Let me name three of the people who influenced me, although it's definitely not a complete list. Ayesha Jalal, the formidable Pakistani-American historian, has rigorously re-evaluated Jinnah's political strategies leading up to Partition. Akbar Ahmed, a former diplomat and now a distinguished scholar, has documented Jinnah's life as a man who welcomed, worked with, and even married people of other faiths. And then there is Ardeshir Cowasjee, the great Parsi newspaper columnist, who in his mid-80s is a kind of living history of all of Pakistan, old enough to have known Jinnah himself.

[Identity liberalism] says, on the one hand, you can never understand me because you are not exactly the kind of person I've defined myself to be. And on the other hand, you must recognize me and feel for me. Well, if you're so different that I'm not able to get into your head and I'm not able to experience or sympathize with what you experience, why should I care?

Karachi captures all of those rifts between ancient and modern, communal and individual. You see them playing out in people's lives.

We need to be stronger. We need to deter the Russians. We need to show resolve, which is why cooperating with them on the other hand can be more difficult.

Karachi has had an overdose of history, too much has happened.

You do have this circumstance in Karachi that because people know things are changing, the stakes are higher. Everyone is thinking, "My home is threatened, my job is threatened, my identity is threatened, my world is threatened." And that creates a very particular sort of climate, that is linked.

[Mark] Lilla sees a deeper problem, and he wrote an article in The New York Times denouncing identity liberalism.He says liberals have appealed to African-Americans or women or the LGBT community but failed to craft a strong, broad national message. He's not the only person saying this. Long before the votes were cast, Bernie Sanders argued the Democrats lost the white working class by not speaking broadly to the country.