Now as throughout the campaign, we hear liberals and neoconservatives rail against the nationalism espoused by Donald Trump that also resonates among tens of millions of regular Americans. Elitists and media messengers likewise express horror when Mr. Trump announces that in all matters, be they domestic or foreign, his policy and attitude will be “America first.”

Why is loving one’s nation and putting its countrymen first, which is the definition of nationalism, so offensive to liberals, elitists, and neoconservatives? Why are those who imbibe the natural love and preference of citizen toward country and countrymen immediately scorned and accused of harboring the latest cardinal “sin” called xenophobia?

Nothing riles left liberals more than nationalism, which places a preference for one’s country and its unique ideals and traditions over another country’s. Nationalism is the foremost obstacle standing in the way of socialism and global transnationalism, wherein nations purposely shed and lose their identity and distinctiveness in favor of a bland, non-distinct shell. Accordingly, the concept of nationalism leaves the liberal media gate already tainted and maligned, a type of taboo among “enlightened” and acceptable company.

Demonizing nationalism allows liberals to impugn the motives and integrity of those who love our historic American ways, thereby marginalizing them.

However, nationalism, especially in a good-willed country like America, is a positive and natural sentiment. Love of nation, place of origin and residence is a fundamental human attachment, as is family; to the contrary, indifference to nationhood and disparagement of American nationalism is what is abnormal. The incessant push for social engineering among liberals often lies in their emotional detachment and recoil from American society’s natural sentiments.

It is not “white supremacism” when people with self-respect display love and admiration for their background and history, wish to defend it, and are proud of it. It is normal and healthy. The opposite is rootlessness. Nor are sincere calls for the maintenance of Western civilization and the Judeo-Christian ethos, as liberals today accuse, “code words for racism”.

The purpose of the shaming we now see coming from liberals against fellow Americans is to muzzle us, so that what we believe is no longer able to be heard or transmitted. It is an enforcement of our political impotence. Longer term, the never-ending demonization is designed to end our civic and religious heritage. Through left-wing bullying and scorn, our heritages are being replaced by the new theologies of progressivism and non-distinctiveness.

There is also the smugness factor. Among the influential are elitists who feel morally and socially superior to their countrymen and see themselves not as nationalists but citizens of the world, apart and above the hoi polloi living outside urban beltways. For them, cosmopolitanism over Americanism is a badge of sophistication, a way of displaying their more worldly “understanding and taste.”

Beyond their smugness is a desire to be a member of a ruling class entitled to govern and be well-connected, not to mention the financial benefits that come with such membership.

As for neoconservatives, many are former Democrats who became alarmed at liberalism’s excesses. Neoconservatism distinguishes itself from historic (paleo) conservatism. While the neocons discarded some of their former liberal ideals, their fear of nationalism remained.

For many, nationalism is an outlook reminding them of Nazi Germany and other European countries where nationalism was used to demarcate between the native populations as opposed to the “other,” Jews being the “other.” This non-acceptance of the outsider led to decades of discrimination, pogroms, and eventually the Holocaust against the Jews. Their fear is understandable but misdirected.

Too many seem unable to distinguish between the toxic nationalism of pre-World War II Europe and what has been the favorable norm and condition here in America. America is not Europe — indeed it was born in rebellion against European attitudes and prejudices. American nationalism is a positive phenomenon, since it is based on the quintessential American belief of fair play, meritocracy, idealism, and is kept in place generation after generation by an overwhelmingly good willed people who are philo-Semitic and inspired by the Old Testament. The truth is that the mushrooming anti-Semitism today is found in the global Left, with its partnership with Islam, and within precincts of the Democrat party.

Many making the accusations of xenophobia live in rarified societies immune from the consequences of Open Borders and would accept “multi-cultural” enclaves governed, for example, by sharia law, blithely indifferent to its effects on the normative freedoms of red-staters. Our need to halt open borders is rooted not in racism but the most profoundly normal and human instinct: the need to protect one’s self and family. This is what we mean by America First.

The best way I know of describing the concept of thinking first of Americans over such things as open borders, overseas nation building, and protecting American lives and jobs is the term America First. Simply because Charles Lindbergh, an anti-Semite, used the phrase does not invalidate the idea nor today fill it with anti-Semitism.

Those against American nationalism seem to admire and push for transnationalism. Transnationalism takes power from a country’s people and imposes laws and new norms from above by a global ruling class based on a universal standard of one size fits all. Transnationalism, as practiced by Obama, Merkel, the EU, The Hague and Scandinavian leaders, is the Left’s universalist dystopia come true. It targets for opprobrium the patriotic segment of the population wishing to preserve and live by the historic values of their country.

It is not American nationalism that warrants our alarm, rather the transnationalism of the American left, whose goal is the forced removal from us, in the name of a “morality and tolerance,” those things that made us who we are. In other words, our very identity… and future.