I got to talk to a retired special forces guy last week, and he said that president-elect Trump won by appealing to voters that have long felt “unprotected.”

Now, everywhere I look, I see the word “protector,” as in a woman speaking of her son, who died literally protecting others with his body. 

I guess it’s time I revised my definition of government.

Government is an armed minority, occupying territory and taxing the inhabitants thereof to reward its supporters. In return the government protects the inhabitants from enemies foreign and domestic.

In other words, the only justification for a government and its bullying supporters is that it keeps us safe. It is there to protect the unprotected, and that is all. The problem is that liberals don’t think that everyone deserves protection.

As I have written here before, I mark the day in 1971 that Archie Bunker debuted on "All in the Family" as the moment that liberals stopped protecting the white working class. The message from producer Norman Lear was unmistakable. Archie was a racist sexist bigot, and he deserved to be punished. No protection for him, said the Soup Nazi.

Nor have libertarians and conservatives done much better in the protection biz. We have tended to regard the unionized white working class as part of the problem, choking the free flow of commerce with privilege and intimidation. And we have not objected enough when liberals sneered at the white working class as gap-toothed southern rednecks.

Now that Donald Trump has heard the cry of the unprotected -- with the help, it appears, of Stephen Miller -- it all seems obvious. Anybody could have seen that the white working class was lying in the street, dying of despair, waiting for someone to put out a hand and promise to protect it.

In fact, it wasn’t obvious, and that is why the Clinton campaign, believing in the narrative of the ascendant, that women, minorities, the educated, and youth would inevitably inherit the future, failed to see what was right in front of its eyes.

Bill Clinton saw it, according to reports. But he is an old geezer: what did he know?

Let us take this opportunity to critique again the whole model of politics practiced by today’s ruling class.

The whole Western ruling class has been carefully taught to hate and to fear the nation state. Because nationalism, Hitler, Mussolini. If you Google “patriotism nationalism” you will encounter a lot of people such as Avner Zarmi trying to tell you that patriotism is okay but nationalism is bad because the Prussians invented the word nationalism.

I say that the nationalism-is-bad meme is rubbish. The nation state on the European dead-white-male model is currently the most successful way for humans to imagine they “belong” to something bigger than the blood kindred of family and tribe, and the nation state is founded on a cult of the nation and its sacred history. If you are a political leader you are bound to use the cult of the nation to rally the citizens of the nation state to your banner. Otherwise you will find that you keep losing elections. To suggest “patriotism good, nationalism bad” reads to me like the “four legs good, two legs bad” of Animal Farm.

Carefully taught to hate and to fear, liberals are outraged by nationalism, and ashamed of patriotism. And as for national socialism, it is unmentionable, and therefore I will not try to explain what Joseph Stalin meant by “socialism in one country,” or Социализм в одной стране. Guess what: Google says that страна translates also as “nation.” I checked with Vera, a native Russian and a tango dancer, and she confirmed that страна means homeland, motherland, the place where you were born.

Being outraged by nationalism and ashamed of patriotism, liberals are therefore blind to the evil of their identity politics, for it deliberately tries to undermine the cult of the nation with the cult of the oppressed minority and the cult of the noble progressive, each with its sacred history, and substitutes something smaller, meaner. The nation is guilty because it has marginalized and oppressed this or that little darling of the liberals, and therefore all minorities should repeat after me: “America was never great.”

What fools these liberals be. What do they think happens after they have reduced the cult of the nation to rubble? Earth to liberals: the successor regime will not be a compassionate and enlightened supranational bureaucracy staffed by well-born liberals. There will be no safe spaces and no free counseling for post-election stress disorder.

I notice that the Clinton campaign featured slogans like “Stronger Together” and “Fighting for Us.” I couldn’t agree more, so long as “together” and “us” means protecting all Americans as we Make America Great Again.

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also see his American Manifesto and get his Road to the Middle Class.