Rejection of Identity Politics Is Part of American History

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I've spent much of the last year promoting, debating and -- let's just be honest -- hawking my latest book, "Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism and Identity Politics is Destroying American Democracy."

An interesting pattern has developed. Of the terms in the subtitle, everyone from my friends in right-wing talk radio to invariably polite liberal NPR hosts -- and the audiences that listen to each of them -- agrees that "tribalism" is bad. I think it's because no party or faction has adopted the term, so each side thinks only their opponents are guilty of it. Similarly, liberals tend to be sympathetic to the idea that populism is bad, largely because they so closely associate it with Donald Trump, though a few remember that Bernie Sanders is a populist, too, and so want to offer caveats about "good" populism and "bad" populism. The same holds for conservatives, only in reverse.

On nationalism, I get the most pushback from the right and the least from the left.
Source: Town Hall
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