The great political struggle of the past 20 years is not nationalism vs. globalism. It's nationalism vs. authoritarianism. Nation-states are the only way common people have a chance to restrain the power of the elite and hold them accountable. The odds are still against them.
Of course individual nations can still become authoritarian horrors, but globalism makes it much easier for the elite to impose their will without having to worry about getting voted out of office or otherwise held accountable for their failures.
Only a strong and enlightened nation-state can provide the instruments needed to restrain authoritarianism: constitutional limits on government, sovereign rights for individuals, laws that bind both the powerful and powerless, meaningful elections, checks and balances.
None of those instruments is GUARANTEED to come with nationalism, of course. The people must insist on them and fight to keep them. But without the nation-state, there is precious little chance any of those weapons against authoritarianism will exist at all.
The bigger our political units become - from town, to state, to nation, to transnational governments - the less power we have over the ruling elite. They stop fearing the people. They no longer doubt their own wisdom. They write rules to favor themselves without a second thought.
And the larger our political unit becomes, the more we lose the supreme power we have over our rules, even MORE important than voting them out of office: the power to say "no," to refuse, to move out of a jurisdiction that imposes laws we disagree with, to vote with our feet.
Where do we go to vote against the globalists? Where do we go to escape from their decrees, if we judge them foolish or immoral? Where can we put our wealth to keep it from their grasping hands? Nowhere.
We are lectured by the globalists that it's immoral for people to govern themselves according to their values and shared interests - well, SOME people, anyway. Some get to be as parochial and selfish as they want. Some are not expected to meet minimal standards of civilization.
That is the inherent and inescapable corruption at the heart of globalism: its standards aren't REALLY applied "globally." More is demanded of some than others. Free passes are handed out for selfishness and barbarism. Some are damned for "protectionism," others applauded.
Only people who govern themselves, AND take full responsibility for their actions, can be truly free - and only that brand of freedom, that mixture of liberty and responsibility, can defeat authoritarianism. Everything else just slows the march of authoritarianism down a little.
The globalists are arriving at a "consensus" that authoritarianism is necessary to deal with great crises, beginning with the coronavirus - but by no means ending there. They believe many other crises are so severe that democracy must be suspended, no votes or resistance allowed.
The elite have believed this for a long time, but they're saying it more openly after Covid-19. The "Great Reset" would reboot the free world with authoritarianism as its new operating system. They'll keep the footprint of this OS small, they swear!
What we'll end up with is a racket where vicious hardcore nationalist nations like China prosper while mouthing the pieties of globalism. It will be Chumponomics on a planetary scale - a system that only works because some suckers play the rules and get fleeced.
The emerging system is pretty much written from the ground up to give advantages to aggressive, self-interested despotisms. The less you have to worry about the opinions of your subjects, the fretting of international media, or the demands of NGOs, the better you will fare.
Our choice, then, is between nation-states where the government is constrained by law and has a real sense of duty to its people, or a globalist arrangement constrained by nothing, with a managerial elite that feels no duty toward anyone but itself and its convictions. /end
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