The new transatlantic buzzword is actually a very old one — ancient Greek, in fact. Thumos is defined by Robert Kagan as “a spiritedness and ferocity in defence of clan, tribe, city, or state”.
I could not consent to the introduction into our national life of a device so alien to all our traditions as the referendum,” Clement Attlee told Winston Churchill in May 1945, “which has only too often been the instrument of Nazism and Fascism.”