiliberal wing even if it leads to the overthrow of the American system of government and perhaps the dissolution of the nation.