Recommended: The End of Identity Politics

Victor David Hanson has another thoughtful piece today worth reading: The End of Identity Politics. America is a nation of immigrants, yet it has succeeded up to now in avoiding the Blakanization and resulting civil strife that so many other countries are facing, because all those immigrants welded themselves within a generation or two into Americans, with a single common language and a more or less common culture. They ceased to be Irish or Polish or German or ..or...or and became "Americans"

Identity politics threatens this process, because it encourages people to see themselves first and foremost as some special, separate group, not like other Americans. Democrats in particular, and Obama and Hillary Clinton especially, thought this was a useful useful political lever (it was for Obama, but not for Hillary Clinton). But it is a dangerous road that leads to the sort of divisions that can bring down a nation.