Are you a millennial, a Christian evangelical, a Trumper, a liberal, an atheist, a Roman Catholic, a worker, a college graduate, a libertarian, a senior citizen, or perhaps you claim the label “unaffiliated”? None of these? More than one of these?

Amy Chua suggests our lack of attention to tribes is one reason for U.S. failures in Iraq and Afghanistan.(“Tribal World: Group Identity Is All,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2018.) She writes: “Once people connect with a group, their identities can become powerfully bound to it. . . They will penalize outsiders . . . . They will sacrifice, and even kill and die, for their group.”

Tribal identity is alive and well in developed countries also. Much of our civil unrest and some of our mass shootings are due to tribal identity turned violent.

Yet, at their best, groups nurture. They provide the love and acceptance we all need. Like other forces, they become dangerous only in their extreme forms.

Ironically, those likely to be captured by tribal extremes often are those who lacked a nurturing tribe as children.

Nurturing a child requires parental responsibility, but nurturing needs a community—a tribe, if you will— prepared to help the least ones: children who need medical care, parents who need job training, families who need secure housing.

We need tribal protection without disrespect for those in another tribe. Above all, we need nurturing tribalism, not destructive tribalism.