President Trump has an unmatched ability to transform ordinary words and standard ideas into bad words and intolerable ideas. This is due to the shortcomings of both the president and his critics. Trump can sully fine ideas with intemperate and intolerant utterances and actions, but to a far greater extent, the major media and the Democrats have been trained to have a Pavlovian reaction, to react in horror at almost anything he articulates.

Thus “nationalism” has become a curse word in polite circles, and it’s a shame. That’s why Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, deserves plaudits for his speech last week to the National Conservatism Conference, a speech for which he is receiving scorn from both reporters and some establishment conservatives.

Of course there are reasons to worry about nationalism. Among the worst crimes in history were those committed in the name of nationalism. But Hitler and Mussolini no more make nationalism always bad than Stalin and Mao make secularism inherently evil. The ideas need to be considered on their own.

These pages have had plenty of criticism for some ideas recently advanced in the name of American nationalism. President Barack Obama’s “Economic Patriotism” was just warmed-over corporate welfare. Trump’s protectionism is typically self-defeating. Also, nationalism sometimes manifests itself as a harmful anti-localism.

Yes, there are many reasons to be wary of nationalism. But in today’s politics, particularly among the media and political elites, there is certainly not too much nationalism. There is too much trans-nationalism, too much utopian post-nationalism, too much dominance of what Hawley calls the reigning “cosmopolitan consensus.”

Hawley summed up this consensus as belief in “the importance of global integration and the danger of national loyalties; the priority of social change over tradition, career over community."

The dream of the bipartisan cosmopolitan elite, Hawley said, is that “The boundaries between America and the rest of the world should fade and eventually vanish,” in pursuit of “a global consumer economy.”

In the abstract, we understand the appeal. But that’s the problem: It’s too abstract. The cosmopolitan dream is built upon a denial of human nature. People need to belong to something. People need to have, well, a people.

“To be attached to the subdivision,” Edmund Burke wrote, “to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love of mankind.”

The nation is a fairly big platoon, and the American nation is a big platoon formed explicitly to foster and cultivate little platoons. Federalism and localism are built into our governmental system. Americans have always and everywhere formed more associations, organizations, congregations, clubs, teams, and squads than any other people. It’s what Alexis de Tocqueville found most important about the United States.

Sure enough, Hawley invoked “family and neighborhood and church,” as keys to American liberty and thriving.

Some conservatives who are fine with these points are still unnerved by Hawley making them. Do we really want lawmakers trying to legislate family and neighborhood and church? How is promoting a “common identity” as Hawley calls it, the federal government’s job?

These are good questions that reflect a wise apprehension. Federal efforts to instill national identity in various policy areas have backfired. Again, economic nationalism often hurts the national economy.

Hawley, to his credit, laid out some good steps for Washington to take on the score of nationalism. For instance, he called for “an immigration system that rewards and nourishes American labor rather than devaluing it.” Current guest-worker schemes are laser-guided plans to drive down low-skilled wages, and somehow this is the only immigration policy with bipartisan support. They should be scrapped.

Also, our economy is rigged in favor of the financial sector not because of laissez-faire economics, but because of decisions by Congress to prop up that sector. Consider the bailouts and protective regulations, and much of the work of the Federal Reserve and the FDIC.

Ultimately, what Hawley said needed saying because it offended so many. We have lost sight of the historical fact that the nation-state is man’s best invention for protecting individual liberty and promoting human flourishing.