Just who and what is Barack Obama? If he “willed himself into being,” what did he will himself to be?… Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama by David Garrow (1472 pages, HarperCollins, 2017) Having read the entirety of this unnecessarily, even ridiculously, lengthy biography of Barack Obama, I trust that I am well-qualified to [...]
Much has been written in recent years about the increasing polarization in American politics. Republicans have moved further to the right, while Democrats have moved further to the left. And seldom do they even attempt to meet anywhere in the middle. The phenomenon is undeniable. It’s observable on a daily basis and confirmed by polling [...]
This “once and future liberal,” Mark Lilla, is actually a progressive in disguise. To be sure, he is also a progressive who doesn’t like some of what progressivism has wrought and some of what progressivism has become; hence, his hope that he has sufficiently camouflaged himself as a liberal… The Once and Future Liberal: After [...]
If a reform produces unintended consequences of a troubling sort, succeeding generations of reformers will make use of those consequences not to undo the original reform, but rather to call for new action that requires an ever-larger federal government… All reforms are notorious for their unintended consequences; liberal reforms are noteworthy for something that is [...]
Originally published in 1986, Robert Nisbet’s recently reissued study of the history and prospects of both conservative thought and political conservatism from Edmund Burke to Ronald Reagan is as relevant today as it would have been over the course of many yesterdays and as it will be for many tomorrows. No doubt intended to shore [...]
I had a dream the other night, a dream that American had elected a black president. The year was sometime in the not-too-distant past, maybe even as recently as 2008. I don’t know about you, but my dreams can be amazingly vivid and curiously vague all at the same time. This one surely was. It [...]
The Death of Conservatism, by Sam Tanenhaus. As far as obituaries go, this is a fairly lengthy entry, not to mention premature. And as far as histories go, it’s more than slightly incomplete, not to mention wrong-headed, tendentious and unfair. Beyond these quibbles, there’s a lot more cause for complaint about this recent and yet [...]