Great nations need organizing principles, and the forthright articulation of a Trump Doctrine will define the future of U.S. foreign policy—if Plato’s advice about the people’s consent is followed… Looking ahead to what will be the most defining feature of the Trump administration, Pat Buchanan has noted that it is “Time for a Trump Doctrine.” [...]
Countless Americans who woke up on the morning after the election sensed their prayers had been answered and a calamity had been averted. If we have been given this reprieve, then we should use it to turn back to God… To those Americans concerned about the moral state of the nation, the immediate reaction to [...]
Donald Trump’s presidency will be a besieged presidency, and he would do well to enlist, politically speaking, a war cabinet and White House staff that relishes a fight and does not run… After a week managing the transition, vice president-elect Mike Pence took his family out to the Broadway musical “Hamilton.” As Pence entered the [...]
The opportunity is at hand for the president-elect to reconfigure U.S. foreign policy to the world we now inhabit, and to the vital interests of the United States. What should Mr. Trump say?… However Donald Trump came upon the foreign policy views he espoused, they were as crucial to his election as his views on trade [...]
How could anyone vote for him?” “How could anyone vote for her?” In a contentious election between candidates with historically high disapproval ratings, voters across the country were asking such questions, incredulous that their fellow Americans could be on the other side this time. These questions were encouraged by the rhetorical strategies of both campaigns, which focused on establishing [...]
“Imagine what our country could accomplish if we started working together as one people, under one God, saluting one American flag.” —Donald J. Trump So on Monday morning, I posted a video on my YouTube channel predicting a Trump win on Tuesday, November 8. I saw the victory coming from three vantage points, two of [...]
“If I don’t win, this will be the greatest waste of time, money and energy in my lifetime,” says Donald Trump. Herewith, a dissent. Whatever happens Tuesday, Mr. Trump has made history and has forever changed American politics. […]
Meg Greenfield, the liberal (1950s style) boss of The Washington Post’s editorial page for the last quarter of the twentieth century, gave the name “The Nixon Generation” to people of her age cohort (born ca. 1928-44). “What distinguishes us as a group,” she wrote, “is that we are too young to remember a time when [...]
So much has been said and written about the present Presidential election campaign that many of us are no doubt feeling overloaded with unwanted and ill-tempered debate and are suffering from political-spin-fatigue. This being so, I have no desire to add to the political overload nor do I intend to descend to the sewers and [...]
It seems that more people than usual are thinking of sitting out Election Day this year. This is hardly surprising—nor is the sentiment entirely new. Americans are much less likely to vote, as a percentage of the population, than most democratic peoples. This tendency is not without its logic—indeed, an at times compelling logic. But [...]
The message is loud and clear. Your actions have no more significance than those of a cockroach. Furthermore, like a cockroach, you are in no position to make moral choices of your own free will. When you commit some hideous brutality, it is not that you decided to do so. No, on the contrary, external [...]
We were preparing the annual financial report to the parish the other day, and the tricky part of the debate was how to present complex details in a simple way that was not misleading or open to misinterpretation. I commented that we must aim for complete transparency, at which point a member of the committee [...]
“I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy. I do not mean our political and civil liberties. They will endure. And I do not refer to the outward strength of America, a nation that is at peace tonight everywhere in the world, with unmatched economic power and military [...]
Never has anyone ruled on this earth by basing his rule on any other thing than public opinion. In these words, Jose Ortega y Gassett, most famous for a book entitled Revolt of the Masses, affirmed the eternal truth and problem of rule by consent. Ortega y Gassett, a classical liberal theorist from Spain, spent [...]