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Every society depends on an experience of membership: a sense of who ‘we’ are, why we belong together, and what we share. This experience is pre-political: it precedes all political institutions, and provides our reason for accepting them. It unites left and right, blue-collar and white-collar, man and woman, parent and child. To threaten this […]
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Conservatives venerate the free market and see smaller government as an end in itself. Liberals do not venerate government in the same way, and we do not see larger government as an end in and of itself. For us, everything works on a case-by-case basis. Should government provide everybody’s education? Yes. Should government manufacture everybody’s […]
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There is much to be said in favor of the classical liberal tradition, even in its extreme libertarian form. But where has this tradition ended up: in the adulation of rich zombies who are the perfect illustration of all that has gone wrong in America life, our stupidity, our weakness and cowardice, our complete inability […]
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Daniel McCarthy points out a new blog by libertarian (or is it Jeremytarian?) Jeremy Lott, author of the new book, In Defense of Hypocrisy. He also happens to be acquainted with Michael Brendan Dougherty (I know, I know, who ISN’T acquainted with Michael Brendan Dougherty?). Due to some technical problems, I cannot yet […]
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Leave it to Charles Krauthammer to take something as simple and decent as a paean to a country he loves and admires (in this case, Australia) and turn it into another tendentious argument about interventionist foreign policy:
That bravery breeds affection in America for another reason as well. Australia is the only country that has fought […]
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Unbeknownst to anyone on the Right, we have received a defector in the form of The New Republic! So says Kos himself here. Jonathan Chait at TNR complains about the Kossacks’ “sectarian” mentality and Kos’ own “paranoid” mentality. Is there any way that we could return said defector to his home country? […]
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That’s Leon Hadar’s very good, sarcastic response to the latest jingo “news” stories. I’m still waiting for Mr. Bush to tell us about the great opportunity to buy prime oceanfront property in Midland, or perhaps Rick Santorum will offer to sell us a bridge in Brooklyn.
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Just when I might have been starting to feel sorry that he was going to get humiliated in this fall’s election (he is the closest thing to a traditional conservative on social issues in the Senate), Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) reminds me why I will not be sorry to see him go. In the […]
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Now, even George Bush’s speechwriters know that the Hungarians did not actually succeed in 1956, nor did they actually overthrow their own Communist dictatorship nor expel the Soviets. The Soviet Union was the “Evil Empire” that claimed to have liberated Eastern Europe and establish true democracy. Eventually that Evil Empire died of its own excesses, […]
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I have so far refrained from commenting on the World Cup, pro or con, even though it seems to have become the thing bloggers want to discuss, either as a jumping-off point for some other political argument or as an exercise in Franklin Foer-like expertise on a sport about which most American bloggers, like their […]
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Back to the original question, I think—to no one’s surprise—that much of the best intellectually curious, non-partisan stuff on the right(ish) is coming from the libertarian writers; Wilkinson, Sanchez, Balko, etc, though the paleocons and religious traditionalists seem to be giving them a run for their (free-market loving) money. ~Peter Suderman
I am grateful to Mr. […]
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At the Scene, Reihan draws attention to Niall Ferguson’s conversion to the cause of Scottish independence and his recognition that New Labour-style devolution is sham self-government. Jonah Goldberg, always two steps behind, will be stunned and amazed by this news, just as he was stunned and amazed to find that there is socialism in […]
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To make amends for my sloppy post that originally credited Rep. John Boehner with Rep. Charlie Norwood’s quote, here are Rep. Norwood’s remarks from the debate in full from his Congressional website:
Mr. Speaker, this rule will allow perhaps one of the most critical actions to date in the War on Terror.
This action is not […]
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I agree with you that [Orwell]’s talking about power-worship which, I believe, resides at the core of all identity politics. The rise of identity politics in the United States — and the West — is ultimately an exercise in gaining power. Black power, and the enabling rhetoric that went with it, was all […]
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For the record, John Lukacs has many great observations about the differences between patriotism and nationalism. The difference, to me and I believe to him, is that nationalism is rooted in the mystic concept of a nation—most famously in blood and soil—while patriotism is rooted in adherence to a creed or doctrine. A patriot in […]
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For that reason the Lukacs argument (as presented by Jonah) seems to me to be very shaky. Loyalty to an idea is another variant of Orwell’s power-worshipping version of nationalism and open to his charge that “it is most virulent” when attached to some other unit of humnanity (rather than one’s own country.) Loyalty to […]
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At The Rockford Files (Chronicles), Scott Richert delivers a withering rebuke to (yet another) facile Jonah Goldberg post:
It goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) that Goldberg could not be more mistaken, both about Lukacs’s understanding of patriotism and his understanding of nationalism. Considering that this has been one of Lukacs’s chief preoccupations (if […]
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Yet allowing all this, and allowing that a Christian or a Jew or a conservative liberal might increasingly doubt the wisdom of rights-talk as the foundation of political order, we are nonetheless citizens of a country in which rights-talk is basically the only kind of talk there is - and I have a hard time […]
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Coulter’s prose style is reminiscent of exiled National Review editor Joe Sobran who is quoted in the book and thanked in the acknowledgements. Like Sobran, Coulter’s gift as a polemicist is the counterpunch. Responding to Howard Dean’s statement, “I don’t have any objection to someone who is pro-life, if they are really dedicated to the […]
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As many of you will have seen elsewhere, David Brooks has written an article in The New York Times, “Changing Bedfellows” (which, in appropriately elitist fashion, is available only to NYT Select subscribers), that has generated more than a little comment and conversation among some prominent bloggers. In the latest Brooksian revision of our […]
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Posting has been very slow for me this week, and I beg my regular readers’ indulgence. Having fallen into the quicksand of following four major sporting events (World Cup, Stanley Cup, Finals, U.S. Open) on my first week of real vacation, and working via dial-up from home, time for posting has been limited. […]
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Let me be clear: Those who say this is a war of choice are nothing more than wrong. This is a war of necessity. ~Rep. John Boehner
In a move that required the courage of a churchmouse, the House passed, by a substantial majority, a nonbinding resolution that rejects withdrawal from Iraq. Withdrawal (or refusing […]
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Some of the latest talk out there in the last few days has been about this Religion News Service article in The Washington Post, this GetReligion post, the topic of the “feminization of Christianity” and the consequent decline in the numbers of men attending church services. The post includes a quote from David Murrow, […]
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A proxy war is now under way in Eastern Chad. On the side of the Sudanese government are the Janjaweed and the Chadean rebels, who are ethnically cleansing thousands of square miles to the east of the country. Ranged against them are the forces of the official Chadean army, such as it is, and the […]
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There’s some truth to this, but I think something larger is going on here, which has to do with the Christian relationship to rights-based liberalism, and particularly the Lockean tradition that America is (roughly speaking) founded on. To oversimplify egregiously but not, I think, inaccurately, the modern Anglo-American political tradition came into being because Christians […]
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