When did “nationalism” become a dirty word? When it became clear that it resonated with millions of people around the world who have finally recognized the globalist agenda for what it truly is: something that overwhelmingly benefits the few at the expense of the many.

“Anywhere industries based on muscular labor could be outsourced, they often were,” writes Victor Davis Hanson. “Anywhere they could not be so easily outsourced — such as Wall Street, Silicon Valley, the entertainment industry, the media, and academia — consumer markets grew from 300 million to 7 billion. The two coasts with cosmopolitan ports on Asia and Europe thrived.”

Hanson further asserts that “thrived” is putting it far too mildly, noting the rapid accumulation of global wealth by private entities and individuals is historically unprecedented. “The result has been the creation of a new class of millions of coastal hyper-wealthy professionals with salaries five and more times higher than those of affluent counterparts in traditional America,” he explains. “The old working-class Democrat ethos was insidiously superseded by a novel affluent progressivism.”

The rest of America? In a refreshing but nauseating display of candor, the last two Democrat Party standard-bearers referred to us as “bitter clingers” to guns, God, and religion, and a “basket of deplorables,” respectively.

Yet they are hardly alone. In a 2016 column defending globalism, Never-Trumper Kevin Williamson was equally contemptuous. “The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles,” he wrote. “Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin.”

What should happen to such Americans and their towns? “The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die,” Williams asserted.

Such arrogance and conceit should surprise no one. It is emblematic of globalists for whom the “net plus” of international trade, unfettered immigration, and open borders, is a reasonable price to pay for the diminution of national identity and democracy — and the evisceration of patriotism.

French President Emmanuel Macron epitomizes their twisted priorities. “Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism. Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism,” he asserted. “In saying ‘Our interests first, whatever happens to the others,’ you erase the most precious thing a nation can have, that which makes it live, that which causes it to be great and that which is most important: its moral values.”

Macron has a convenient memory. It was American Patriots, the overwhelming majority of whom believed in the greatness of their own nation, who liberated France — twice — at a considerable cost of blood and treasure — twice. That’s as moral as it gets.

Moreover, there is nothing remotely wrong with promoting national self-interest, and it is extremely telling that globalists like Macron believe those interests are nothing more than zero-sum selfishness.

Nothing is more profoundly selfish and self-serving than globalism. Thus when its adherents, such as the artists and intellectuals promoting a “European Republic,” insist “the sovereignty of states is hereby replaced by the sovereignty of citizens,” we are approaching the heights of intellectual bankruptcy.

Sovereignty of citizens — according to which precepts? The Constitution or Shariah Law? Those that treasure individual liberty, or those that abet the totalitarian collective?

How about sheer practicality? If one wanted a stoplight erected at a dangerous intersection in one’s town, it would be far more practical if the person empowered to do so was the local alderman, not one’s congressional representative in Washington, DC — or if the one-worlders had their way, some extra-national bureaucrat in Brussels. Top-down government is the antithesis of citizen sovereignty and empowerment, which is why the Constitution put severe limitations on it.

Limitations the globalists would like to obliterate. Thus it is no surprise that they and their media allies seek to paint anyone who resists their agenda as racist, tribalist, and xenophobic.

And if all else fails, anti-Semitic. Thus globalist is “often understood as code for ‘Jews,’ so this language is activating and traumatizing for a lot of Jews,” asserts Rabbi Rachel Barenblat. Columnist Gideon Rachman concurs. “Mr Trump and his European equivalents have also talked up the myth that dastardly globalists, like [George] Soros, are encouraging and funding illegal migration,” he writes. “In doing so, they fan the paranoid fantasies that led to attacks like the mass killing that took place at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. … For many anti-Semites, ‘globalist’ has become a synonym for Jew.”

For many nationalists, the anti-Semite trope is the last refuge of globalist scoundrels. And while globalists insist nationalism fueled both world wars, the truth is exactly the opposite. “Instead, cross-border multilateral security guarantees became the tripwires that detonated global strife,” explains columnist Steve Cortes, with regard to WWI.

WWII? Directly attributable to the globalist-oriented League of Nations and its utopian, one world vision that ultimately became untenable. “Great nations will not allow the claims or commands of multinational institutions to take precedence over vital interests,” Pat Buchanan explains. “The crucial choice — of non-intervention, sanctions, or war — will ultimately be dictated by national interests alone.”

National interests that are anathema to the globalist agenda. Thus, a United Nations dominated by thugs, dictators, communists, and socialists has released a report calling for the silencing of anyone who objects to the globalist agenda. According to the UN, nationalism poses a “sobering threat to racial equality by fueling discrimination, intolerance and the creation of institutions and structures that will have enduring legacies of racial exclusion.”

Such nonsense dovetails quite nicely with the globalist quest for open borders. Any American opposing a de facto invasion isn’t concerned with the depression of wages, unlawful job competition, or aspirations of permanent power already evinced by allowing illegals to vote. One is merely a racist xenophobe.

Remarkably, many of the same people who insist immigration per se is an economic imperative are also advocating for a Universal Basic Income, because AI and automation will replace millions of jobs. That is an irreconcilable disconnect — until one realizes that millions of people robbed of ambition and industriousness, while simultaneously beholden to an oligarchy of “benevolent” globalist paymasters, would be quite pliable.

Free trade (that isn’t really free) is no salve for subjugation.

Neither is trade wholly removed from patriotism and/or morality. Boeing Airlines lost a sanctions-induced $20 billion deal with Iran. If it lays off workers as a result, wouldn’t most Americans prefer those layoffs to providing EMP-attack-facilitating jetliners to the world’s foremost state sponsor of terror? How many American corporations abide China’s rampant stealing of intellectual property and its increasing military belligerence as a reasonable tradeoff for access to its markets?

“In our country, many elites in corporate C-suites and coastal newsrooms bristle at the notion of American nationalism because they identify far more with Paris, France than with Paris, Illinois,” writes Cortes. “But no matter how loudly the Davos crowd complains, President Trump was elected with a clear mandate to govern America for Americans.”

Make that Americans who still want to be Americans. Going forward, how many Americans, long taught to be contemptuous of their own nation, will prefer to be “citizens of the world?”