Ever since the Brexit vote in Great Britain last summer followed by Donald Trump’s victory in November, coupled with the strengthening of political movements on the populist right in other European countries, we are besieged by analysts left and right who wonder whether we are witnessing a massive move to populist nationalism in the West. […]
A Trump Movement?
President-elect Donald Trump says that his victory was grounded in a “movement”. Is it a movement? If so, what’s it about? Like a lot of folks, I have spent considerable time since election day and read and heard tens of thousands of words by various analysts investigating this and related aspects of the Trump phenomena. […]
The Brits Vote to Take Their Country Back
We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.—British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, “Speech to the College of Europe”, Bruges, September 20, 1988. In a previous issue, I recommended Lady Thatcher’s book, […]
The Brits and the EU
After some preliminary concessions worked out by UK Prime Minister David Cameron, the stage is now set for a June British referendum on the continuation of Britain’s membership in the European Union. This is a long overdue reassessment of a failed experiment in my opinion, and I would strongly suggest that every British voter get […]
Stanton Evans, RIP
In September 1960, about 100 young conservatives congregated at the home of National Review founder William F. Buckley, Jr. in Sharon, Connecticut and founded Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) to serve as the vehicle for young conservative movement activists. The result was a statement of principle known as the Sharon Statement, which was drafted by […]
The Reformation That Awaits
The irony is almost poetic: We now have a deeply troubled and humbled Presidency the historical legacy of the incumbent of which will now rise or fall based on his success as a war President! That is if and when he ever really admits that he in fact is a war President. You can’t make […]
The Chimera of “Cosmic Justice”
Beyond any U. S. President, in his demagoguery on the fairness/inequality issue, Barack Obama has employed the pursuit of egalitarianism and the politics of envy to an extreme degree, to the point where we are rapidly becoming what Bill O’Reilly has called the “grievance nation”. America has never been susceptible to such notions on a […]
The Ultimate Progressive Mindset
For a brief moment before it reached the light of day, the Federal Communications Commission planned a major study of journalism newsrooms designed to define “Critical Information Needs”. The idea was to send out agents to media outlets around the country to inquire about such things as “who decides which stories are to be covered”, […]
More on Middle Class Revolution
Last month I commented on Francis Fukuyama’s essay on worldwide political turmoil led by the new middle classes in emerging countries and the degree to which it is being driven by the failure of governments to meet the rising expectations of the newly prosperous and educated. Recently, Alan Murray, President of the Pew Research Center, […]
Has Democracy Had Its Day?
Our purpose is to cultivate in the largest possible number of our future citizens an appreciation of both the responsibilities and the benefits which come to them because they are American and they are free.—Harvard University President James Bryant Conant in the preface to the 1945 report, General Education in a Free Society. Concerns […]