Goodbye, Left and Right, by R.R. Reno.

Flagged down on his way to the polls in a ritzy part of Paris, a French voter in the presidential showdown had this to say about his support of Emmanuel Macron: “He’s for globalization, for the EU. I’m a citizen of the world, so he gets my vote.”

That offhand remark was a sign of how politics is changing throughout the West. Whether French socialism or British labor, the pro-worker center-left is collapsing in Europe. It was wiped out in the recent Dutch election. The reason is simple: The driving political questions of our time turn on an increasingly stark contrast between nationalism and globalism.

Why?

Today, globalism, in one form or another, unites the establishment left and right. …

The political establishment quarrels over a great deal, but it shares the metaphysical dream of a more open and fluid world. The left leans in the direction of multiculturalism, where political correctness operates as an obligatory ideology of inclusion. The right tilts in the direction of free markets, even to the point of describing national citizenship as rent-seeking. But the root idea is the same. When in doubt, open things up!

The metaphysical dream that has dominated the West for decades is being challenged. People don’t weep because of tax proposals. But a temporary ban on travel from a few Muslim countries evokes anguish. That’s because it’s a direct assault on a central tenet of globalism—the belief that “openness” and other deconsolidating motifs will midwife a better future.

Or maybe it simply defies the PC-driven leftists ascendancy, in which the left find electoral majorities and hand themselves all those plum taxpayer funded jobs and other goodies.

hat-tip Stephen Neil