When commentators regret the ferocious polarization in the United States following the election of President Donald Trump, conservatives must be wary. Polarization as a term to describe the political scene has strategic value for liberals. In calling what has happened to our country a problem of a disappearing middle, liberals obscure actions of the Left
If you ask conservatives what they stand for—I mean genuine conservatives, not libertarians who were aligned with conservatives long ago because of a shared anti-Communism even though their social beliefs were wholly liberal—here is what they will say: “God. Family. Country.” Yes, it’s that simple. Conservatives want a churchgoing public, stable families, and national identity.
Even as Donald Trump continues to frustrate #TheResistance after three years of ceaseless fabrication and hysteria, conservatives must not forget just how close they are to the edge. We have a defender in the White House, but the social ideas of the Left prevail in nearly every other elite and cultural space in the United
The sorry descent of former Vice President Joe Biden into identity politics on the campaign trail signals that the Democratic Party of Tip O'Neill and Bill Clinton is over and done with forever. The pull of group resentments in the party is too strong. Last summer, Biden staked his place in political correctness, and he
“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for” may be the most self-aggrandizing, self-satisfied, self-projecting campaign slogan ever adopted, but among the liberal elite the conceit is even stronger today than it was in 2008. “We should be in charge—not those guys!” is the subtext of every statement in the recent Democratic presidential primary debates.
Ever since the “Theory Revolution” of the 1970s, my colleagues in the humanities have prided themselves on their vigilant critical temper. Marx’s famous pledge in 1843 was everybody’s motto: “a ruthless criticism of all that exists.” By 1980, after the wave of Theodor Adorno, Simone de Beauvoir, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and other radical analysts
Last week in a dinner speech at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., Princeton professor Robert George had some advice for social and religious conservatives: “You must fight.” It was an exhortation that does him no good in the academic world. A distinguished Ivy League scholar and teacher isn’t supposed to talk about the “culture
“The deliberate national penance that most Germans take for granted offers a striking contrast with the ways American have confronted their own national crimes.” That’s a line from an article last month in The Atlantic. The article focuses on a supposedly sad divergence: while Germans have fully acknowledged their responsibility for the Holocaust and accepted
When my liberal friends and colleagues begin to explain to me why they imagine President Trump is appallingly vulgar and incompetent and venal, there is always a point in which their faces go blank. It happens when I say to them, “What about the Little Sisters of the Poor?” That stops them short.
