When in France in November with other leaders to commemorate a century since the close of World War I, President Trump was treated crudely by Emmanuel Macron, the French president, who, in front of an entire assembly of world leaders, derided President Trump’s policy of nationalism. Aside from the imperious Frenchness of it all, Macron was able to be condescending because he knew he had a globalist cheering squad back in the United States who would relish Macron’s put-down of President Trump and the concept of nationalism itself. For, here in the U.S. there are, sadly, hundreds of trans-nationalist elitists who are against putting America first, against a policy and President prioritizing the needs of American workers, and against placing our security and military over other countries. They constitute most of the Deep State.

Scarier, at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Berlin, Angela Merkel of Germany asserted: “Nation-states must today be prepared to give up their sovereignty.” When speaking of her own country, she went on to say: “The people are not a group who define themselves as the German people.”

Merkel, Macron, and other Western European heads of state are globalists, strong advocates for a European Union that erases the borders between European countries; so that when a jihadist enters one country he is blithely free to enter another country or city like Strasbourg. This Open Borders policy casts aside national sovereignty as something archaic and non-inclusive. The leaders of these countries willingly forfeit their economic autonomy to unelected bureaucrats in Brussels. The result of all this, most often purposeful, is a severe diminution of those cultural and traditional values, and homespun rituals, that determine a country’s identity, ending up maligning and erasing a country’s history.

In contrast, President Trump doesn’t want this for America. Indeed, most Americans don’t. We are not trans-nationalists or Obama-like “citizens of the world,” rather nationalists who love our history and identity and are proud of who we were and who we are. But, the political Left here in America is not proud of our history and disdains our Judeo-Christian identity. As anti-nationalists, they are 24/7 campaigning to transform America and have us become another Belgium or Sweden. They, like their counterparts in Europe, are universalists.

This zealous push by world leaders and elitists toward globalism is dangerous. It powerfully unites all the leaders and bureaucracies in the world toward the goal of reducing the autonomy and position of the individual nation, and mutes the voices of the people living within what were once sovereign nations. It is against the concept of individual liberty. By reinforcing each other within a political fraternity of globalism, each globalist leader is strengthened, while those who are nationalists are deliberately excluded and thereby weakened. Hopefully, Trump may be the exception who can override them.

The coalescing of leaders toward trans-nationalism and the nullification of citizens within their own countries is as old as the story of the Tower of Babel. “And they said, come let us build us a city and a tower, with its top in heaven, and let us make us a name” (Genesis,11:1-9). It was the first instance of consolidating all power within one governing force. It was a challenge directed against God as well: pierce the heavens. No longer, they declared, were the rights of man bestowed by God to human but from the governing leaders… a ruling class.

Sameness was to be the new rule and paradigm. Political and social hegemony was to be enforced. “They are one people and will have one language.” This was a declaration of war against distinctiveness and against the individual and, thus, liberty.

Nations and the nation-state are sovereign because they are distinctive; take away that distinctiveness, as the Tower of Babel globalists did, and the result is an abolition of the nation state and individual freedom. “Let us not be scattered”: Neither different nor autonomous. Citizenship to an individual country was replaced by being but a citizen of the world; individuals were rendered powerless, spiritually sterile, and purposeless.

This was a push by leaders for secularism; therefore, God, secularism’s opposite, had to intervene to undo the war against Him. God and Biblical religion are necessary ingredients if a nation and people are to remain distinctive and free. Not only because God provides us rights, but because the distinctiveness of a culture and ethos derives from its founding religion and notions of God, including His aspirations for human and man’s conduct.

Those pushing for sameness, universalism, Marxism/socialism, and globalism begin by attacking the Biblical religion and religious freedom. Why? Because religious people stand in the way of government controlling the people; the State’s demand for ultimate loyalty to it is anathema to those whose faith and loyalty is to the Almighty.

Jewish lore tells us of the oppression from Tower of Babel leaders commandeering the people below during the short Tower of Babel era. Eventually “God confounded them and their single language.” No longer would they live by enforced sameness and banal platitudes in language, but as individuals, in different lands and distinct cultures. Just as it had been prior to the Tower.

“And the Lord scattered them across the earth.” No more hegemony and no more trans-nationalism and globalism. The tyranny of global/elitist leadership dissipated and men were no longer forced to live mostly under international laws and mores, rather by the hands and consequences under their own local control.

The next historical episode in the Bible is: “And God called to Abraham.” Man finds God again when, as originally, living in a land that is separate and distinct. God speaks to an individual, a singular man named Abraham. And, thus begins the Biblical saga, which eventually culminates in the Judeo-Christian ethos upon which America was built and prospered.

Rabbi Aryeh Spero is author of Push Back: Reclaiming Our American Judeo-Christian Spirit; author of Why Israel Matters to You; president of Caucus for America; and spokesman for the National Conference of Jewish Affairs.