Pope Francis’s Stunning Rebuke of JD Vance Exposes MAGA’s Dark Soul

All of this gets at another Vance error. He claims that the “far left” has the circles of obligation backward, that they “seem to hate the citizens of their own country, and care more about people outside their own borders.” Judging by what Vance might be expected to mean by “far left,” he appears to be referencing cosmopolitan liberals. And yes, we do believe the nation should find ways to let in more migrants, both because this can solve demographic problems and otherwise serve the national interest and because what Pope Francis calls the “dignity of every human person” calls on us to attempt it.

But whether Vance knows it or not, the cosmopolitan tradition also has a lot to say about the proper ordering of obligations that he himself references, and it’s not what he claims. As Martha Nussbaum details in her book on that tradition, cosmopolitan thought going back to Cicero provides the resources to cultivate a patriotism that is “compatible with strong familial, friendly, and personal love” but also “builds ties of recognition and concern with people outside our national borders.” This notion, Nussbaum writes, explicitly does recognize deep obligations to those closest to us, to community and nation, and sees those obligations as a source of richness in life, but it also forthrightly faces up to our obligations to those on the far outer peripheries.

Cosmopolitan liberalism accepts the challenge of trying to find the right balance between those imperatives; indeed, that’s what makes it attractive. Vance can feign righteous anger about the “far left” all he wants, but he and MAGA simply do not accept that challenge. They cravenly shrug it off entirely.