The opposite of liberalism is not conservatism, as we understand the term in modern America, but populism. Populists address an exclusionary “us.” As Mr. Trump himself once put it with rare clarity, “The only important thing is the unification of the people — because the other people don’t mean anything.” Populism is democracy without liberalism. None of the Democratic candidates would talk about, or treat, “the people” as Mr. Trump has done. The secular, free-market conservatives who voted for Ronald Reagan accepted the basic apparatus of a liberal society. But it is not, in the end, the formal rules and institutions that sustain liberal democracy.

Source: New York Times October 17, 2019 15:44 UTC