If we are to withstand the coming totalitarian regime, we will need resources that are not just political but beautiful. We must become reattuned to our past and look to a standard outside ourselves. Reclaiming beauty means acknowledging that there are good things that have come before us. When the stock market becomes volatile, people [...]
According to the Constitution, due process, and everyday legal practice, Donald Trump did not receive a fair trial in the Senate. And beyond that: What did the impeachment trial look like? According to the Supreme Court, “Justice must satisfy the appearance of justice” (Offut v. United States). So, what’s next for the courts under Democratic [...]
The lesson of the great masking crusade is important. We need to admit now that forcing unproven, divisive, and ultimately fruitless policies on the population has been a mistake. Universal mask mandates have not made a difference in fighting COVID. Rather, they have divided our country, provided a surplus of garbage, and caused some dental [...]
Suggestions that Congress use Article I Section VIII to restrict the president’s power to engage in war, nuclear or otherwise, are both unconstitutional and imprudent. Last week, 30 Congressional Democrats sent a letter to President Biden asking him to “review the ways in which you can end the sole authority you have to launch a [...]
In the "domestic terrorism" at the Capitol, no protester set off a bomb, toppled a statue, or fired a weapon. Of the four who died that day, all were protesters. My guess, Minneapolis, not Capitol Hill, is where the action will be this spring, and it will not be Proud Boys keeping the cops busy, [...]
Bruce Springsteen sternly instructs us in his new infomercial to "find the middle" in politics. But the Founders made clear the fact that vigorous debate was critical to their vision of democracy. I can forgive Bruce for recycling footage and clothes from his Western Stars movie in that Super Bowl commercial (pulled by Jeep in [...]
In the wellspring of classic nineteenth-century American literature, a spectacular theme unites our greatest authors. They, in various ways, challenge the naïve optimism of the “American Adam” and American liberalism. They are deeply conservative in their skepticism toward human and civilizational progress and perfection. It is true that the classics, especially Virgil and Cicero, along [...]
‘National Review’ seems collectively incapable of seeing that it is no longer standing athwart history but is instead mostly athwart rank-and-file conservatives. NR is more liberal echo than conservative choice these days, and I don’t see any sign of recovery. William F. Buckley “Every young writer, I imagine,” wrote Ross Douthat, “has their [...]
There is a specific Trumpian agenda, with which he is alone associated, that is becoming the issues agenda of the conservative movement and the party base, if not the party elites. “I don’t know if he’ll run in 2024 or not. But if he does, I’m pretty sure he will win the nomination.” So says [...]
In “The Social Group in French Thought,” Robert Nisbet explains that social philosophers such as Bodin, Hobbes, and Rousseau undermined and sabotaged private law and intermediary institutions. Their thought culminated in the French Revolution and in its radical and nationalist legislation. Robert Nisbet’s dissertation began by lamenting that the history of freedom has been written [...]
The current presidential selection system is broken. The way to fix it is by returning to strong parties at the national, state, and local levels. The 2004 Senate election and 2008 Presidential election of Barack Obama demonstrate how outside actors can create political momentum to capture a political party. This results in a party that [...]
For the first time in a very long time, no one is second-guessing the decision by a police officer to use deadly force against an unarmed woman. Why? The storming of the Capitol was criminal and a disgrace. Assaults upon our democratic institutions, whether from the Right or the Left, should never be tolerated. At [...]
The political agenda laid out by Joe Biden’s website together with the 2020 Democratic Platform is lengthy, comprehensive, detailed, and unprecedented. No such agenda has ever been written down by one of the major political parties in American history. It is, in fact, not only socialism but the effective elimination of our already-much-diminished federalist system. [...]
The “end” of the end of history is not necessarily something that we need fear or mourn. Rather, it is an affirmation of what many conservative thinkers have long recognized about human nature: that comfort and ease, however sweet, do not long satisfy; that above all we hope to be part of a story that [...]