Wilders reacting to his right-wing party's shock win in the House of Representatives elections in the Netherlands last year. -- AFP
WE used to have long debates about American exceptionalism, about whether the United States was an outlier among nations, and I always thought the bulk of the evidence suggested that it was. But these days American political attitudes are pretty ordinary.
America, far from standing out as the champion of democracy, as a nation that welcomes immigrants, as a perpetually youthful nation energised by its faith in the American dream, is now caught in the same sour, populist mood as pretty much everywhere else.
