Identity politics is exactly who we are

Pat Buchanan writes:

Hillary Clinton called them “the deplorables.” Barack Obama called them losers who “cling” to their Bibles, bigotries and guns.

To President Jean-Claude Juncker of the European Commission, they are “these populist, nationalists, stupid nationalists ... in love with their own countries.”

Well, “stupid” they may be, and, yes, they do love their countries, but last week they gave Juncker a thrashing, as they shook up the West and the world. ...

Yet even larger lessons emerge from these two elections.

Liberalism appears to be losing its appeal. A majority in the world’s largest democracy, India, consciously used their democratic right to vote—to advance sectarian and nationalist ends. ...

Identity politics, people identifying themselves by their ethnicity, nationality, race, culture and faith, appears to be the world’s future.

Even leftists are bowing to the new reality.

“Identity politics is exactly who we are and it’s exactly how we won,” says Stacy Abrams, the African American Democrat who almost won the Georgia governor’s race. “By centering communities in Georgia, we . . . increased voter participation, we brought new folks to the process.”

The Democratic Party is now a coalition easily identifiable by race, ethnicity, ideology and gender — African American, Hispanic, Asian, LGBTQ, feminist and Green.

Our Founding Fathers believed we Americans were a new people, a separate, unique, identifiable people, a band of brothers, who had risked their lives and shed their blood. Liberals believe we are held together by abstract ideas and ideals, such as democracy, equality and diversity.

This is correct. Liberal politicians have sold out to identity politics.

When America was a White country, democracy was a sensible system to promote liberalism. Countries all over the world are discovering that the combination of democracy and ethnic diversity result in identity politics.

If India is a democracy, and a large majority are Hindu, then we should expect government to favor the Hindus.

The 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign was based entirely on identity politics, as the Democrat Party has gone increasingly in that direction for 30 years. Get used to it. The history books may record Donald Trump as one of our last politicians to try to avoid identity politics.