“There is a lot of learned material written about nationalism - scholar...” — Anne Applebaum Quote

There is a lot of learned material written about nationalism - scholarly books and papers, histories of it, theories of it - but most of us understand that nationalism, at its heart, at its very deepest roots, is about a feeling of superiority: We are better than you. Our country is better than your country.

What links Donald Trump, Viktor Orban, Andrej Babis, Jaroslaw Kaczynski and Marine Le Pen is one simple character trait: hypocrisy. These politicians aren't tribunes of the people, they are hucksters. They aren't bitter enemies of the Western system; they are con artists who seek to profit from it.

If we can't have a public debate because the information space is so polluted, or because people are afraid of the reactions of organized trolls, then we can't really have meaningful elections anymore, either.

In Belarus, the government is a kind of presidential monarchy with no checks, no balances, and no rule of law.

Our deepest wounds when integrated become our greatest power.

I was a hard-times governor. I had to steer my state through the deepest recession since the 1930s. But hey, tough times don't last and tough people do. And can I tell you that Virginians are tough people? We are tough people.

Perhaps faith is a faith in one's self, the belief that one wouldn't feel so moved by the encounter if it weren't divine, a trust in one's own deepest positive responses. To doubt it would involve a self-alienation.

God has been good to me. My faith has been good to me in the moments of deepest suffering, doubt and fear.