Home

In the past, disparate groups on the American right were united by their opposition to communism. Today, fears of the threat of an ascendant China, the growing boldness of cancel culture, and the enervating philosophy of the “woke” proselytizers form the basis of new right-wing coalitions. If Trump succeeds, the big government of the American right will be one that embraces American ideals, American history, and American religion rather than tearing it down in pursuit of some post-religious techno-secular utopia.

Once we no longer care about the truth, our own deliberations become corrupt. When the positions we take and the policies we advocate are not restrained by truth, it no longer seems to matter how we bring about our agenda. All that matters is that we win.

The duty of Christians is to be the soul—even more specifically, the conscience—of our civilization. The options this November, and the trajectories they promise, are not acceptable, and in choosing between them we risk forsaking our calling by soiling our witness.

For too long we have acquiesced to the political choices given to us, tried to figure out what the lesser evil is, and voted for that. Instead, we should demand a vision of the good that we share in our political space and vote for the party that espouses that vision: the American Solidarity Party.

No amount of high principles or decorous manners can exempt conservatives from the responsibility to continue the work that Donald Trump has begun. President Trump somehow has attached his robust self-love to a love of our country. He can use help articulating the meaning of this country, but he knows what it doesn’t mean, what it is opposed to: the pincer movement of cosmopolitanism and identity politics. Recognition of this threat is the one thing needful at this moment, for the conservative movement and for the United States of America.

While I do not intend to vote for Biden, I am adamant that a Christian may in good conscience vote for him so long as it is not because of the evils he supports. Recognizing this fact is crucial for those who care about Christian witness in a fallen world. When our moral witness becomes entirely tied to prudential political judgments, we swap our faith in a transcendent redeeming God who offers us salvation for a politician or party who promises to create heaven on earth.

While both presidential candidates have changed their views on abortion over the past decades, their actions in recent years clarify the direction that they would likely take while in office. President Trump has maintained a consistent pro-life record in office that affects the regulations of various executive agencies and American leadership on the world stage. On the other hand, former Vice President Biden has moved to support his party’s current position of actively promoting federal funding for the abortion industry and cementing abortion as a constitutional right.

With Trump as nominee, social conservatives might think that by not voting for him they are keeping their hands clean. These people fail to recognize that under a Clinton regime there will be no refuge from a systematic agenda that seeks to destroy the very notion of “nature” and of any restraint on federal power.

The face that is emerging for the GOP is the ugly face we have always been accused of having—misogynistic, racist, and gratuitously authoritarian. If we assent to his nomination, how can we still consider ourselves the flag bearers of the attempt to harmonize virtue and the political life?

The conservative should not act the ideologue in order to attack the demagogue, because the simplistic thinking of the ideologue is just as hostile to true statesmanship as the angry passions of the demagogue.

Until a solid conservative independent candidate has made a run for the presidency and is coming up far short the Monday before the election, there is no reason for a conservative (or anyone else) to consider Donald Trump as the answer to the Democratic candidate.

A bipartisan record of inadequacy by governing elites incapable of admitting their failures led to the election of Donald Trump. Thankfully, America is vast, diverse, and free enough to give itself a new governing elite if the old one can’t learn.

Anyone who hopes to see a major shift among the major parties has to ask himself: when am I going to stop voting for them? If not during the year of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, then when?

Hillbilly Elegy not only helps us to understand the social phenomena highlighted by Donald Trump’s rise to the presidency; it also reminds us of other things that have been obscured by that rise, but that we ought not to forget.

In deciding how to vote this November, one should be guided both by political science and one’s conscience.

Vote as if your ballot determines nothing whatsoever—except the shape of your own character.

American politics is suffering from a failure of empathy. In particular, the country’s elites have failed to empathize with the working class. Over the last few generations, America’s elites have stood in the way of the working class’s pursuit of the American dream by devising, and then by tenaciously defending, policies that impede upward economic mobility.

If you have been tempted by the utilitarian, lesser-of-two-evils argument for Donald Trump, then you must appreciate how his latest and most serious scandal changes that calculation.

Voting always requires a weighing of consequences. The paramount question for the conscientious voter in 2016 is, “Which outcome among the feasible alternatives will promote the greatest good or prevent the greatest harm?”

The country’s ruling elites misunderstood or ignored the concerns of a significant segment of the electorate. The Great Revolt suggests that those elites should move beyond lamenting the misfortune (to them) of Trump’s elevation to the presidency and ponder the mistakes on their part that made it possible.