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.
Author: Carson Holloway (Carson Holloway)
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.
Post
The National Bank: An Early Lesson in Constitutional Fidelity
The debate over the creation of a national bank reveals how Washington, Jefferson and Hamilton, despite profound disagreements, argued respectfully with prudence and fidelity to the Constitution. All three men offer valuable examples to today’s statesmen.
Post
Why Trump Persists
No amount of lecturing about principles will persuade voters who think that their interests are under assault—and that Trump is the only candidate taking their interests seriously.
Post
Corporate Personhood and Individual Rights: A Reply to S. Adam Seagrave
The truth that human beings possess a natural personhood and natural rights is not incompatible with the idea of corporate personhood and rights that exist not by nature but by convention.
Post
The Living Constitution Revisited
Justice William Brennan’s vision of a living constitution continues to dominate contemporary constitutional interpretation, in spite of its troubling inconsistencies.
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
Corporations are People, Too
The contemporary left’s extreme anti-corporation position is hostile to the traditional legal culture of American liberty, which advances the common good by protecting the rights of both individuals and formally organized groups of people.