The discussion below has been edited for clarity and length.

Emma Green: Why do you support Trump?

R. R. Reno: I wrote against him in February for an issue of National Review—the “Never Trump” issue. My argument was that the Republican Party deserved Trump because its elites were so out of touch with the voters. I didn’t take Trump seriously—I thought he was a vanity candidate out to burnish his brand.

But he was the nationalist candidate. America’s social contract is frayed, and people are no longer confident that the people who are leading them have the same interests as they do. You see this in reactions to the election from liberals. They feel disenfranchised, just like people on the right would have felt disenfranchised by Hillary Clinton’s election. That’s a bad sign for society, when people feel like losing an election is akin to being cast out in the cold.

Green: You wrote about this anxiety for the upcoming issue of First Things—this feeling people have of being homeless in their own country.

What do you make of this anxiety? What’s your sense of where it comes from?

Reno: The post-war era is ending. The Cold War posed an existential threat that kept people in a state of unity. After 1989, a lot of those unifying forces weakened.

And globalization has had a powerful effect. We’re at the center of the globalizing project in the United States. We’re the prime beneficiaries, but at the same time, we’re experiencing it in a particularly acute way. It’s not clear what our politics and society are for.

Green: I think a Muslim who is unhappy with the election outcome might say, “No, I’m anxious right now because I believe Donald Trump might put me on a registry,” or “I have family members who are immigrants and they might be deported.”

Reno: Those are legitimate fears.

Green: And they’re based on specific things Trump has said, or that people tapped for his administration have said. Have these fears shaped your public and private support for Trump?

Reno: It’s difficult to be a Muslim in the West, because you look like the people who are trying to kill people. But you can’t have mass terrorism without people being fearful of Muslims. Responsible leadership tries to minimize that, because it’s irrational.

We’re fortunate in the United States: We have a small Muslim population, and we also have a strong tradition of civil liberties. That combination makes me optimistic that we won’t have mass deportations or internment camps. That’s not a rational fear.

Green: But Trump and his surrogates have suggested these things are very possible. Like when a Trump surrogate went on Megyn Kelly’s Fox News show and pointed to Japanese internment as the legal precedent for a Muslim registry—a policy Trump has appeared to support. Or Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state who may be considered for an administration position, carrying a memo into a meeting with Trump detailing how immigrants and refugees will be tested for their belief in Sharia law.