Was George Washington a Christian?

By |2020-12-13T19:53:05-06:00March 19th, 2018|Categories: American Founding, Christianity, George Washington, History, Paul Gottfried, Politics, Timeless Essays|

The depth of George Washington’s Christian beliefs is totally irrelevant to his vision of the country he helped found. It is only our American obsession with personal authenticity that would cause us to worry about whether Washington was inwardly Christian. One of the most illogical historical debates I’ve ever tried to follow concerns the personal [...]

On Straussian Teachings

By |2023-07-27T09:10:10-05:00October 6th, 2017|Categories: Economics, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Leo Strauss, Neoconservatism, Paul Gottfried, Political Economy|

The nexus between the Straussians and neoconservatives has been overstated for partisan ends, but it is still nonetheless there. Sociologically and culturally, the two movements are largely indistinguishable… The Truth About Leo Strauss by Catherine and Michael Zuckert (University of Chicago Press, 2006). In The Truth About Leo Strauss, Catherine and Michael Zuckert, both professors holding [...]

“Revisions and Dissents”: Touching Upon Present and Past

By |2021-05-27T16:05:09-05:00June 27th, 2017|Categories: Books, Conservatism, Edmund Burke, Featured, Paul Gottfried, Russell Kirk|

As Paul Gottfried explains in “Revisions and Dissents,” the real division between right and left cuts not between finance capitalists and welfare statists, but “between those who wish to preserve inherited communities and their sources of authority and those who wish to ‘reform’ or abolish these arrangements.” Complaints about Donald Trump’s “divisiveness” strike Paul Gottfried [...]

Remembering a Crucial Battle in the “Conservative Wars”

By |2022-07-04T15:31:31-05:00December 26th, 2016|Categories: Conservatism, Culture War, Featured, Gleaves Whitney, Paul Gottfried|

The “conservative wars” between neoconservatives and the Old Right became particularly bitter after a stormy session at the Philadelphia Society in 1986. Mr. Gleaves Whitney, the president of the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies and a Senior Contributor to this journal, has written about an event that I remember well.* I was involved in it, [...]

Leo Strauss: The Right’s False Prophet

By |2015-05-23T07:12:31-05:00May 22nd, 2015|Categories: Conservatism, Leo Strauss, Paul Gottfried|Tags: |

Leo Strauss and the Conservative Movement in America, Paul Gottfried, Cambridge University Press (2011) When writing about the work of an academic historian or philosopher—as opposed to a polemicist, a politician, or a popularizer—there is an obvious threshold question with which to begin: Is the writer’s work intrinsically interesting or compelling in some way? If [...]

Harry Jaffa and the American Conservative Movement

By |2015-02-09T17:11:06-06:00February 9th, 2015|Categories: Conservatism, Paul Gottfried|Tags: |

The death of Harry V. Jaffa at age ninety-six was met by exuberant detailed tributes in sources extending from the New York Times and Washington Post to the major organs of the Murdoch media. Jaffa was hailed as an influential conservative theorist, the founder and driving force behind the heavily endowed Claremont Institute, and the author of [...]

Conservatives, Liberals, or Social Democrats?

By |2014-03-13T08:15:00-05:00March 12th, 2014|Categories: Paul Gottfried, Politics|Tags: |

George Will In what for me illustrates the use of confusing labels, George Will recently complained about attacks of “cognitive dissonance” in trying to understand our political terms. Although Americans identify overwhelmingly as “conservatives,” many of them vote differently from the way they describe themselves. They lean theoretically toward Thomas Jefferson, who advocated very limited [...]

Crusades for Democracy & American Foreign Policy

By |2016-07-26T15:21:37-05:00January 28th, 2013|Categories: Claes Ryn, Foreign Affairs, Leo Strauss, Neoconservatism, Paul Gottfried, Political Philosophy|Tags: |

In recent years a heated debate has erupted about American foreign policy and about what moral purpose should inform our conduct of international relations. While analysts Robert Kagan, Michael Mandelbaum, and Stephen Schwartz insist the United States should use its power, where possible, on behalf of “democracy,” other commentators have rejected this approach. James Kurth, [...]

Heads-Up: Gottfried on Leo Strauss

By |2017-08-03T13:41:59-05:00December 12th, 2011|Categories: Books, Conservatism, Leo Strauss, Paul Gottfried, Stephen Masty|

Leo Strauss Far from Amazon and bookshops here in Kabul, I can only suggest a good article by Paul Gottfried on his newest book and hope that someone reviews it here. Dr. Gottfried, a prolific conservative author who teaches at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, has written Leo Strauss and the American Conservative Movement: [...]

How the GOP swallowed the Conservative Movement

By |2014-03-19T16:32:14-05:00December 8th, 2011|Categories: Conservatism, Paul Gottfried|Tags: , , , , |

  One might think that I’m being sarcastic but I’m only trying to illustrate my contention that the term conservatism has become so free-floating that it means whatever journalists and politicians want it to mean. “Conservative,” as it is now being used to describe Republican ward-heelers and neo-Wilsonian social democrats, is an arbitrary designation. Equally [...]

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