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.
Category: 2016 Election
2016 Election
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Picking a Justice Who Can Resist the Lure of the Liberal Side: Recommendations to the Next Republican President
In evaluating potential nominees to the Supreme Court, Republican presidents should seriously consider state supreme court justices. Their independence gives a clearer indication of how they would behave if appointed to the high court.
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Now Is the Time: Why We Must Refuse to Vote for the Lesser of Two Evils
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?
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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.
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Abortion as a Positive Good: How the Abortion Movement Echoes Radical Slavery Rhetoric
Like John C. Calhoun, who famously embraced slavery as a “positive good,” the abortion movement of 2016 has shifted from seeing abortion as a “necessary evil” to celebrating it as good for women and society.
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A Call for Partisan Consistency
Only when we are willing to hold our own party to the same standards to which we hold the other party will we be able to improve our national politics.
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How to Fix the GOP
By invoking the principles of the Declaration of Independence, Republicans can wholeheartedly embrace the ideas of integration, inclusion, and respect in a way that remains consistent with their commitments to morality, patriotism, and liberty.
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A Vote’s Consequences and a Voter’s Conscience
Vote as if your ballot determines nothing whatsoever—except the shape of your own character.
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On #NeverTrump (and #NeverHillary)
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.
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Donald Trump: An Old-fashioned Whig
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.
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Stephen Douglas and Donald Trump’s America: Lessons from Lincoln
Seeing in our contemporary politics the revival of Douglas Democracy in all its anxieties about freedom—and seeing it make such headway in Lincoln’s political party—is disheartening in the extreme. The imperative of learning from Lincoln, as Allen Guelzo’s work brings him to us, has never been stronger.
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Dear Mr. Trump: If You Want to Make America Great Again, You’ve Got to Start with Marriage
If you want to make America great again, you cannot afford to ignore the role stable marriage plays in motivating our labor force and in our nation’s economic growth as a whole.
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The Problem of Character: Why Conservatives Must Reject Donald Trump
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?
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Who Represents “We the People?”
Political institutions force individuals to cooperate, to listen to opposing points of view, and to think about the decisions they are about to make. They delay and complicate the way that consent is expressed, but this is precisely why they are necessary: they help ensure that the public will is reasonable.
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The Meaninglessness of Our Political Discourse: A Lesson from George Orwell
If a slogan can mean anything to anyone, who could oppose it?
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Constitutional Conservatism: Its Meaning and Its Future
The project of constitutional conservatism must be about more than restoring limits on government. It must also invoke the ends of the American experiment in ordered liberty if the United States is to resist the siren-calls of egalitarianism and populism.
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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.
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What Trump and Sanders Teach Us about America
Enthusiastic support for Trump and Sanders shows the stranglehold that materialistic individualism has on American political culture. Unless we can find a counterbalance to our excessive focus on economic interests, we should expect to be crushed beneath their weight.
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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.
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The Politics of Passion: A Lesson from The Federalist Papers
In an era when Americans seek political leaders who display “authenticity” rather than prudence, a look back to the Federalist Papers makes clear the importance of a politics based on moderation rather than passion.
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Presidential Elections, Party Establishments, and Demagogues
The American Founders created a careful system to prevent the election of the power-hungry. Progressive-led changes to the electoral process in the twentieth century, however, make it all too easy for ambitious demagogues to seize control—as first Obama did, and now Trump is doing to far worse ends.
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Donald Trump: At Home in Postmodern America
Donald Trump is not a conservative—he’s a reality TV star thoroughly in tune with the passions and dynamics of mass publicity and social media. No matter how much he denounces them, he’s still a product of victim-based identity politics.
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Donald Trump, George Will, and the Crisis of American Conservatism
You can’t beat a flawed moral vision with no moral vision. This is not idealism but hard political reality.