Tag Archives | conservatism

What Is Autonomy?

Commentary by , January 14, 2020

From My Notebook Having published and sent out into the world my book on Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, I have begun work on my next project, my book in defense of the “autonomous individual.” Some of you have asked me why I chose that term. Partly, it’s because that is the term chosen by the […]

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“Bellicosity and Disengagement”

Feature Article by , January 13, 2020

Following the US military’s assassination of Iranian terror master Qassem Suleimani, a lot of people have been trying to make sense of President Trump’s Iran policy and the support for it among the otherwise isolationist nationalists. The New York Times sums up the sense of confusion: “Mr. Trump has yet to resolve the two conflicting […]

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The Inherent Tension

Feature Article by , December 24, 2019

Top Stories of the Year: #2 I ended the last item in my countdown of the top stories of the year by observing the irony that a non-ideological figure like Donald Trump could trigger a broad ideological transformation of the entire American conservative movement. Perhaps this is because those who are seeking to promote that […]

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Impeachment Is Over

Commentary by , November 24, 2019

Impeachment Roundup The public impeachment hearings are finished in the House, and what have we learned from them? The Dispatch, Jonah Goldberg’s new outfit, has a good overview of the testimony from the past week, while Michael McFaul, former US Ambassador to Russia, provides a summary of the wider story. Here are the outlines. President […]

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An Era of Moral Crisis

Commentary by , September 11, 2019

Five Things You Need to Read Today 1. A Serious Foreign Policy and an Unserious President President Trump celebrated the 18th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks a few days early this year by announcing that he had planned to hold personal negotiations with the top leadership of the Taliban–and to do so at […]

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Sohrab Ahmari-ism, Courtesy of David French

Feature Article by , September 6, 2019

The battle between the “liberal” conservatives—that is, those who still believe in free markets and civil liberties—and the illiberal nationalist conservatives has been out in the open ever since Sohrab Ahmari launched a broadside against “David French-ism,” naming the National Review writer as his avatar for the supposed cultural weakness of “classical liberalism.” So a […]

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Conservatives Lose Their Word

Commentary by , July 30, 2019

Five Things You Need to Read Today 1. The Death of the Tea Party The Tea Party movement of ten years ago is now comprehensively dead. How do we know that? Because Republicans and Democrats in Congress just got together on a budget deal that approves deficits in excess of $1 trillion forever—at a time […]

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Declaring Independence from Independence

Commentary by , July 21, 2019

The big question about the impact of Donald Trump on the Republican Party is: will he be an aberration, a temporary departure from the normal rhetorical style and ideological composite of late-20th-Century conservatism—or will he usher in a “new normal,” a new baseline for what the party stands for and what it will tolerate? We’re […]

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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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The War on the Brains of the Right

Commentary by , December 15, 2018

Five Things You Need to Read Today 1. The War on the Brains of the Right At the very beginning of the Trump phenomenon, I warned about a war on the brains of the right. Along with many friends and colleagues, I have found it grimly amusing to find myself dismissed as an “establishment” “elitist” […]

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