Madeleine Albright’s rendition this summer of Madonna impersonating Evita Peron (“Don’t cry for me, Argentinaaaa . . . “) was neither intrinsically interesting nor aesthetically pleasing. The venue was an aircraft—paid by you and me—en route from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Singapore; and according to an eyewitness, the only thing missing was a red orchid in her hair. The audience of assorted media hacks and admiring GS-11 brown-noses would have called it a lot of fun—in public, at least—had the noted Episcopalian not preempted them all by declaring “it was a lot of fun!” Luckily for the former, it was a short flight.

But the Secretary of State’s junket was far from trivial. According to the New York Times, Albright went to the annual ASEAN meeting in Kuala Lumpur to defend that well-known philanthropist, George Soros, from the accusation— made by Malaysia’s Prime Minister Mahatir Mohamad—that Soros and his fellow speculators had used their market prowess to undermine Southeast Asia’s currencies. While we readily admit to knowing as much about Malaysian money markets as we do about Mr. Soros’ World War II record in Nazi-run Europe, two things arc striking here. One, Mr. Soros has become firmly established as an American icon, at least inside the Beltway. Attack him, and you may soon be suspected of planting explosives in federal buildings, or worse, being a Serb. Two, why did Albright feel called upon to intervene in his favor? Now, it would be idle to pretend that their commonality of ethnic, cultural, and geographic background is purely coincidental here. But even if it were, the episode is telling in showing that globalism is not really a conspiracy: it is a social system, a mentality, and an expanding wave of redefinitions. Albright and Soros do not share a secret oath, but they do share a culture and an ideology.

For example, both of them see “Bosnia” as an attractive concept because it is an inherently unstable and artificial edifice; it is the very opposite of a European nation in any conventional sense, a grotesque caricature in fact, where the most brazenly anti-Christian party has been instructed in the rhetoric of “multi-ethnicity” for the benefit of the Upper East Side, Boulder, Aspen, and Berkeley. Both Albright and Soros insist ad nauseam that Bosnia has to be preserved as an “experiment in multiculturalism,” which can only end in a global empire devoid of nation-states and cleansed of the hierarchy of values, culture, tradition, and bonds of loyalty born out of centuries-long shared experiences.

As Michael Stenton of Cambridge University has recently noted, to such people formal legitimacy is becoming a side-issue, as functional legitimacy is deemed sufficient and redefined as less a matter of effective authority or even ballot boxes than of conformity to globalist precepts; “Only a decade ago, Washington’s Big Business liberalism was considered something of a joke by Europe’s Left and Right alike. Europe was more social-democratic, more anti-immigration, more atavistic and national. It is striking that the immigration question— the great globalist Signifier—was always handled, in practice, on strangeK’ American assumptions despite the unfriendly national contexts. The power of globalist ideology to freeze the national capacity for action, even reaction, was there for all to see.”

The Albright-Soros attack on the nation- state is unrelenting and explicit. The more you resist, the bigger the siege engines used against you. The Swiss decision not to join “Europe”—actually, not the EU but the regulated trade penumbra—they resented. Sure enough, Swiss banks soon hit the headlines. Compared to those now humbled bastions, Malaysian trenches look flimsy. So Mr. Mahatir better take note. What happened to your currency last summer is only a mild warning, a nonchalant shot across the bow, lest you forget your assigned role. Produce more, sell more, import more. And forget who you are. And learn to sing.