We belong to groups. The behavior of those groups is largely dictated not by ideology but by demography. To understand how and why, one needs the identity matrix.

A field guide to the things groups of humans do to other groups of humans.

We need to redefine what we mean by "ethnic cleansing" far beyond our conventional understanding of the term, so that it includes all the ways states constantly control their demography.

The left is assuming that people who lose their insurance will switch and vote Democrat because the loss of healthcare is a traumatic experience that can literally mean bankruptcy or death. But what if that's not the reason people vote anymore?

Regimes gain legitimacy by their existence and their ability to govern and hold territory, regardless of how reprehensibly they do it. It doesn't matter whether Washington considers Pyongyang's government legitimate. It’s there.

It is always possible that some decisive action could work, or at least compel the regime to find other ways of killing its citizens besides chemical weapons. But the most likely outcome is that Washington retains enough hostility to Assad to not accept him as legitimate, but not enough to do what is necessary to remove him. And the war will continue, probably for the rest of Trump's presidency, and possibly beyond.

More than any previous president, Donald Trump comes into office as a wild card on international affairs. He is not beholden to any of the standard orthodoxies of American foreign policy, and his contradictory statements and actions make it unclear what he is actually going to do. His policies are more Jacksonian than anything we've seen in modern times. He has expressed no interest in promoting American values abroad, only in acquiring good deals for the United States. He wants to ramp up military spending but it's unclear what for. He seems to think that the best way to handle asymmetric threats like terrorism is torture.

A lot can change in a quarter century, but let's be clear: white majority rule in America cannot be maintained by liberal means for much longer, and many of those who voted in this year's poll know it. The question is, did Trump win primarily due to ethnonationalism or economic nationalism? Or, put another way, how badly does America want to remain majority white?

The war in Syria is where ideological rigidity goes to die.

What if we can have European integration or refugee resettlement, but not both?

If partition could pacify the former Yugoslavia, why not Syria and Iraq?

One can bring warring factions to the table but one cannot make them want to be there.