Tag Archives | Founding Fathers

The Futile Rage of the Illiberal Conservatives

Feature Article by , June 2, 2019

The right-of-center Internet has been lit up for the last few days by an assault by Sohrab Ahmari on David French and something Ahmari improbably calls “David French-ism.” Supposedly, this is about French, a lawyer and contributor to National Review, being too weak-kneed and polite because he is interested in using persuasion to try to […]

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Live by the Sword, Die by the Sword

Feature Article by , February 26, 2019

In Venezuela over the weekend, a socialist regime seeking to block humanitarian aid shot protesters and burned trucks carrying food across the border. Dictator Nicolas Maduro would rather see his people starve and see infants dying in hospitals for lack of medical care than risk relinquishing power. So it is clear, in the minds of […]

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Salon of the Refused, Episode 2

Announcement by , November 23, 2018

The second episode of my video and podcast series, Salon of the Refused, is now available. Rob Tracinski talks with Charles C.W. Cooke, editor of NationalReview.com, on what it’s like to be an atheist on the right. The conversation includes: the secular basis for morality and liberty, how atheism is good for the right, Ayn […]

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What Is the Social Contract?

Feature Article by , July 25, 2018

Michael Anton has responded to those who criticized him for his disastrous plan to have the president try to end birthright citizenship by executive order. His response is fundamentally non-responsive. He defends the fact that he used a doctored quote to back his view that the 14th Amendment, which established birthright citizenship, doesn’t actually do […]

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The High Road of Hope and Prosperity

Commentary by , June 20, 2018

Five Things You Need to Read Today 1. Did Monticello Just Evict Thomas Jefferson? Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson, has just completed a restoration of the house’s outbuildings and slave quarters. The way the New York Times describes it, this is being used as an excuse to evict Jefferson from his own house. The […]

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“The Advantage of Being Armed”

Feature Article by , March 21, 2018

Editor’s Note: Subscribers may recognize that the article below is partially based on comments I published last year in response to a controversy within the Objectivist movement. I was motivated to expand this to a larger piece, not just because it is relevant to the wider debate right now over gun control, but also because […]

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Guns and the Monopoly on Force

Note by , May 30, 2017

The Objectivist corners of the Internet have been lit up recently by some new comments from Yaron Brook (executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute) about the Second Amendment and gun control. I’m not going to take on these comments in much detail because they strike me as offhand, flippant, and offensively arrogant—you really have […]

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Is Personnel Policy?

Commentary by , November 27, 2016

In politics, there is an old saying: personnel is policy. What a president does is determined to a large extent by the people he hires. Consider the rumors that Donald Trump is considering appointing Mitt Romney as his Secretary of State. Trump’s stated foreign policy involves a much friendlier approach toward Russia. But he’s not […]

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“Death to Tyrants” Is as American as Apple Pie

Feature Article by , June 1, 2016

On Glenn Beck’s radio show recently, he and thriller author Brad Thor discussed what would happen if Donald Trump becomes an authoritarian tyrant and can no longer be limited by Congress or the courts. Thor then proposed, “as a thriller writer,” a “hypothetical” scenario in which Trump would have to be removed from office. I […]

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The Perils of Populism

Feature Article by , March 21, 2016

Take the news that John Kasich is being funded by George Soros, a billionaire notorious for bankrolling far-left institutions, and combine that with the fact that it was Bill Clinton who encouraged Donald Trump to run for president, plus the way Trump has dominated the race with billions of dollars of free media donated by […]

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