Political philosopher that he is, Patrick Deneen is preoccupied with the eternal question of the few versus the many. How to balance their interests? How to reconcile their differences? He hopes that a “mixed regime” will force the few and the many to learn from each other, while correcting the abuses and excesses of each [...]
More than 75 years ago, Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey made history for the Brooklyn Dodgers by breaking baseball’s “color line." But today’s Los Angeles Dodgers are making a different kind of history by honoring men who put on nuns' habits in order to mock the Catholic Church. The devoutly Christian Robinson and Rickey must [...]
Gerald R. Ford took office at a time when “we didn’t need to look into the future but assure ourselves we had one.” And though biographer Richard Norton Smith argues that Ford was not a visionary, he did recognize the “long-term consequences of a public sector growing faster than the private economy that sustained it.” [...]
"Witness" is a brief against the “dying civilization” that was the United States of the Jazz Age. The America of F. Scott Fitzgerald, flappers, and general frivolity was dying? The young Whittaker Chambers vaguely thought so at the time. The mature Chambers of "Witness" was convinced of that. Whittaker Chambers “Man without mysticism [...]
Does the "socialist-patriot" George Orwell offer a model for us today? Specifically for the young—of left or right—for whom Peter Stansky's book is likely meant to serve as an introduction of sorts? The Socialist Patriot: George Orwell and War by Peter Stansky (130 pages, Stanford University Press, 2023) Less a brief biography than a lengthy [...]
Is there room for yet another biography of Abraham Lincoln? Of course there is, especially if the biographer in question is as deft and insightful as Jon Meacham. And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle by Jon Meacham (676 pages, Random House, 2022) Is there room for yet another biography of Abraham [...]
Biographer Troy Senik insists that though Grover Cleveland’s was not a “great presidency,” his subject is “one of our greatest presidents." And it is the fundamental soundness of Cleveland's character that goes a good deal of the way toward explaining why this might well be so. A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable [...]
What H.L. Mencken thought was the case in his day likely remains the case today: Public schools have “done more harm than good.” How could they not, Mencken asked. Having taken the “care and upbringing of children out of the hands of parents, where it belongs,” the politicians of his day had “thrown” the entire [...]
As G.K. Chesterton observed what was happening all around him in England, he was led to conclude that there were historical moments when what he termed “over-civilization” and what he termed “barbarism” were close to becoming one and the same thing. Virtually the same thing might be said of America today. Just where is our [...]
Matthew Continetti may want a “viable” conservatism, but does he desire a winning conservatism. He seems more determined that the Republican Party and the conservative movement begin the difficult, but necessary, task of “untangling” themselves from Donald Trump rather than build a winning coalition. The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism, by Matthew Continetti [...]
G.K. Chesterton prophesied that the attack on the family would intensify, and his writings were an attempt to provide ammunition for those who would be on hand when his prophecy came true. And now we have Dale Ahlquist to give us the best of Chesterton's writings on the family in what we hope will prove [...]
The good life for "Stan" Evans was the simple life. A populist conservative, he both preached the virtues of the common man and lived the life of the common man—and all with the benefit of an uncommonly fine mind. M. Stanton Evans: Conservative Wit, Apostle of Freedom, by Steven F. Hayward (391 New York: Encounter [...]
Victor Davis Hanson links the long history of progressive dominance with the gradual “dying” of American citizenship. Is he wrong to do so? Victor Davis Hanson, The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America (419 pages, New York: Basic Books, 2021) Here and there Victor Davis Hanson tries [...]
I am increasingly persuaded that the great divide in this country between right and left comes down to a divide between those on the right who think that the United States has essentially been a force for good in the world and those on the left who think this country has essentially been a force [...]