“Are the good times really over for good?” asked Merle Haggard in his 1982 lament. Then, the good times weren’t over. In fact, they were coming back, with the Reagan recovery, the renewal of the American spirit and the end of a Cold War that had consumed so much of our lives. It is hard [...]
Like millions of conservative Americans, I spent last night with hope and fear, followed by sinking disappointment at what my fellow Americans had chosen to do with our country. That disappointment has not gone away. But it has been tempered, as all our disappointments should be tempered, by a realization of just how little we [...]
A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within. The essential cause of Rome’s decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.—Caesar and Christ […]
Winston, you have lived through far more elections than I, so I have no doubt your insight is born of experience and the reflections of a keen mind. But I have to respectfully disagree with your line of thought on the election. A man’s natural tendency is to contemplate his vote from the standpoint of [...]
Winston Elliott III I am a conservative. I desire to restore a republic rooted in faith, family, and local community. I respect the dignity of the human person and oppose political ideologies that promote an abstract liberty. I do not believe our primary enemy is government. Man’s primary enemy is found in original [...]
As Americans enter the voting booth today, we will be making a momentous decision for our nation. Whose vision will we embrace? Three groups of people are split, and they may very well determine the outcome: women, Hispanics, and Catholics. And the concern that drives many of them is “who really cares?” The people who [...]
“On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.”—Inaugural Address, President Barack Obama 2009 No matter who wins at the polls today, the great loser of election 2012 will be Barack Obama and the [...]
Being neither a religion nor an ideology, the body of opinion termed conservatism possesses no Holy Writ and no Das Kapital to provide dogmata. So far as it is possible to determine what conservatives believe, the first principles of the conservative persuasion are derived from what leading conservative writers and public men have professed during the [...]
“The abyss of Hell itself seems to yawn before me,” Burke was to write in 1793 as the French Revolution continued its bloody march carrying the banner of ‘liberté, égalité, fraternité!’ “We are just on the verge of Darkness and one push drives us in.” Many of us on the Right feel that America’s present [...]
After convincing my fiance that it would be so much better to watch the life of Margaret Thatcher than a movie involving aliens attacking the Earth (will they never cease?!), I suffered one of the greatest cinematic disappointments of my life. The Iron Lady taught me three things: A) It’s more important to focus on [...]
James Ceaser, perhaps our most distinguished student of American politics on the conservative side, isn’t about predicting the outcome of elections. That’s actually hard to do. And those political scientists who predict outcomes correctly well in advance are almost always just lucky. This election, all the evidence suggests, is going to be very close and [...]
One of the little known aspects of recent American history is that Russell Kirk served as one of Barry Goldwater’s most important intellectual advisors, 1959-1964. The two talked frequently, met frequently, and strategized frequently. In private and public, Goldwater acknowledged Kirk’s role a number of times. Only recently, however, did I discover that Kirk wrote [...]
By the conservatism of desolation, I mean the forlorn endeavor of certain persons of conservative instincts to convince themselves that they are “individualists”—that is, devotees of spiritual and social isolation. The dreary secular dogma of individualism is the creation of Godwin, Hodgskin, and Herbert Spencer, and it progresses from anarchy back to anarchy again. Any [...]
Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people—a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side [...]