Watch a senator on the floor of Congress, a preacher at a pulpit, and a tenured professor at a conference podium. Three completely different rooms. Three different audiences. Three different vocabularies. K saw one move repeating itself across all three stages.
The senator draws a border on a map and calls everything inside us. The preacher draws a border around a doctrine and calls everything inside saved. The professor draws a border around a body of knowledge and calls everything inside qualified. The boundaries are different. The action is identical. A circle drawn. A name given. An outside produced. Once the outside exists, it has to be kept out. By argument. By exclusion. By ridicule. Eventually by force when the temperature rises.
K could speak about national borders, religious belief, and expert hierarchies in the same breath without changing his point. He wasn't skipping topics. He was naming three instances of one move. The patriot's pride, the believer's conviction, the expert's confidence — different shades of the same emotional response. The fragment recognizing itself in the mirror and approving of the reflection.
It's also why the three so often defend each other. The educated patriot with religious conviction isn't three separate identities stacked on one person. It's one fortress with three watchtowers.