For centuries, advocates for greater state power have claimed that modern sovereign states are like families.

The value of the strategy is clear: most people view families as both necessary and natural. Even in our current age of widespread divorce and single parents, the idea of “family” (variously defined) remains enduringly popular. Thus, for a politician looking to increase the perceived legitimacy of the state, it only makes sense to attempt to show that the family is analogous to the state—that the state is a type of family writ large.

Walter Russel Mead asserts in his new piece in Foreign Affairs that what he labels as “Jacksonian national populism” and “Jeffersonian isolationism” have made a significant comeback during the 21st century. According to him, President Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq mirrors Jacksonian populism and that Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 was a sign of the collapse of neoconservatism in the American electorate.

The phrase “Paper or plastic?” became part of the language after states and localities, beginning near the mid-2010s, began banning single-use plastic bags. San Francisco was the first US city to ban plastic bags completely, passing an ordinance in 2007. But elsewhere before that, Bangladesh had become the first country in the world to ban plastic bags in 2002, because thin bags there were clogging drains and causing floods.

If you have been pacing the floor over the possibility that the Russkies are trying to influence your vote in the 2024 elections, you can sleep well tonight. That’s because the feds are currently prosecuting four members of the African People’s Socialist Party in a trial in federal district court in Tampa.