Many have argued that without God there can be no fixed moral principles. George Orwell’s 1984 goes further, raising the possibility that without God there cannot even be “facts” in any meaningful, reliable sense.
Author: Carson Holloway (Carson Holloway)
Post
The True Meaning of Christmas: Accept No Substitutes
The Christmas message is one of joy, even “great joy,” but not superficial joy. Christmas confronts us with the sobering claim that humankind is in a state of sin—a state from which we cannot save ourselves. Hence the need for a savior, and hence the joyful Christian claim that God himself offers the salvation by coming to live among us.
Post
Public Discourse in the “Age of Selfies”
Adam MacLeod’s new book, “The Age of Selfies,” represents a worthy contribution to the intellectual retracing of our steps that we must pursue if we hope to restore reason and civility to our public discourse. Our freedom and social tranquility depend on a renewed seriousness about natural law and objective moral truth.
Post
Hamiltonian Nationalism: A Response to Samuel Gregg
Samuel Gregg admonishes us that Hamilton was really “a different kind of nationalist from those that claim this mantle in our time.” While we yield to no one in our respect for Gregg, we think he has gone astray here: partly by overlooking some relevant aspects of Hamilton’s thought, and partly by mischaracterizing today’s American nationalism.
Post
The Problem of Human Rights
For the considerable body of people in the western world who still believe in self-government, and in the preservation of their nations’ traditional moral identities, the overreaching of the contemporary human rights project will perhaps lead them to reconsider natural law, presented in a prudently modest formulation. This is a crucial undertaking to which Pierre Manent’s new book is a worthy contribution.
Post
Social, Political Animals: Embodied Learning and the Limits of Online Education
Technology may permit us to supplement, but it should not lead us to discard, the personal Socratic education that does full justice to human nature and has contributed so much to the development of our civilization.
Post
Christmas and Western Civilization
Though Christmas is a religious holiday, secularists should appreciate its great contribution to Western Civilization: the lesson that all men are equal in their fundamental human dignity.
Post
Sailing on the Ship of Fools
The values America’s elites cherish are not the incontestable truth of things, and they may even run counter to the deeper truths of American politics and human life. Those who aspire to lead our country—and to deserve to lead it—would do well to ponder these lessons by reading Tucker Carlson’s Ship of Fools.
Post
Donald Trump Was Elected Because Elites Have Failed the Working Class
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.
Post
The Great Revolt: Understanding Real Trump Voters
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.
Post
In Defense of Originalism
Originalism is the commonsense, traditional American approach to constitutional interpretation, not a contemporary conservative invention.
Post
Can Liberalism Change?
In a paradoxical new book, Columbia University professor Mark Lilla correctly identifies the defects in contemporary liberalism and identity politics but cannot free himself from them.
Post
Renouncing Fatalism: Trump and Tocqueville in Poland
Trump did well in Poland to eschew all talk of “the wrong side of history” and instead to emphasize the real power, for good and ill, that we have over our own destiny. By doing so he defended our dignity and upheld our humanity.
Post
The Patriotism We Need: Principled and Spirited
A timely book on the thought of Harry Jaffa and Walter Berns reminds us that patriotism needs to be about ideas and principles, but it cannot only be about ideas and principles. To win—and deserve to win—elections, conservatism must also inspire love of country and serve the immediate interests of the ordinary man.
Post
The Utopian Aspirations of the Fight Against Climate Change: A Call for Moderation
The effort to combat climate change aspires to feats of social control, coordination, and foresight that are unprecedented in the history of politics. Our expectations for the movement ought to be tempered by our knowledge of human limitations.
Post
Russian Hacking and Acts of War
Prudent foreign policy does not multiply the country’s enemies unnecessarily.
Post
Trump, Hillbillies, and the Forgotten Men and Women of America
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.
Post
On the Bipartisan Inadequacy of Governing Elites: A General Theory of Trump’s Victory
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.
Post
The Promise and Peril of Making America Great: On Trumpism and Hamiltonianism
Donald Trump’s approach to politics has real roots in American political history. Yet, as Alexander Hamilton warned, it is very dangerous to undermine a democratic people’s confidence in their own governing classes.
Post
Moderation and the Preservation of Democracy
Preserving democratic freedom requires prudence and true moderation that acknowledges the complex conditions on which freedom depends.
Post
Collaborative Greatness: The Lesson of George Washington and Alexander Hamilton
We need to reflect on and learn from Washington and Hamilton’s lesson in collaborative greatness. Their alliance forged our nation, and we will need similar alliances to preserve it and ensure its flourishing.
Post
The Trump Phenomenon and the Decline of American Politics
No American politician is ever as great as his most ardent adulators say or as bad as his most vitriolic detractors say. Still, Trump’s rise reveals a certain lowering of standards not only among the voters who support him but also in the elites who oppose him.
Post
Donald Trump, the Declaration of Independence, and the GOP: A Response to Adam Seagrave
Voters will not respond favorably to a political party that offers them moral principles—especially principles rooted in the past—without also showing a real concern for their concrete interests.
Post
Reagan vs. Trump on the Constitution, Freedom, and Conservative Statesmanship
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.
Post
Aristotle Explains the Trump Phenomenon
Aristotle’s discussion of factional conflict in his Politics gives historical insight into Donald Trump’s meteoric rise to political popularity. Ordinary Americans are acting in defense of their perceived economic interests and against the reign of political correctness.