Nationalist populism is a hostile reaction to globalization and its transformation of nation-states. As I argued in a previous Starting Points essay, what makes this movement “nationalist” is the angry sentiment among populists that elites today are rootless cosmopolitans who have betrayed their native countries. The “Davos Man” is despised because he supposedly regards all […]
Plutocrats and Demagogues: The Prophetic Warning of Montesquieu
The French political thinker Baron de Montesquieu predicted the divisiveness of our current political climate. He also anticipated the two major threats likely to emerge in large democratic republics like the United States: plutocrats and tyrant demagogues. Historians may one day regard the 21st Century as the epoch in which the steady march of globalization […]
