We need to see beyond the myopia of the current crisis to its long-term consequences. What awaits us when the pestilence passes? What sort of world will we be living in? Will the lessons learned lead to the restoration of lost liberties, or will we find that the freedoms we relinquished in this time of [...]
Democrats may proclaim that they are eager to see the pandemic come to a swift end and the economy return to a robust state. But the cold political interests of the Democratic Party today are what they were in Herbert Hoover's time: to pray that the president fails, and fails badly, so that they inherit [...]
Rousseau’s bastard sons sit off, signing their suicide pacts— man born free yet everywhere in subclauses and stipulations. […]
In his excellent, short book, Conservatism: Dream and Reality, Robert Nisbet had no problem in identifying conservatism as an ideology. Whereas his friend, Russell Kirk, had repeatedly resisted defining the faith as anything other than a “way of being” quite contrary to all ideologies (in essence, an anti-ideology). Nisbet proclaimed it one of three ideologies [...]
Now, standing patiently in line for their bailouts, are the states—and America's cities and counties. The one certain victor in the coronavirus pandemic war will likely be Big Government. "War is the health of the state," wrote the progressive Randolph Bourne during the First World War, after which he succumbed to the Spanish flu. America's [...]
If Donald Trump wins the 2020 election, borders will be tightened. The U.S. withdrawal from the Mideast will continue. U.S. manufacturing will begin to be repatriated. Transnational institutions will be downgraded, ignored and superseded. The watchword will be what it has lately been: "America First." After the Great Pandemic has passed and we emerge from [...]
Will this pandemic prove the decisive factor in America's retreat from global hegemony? For declaring in March that the U.S. economy might be reopened by Easter, President Donald Trump was roundly mocked. Yet, it appears his political instincts were correct. He was more in tune with his country than were his critics. By early Easter [...]
A few weeks ago, the word was temporary. Now we are hearing indefinite. America’s recently unemployed subjects under house arrest can be forgiven for starting to wonder from behind their bootlegged face-masks: If politicians and the media continue to clamor for increasingly draconian measures (including, in the case of EWTN White House correspondent Owen Jensen, [...]
Let me begin this essay by simply throwing down the gauntlet. American imperialists—of whatever political persuasion or ideology—are not only traitors to the American cause and in violation of the deepest meanings and profundities of the American ideal, they are also embracing demonic goals of remaking the world in their own image, thus trampling on [...]
A journal is claiming that the Russian government was using the Covid-19 outbreak to strengthen anti-EU feelings, make propaganda gains, and gather intelligence at the heart of NATO. Although this report has gained traction, what is this statement really saying and who is saying it? According to a recent news report, Russia is using the [...]
What does this deliberate decision to shut down the country and carpet-bomb our own economy, upon which we all depend, tell us about what we Americans value? For each American lost to the pandemic, 1,000 Americans have lost their jobs because of conscious and deliberate decisions of the president and 50 governors. Some 60,000 citizens, [...]
My initial skepticism about the way in which we have dealt with this real but exaggerated threat has only grown. In fact, the lockdowns and the shuttering of our medical and economic system have now become a greater threat than the disease itself. After my essay on conservative skepticism about both the severity of the [...]
From the founding generation to the greatest generation, Americans sought meaning in one or more of the three operating systems that informed Western civilization: Judeo-Christianity, the Enlightenment, and Romanticism. The productive tension among those three operating systems defined the modern age. Three radically different world views—yet we moderns kept them suspended in a three-way polarity. [...]
The question—is liberalism a self-defeating enterprise?—has gained traction over the last couple of years. Even as far back as 1921, the Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana dedicated time to this topic in the form of an essay he titled “The Irony of Liberalism.” In this brief work, Santayana explored prevalent themes that emerged throughout liberalism’s early [...]