Among the many privileges certain Americans enjoy—along with the presumption of competence and driving without being pulled over unless they actually commit a moving violation—is the right to cry out in rage at the sight of political and societal change, to demand that things revert back to how they were before, and to find this demand greeted with understanding and consideration. Indeed, the angry demand for a reversion to the prior order—what we can call the politics of backlash—has been the basis of Republican electoral success for decades. They have held up one social or political development after another and told have voters, "These changes are the symptom and cause of what you have lost." Your standard of living, your hopes for the future, the vibrancy of your community, your security, your place in a society ordered as you would like it, or just the feeling that people like you are on top, where they should be—whenever any of it is threatened, the...

When it comes to public policy, Donald Trump doesn't believe in very much. He has little in the way of strong feelings about abortion or guns or health care, for instance, though he understands that staying consistent with Republican orthodoxy is politically important for him. But there are a few issues he cares deeply about, and has since before he became a politician. Trade is one of them; he thinks that whenever an American buys something made in another country, the country has been made to look the fool and the world is laughing at us . The other major issue on which Trump has firm beliefs is immigration, and now we are truly seeing those beliefs put into practice, and the result is one of the more intense controversies of this presidency. After a lengthy internal argument in which the utility and morality of separating children from their parents when they try to cross the border was debated by Trump administration officials, the hardliners won out. Now, instead of putting...