Tag: American conservatism

The Blood Compact Monument in the Philippines, which commemorates the blood compact between that country and Spain that was made in 1565.

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Most classical liberal thinking, which is still ultimately liberal and thus subversive, is based on the idea of the Lockean social contract. But what if the idea of a social contract is a complete farce? Given that classical liberalism underpins much of lukewarm conservatism, if we knock out the idea of social contracts, we also knock out conservatism. (more…)

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Colleen Doody
Detroit’s Cold War: The Origins of Postwar Conservatism
Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 2013

In 1945, with the exception of the United States, Canada, and a few other places, the civilized world was in ruins. While the industrial centers of the United States were not burned-out husks pocked with bomb craters, the economy was not well-functioning. There was inflation and a shortage of consumer goods. (more…)

Phyllis Schlafly’s critique of the Republican Party changed its focus and direction.

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Phyllis Schlafly
A Choice Not an Echo
Alton, Ill.: Pere Marquette Press, 1964

Many of the greatest pioneers of Right-wing political thought in the United States are women. Right-leaning men are often too busy with their jobs and putting out the fires to be prophets. Female activists, for their part, have a remarkable ability to challenge and change the direction of institutions. One such woman was Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016). (more…)

Simone Biles

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The Olympics are finally over and Team USA managed to edge out China for gold medals, but fewer Americans were ecstatic for the athletic triumph. In fact, a sizable number of conservatives rooted against America in some of the competitions, particularly women’s soccer. (more…)

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Unless you’re a Texan, you probably never heard of Juneteenth until last week.

This holiday celebrates the end of slavery and has long been a minor holiday in the Lone Star State. It commemorates the day — June 19, 1865 — where the Union declared all slaves in the state of Texas free, (more…)

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Christopher Caldwell
The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020

The 1960s forever transformed America. Race relations, sexual relations, popular culture, music, foreign policy, trust in government, and urban life were all dramatically changed. (more…)

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Today is the birthday of Revilo Pendleton Oliver, born in Texas in 1908. He was Professor of Classics and Modern Languages at the University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana) for many years, an analyst with the War Department in the 1940s, and a contributor to the National Review and other publications from the 1950s onward.

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F. H. Buckley
The Republican Workers Party: How the Trump Victory Drove Everyone Crazy, and Why It Was Just What We Needed
New York: Encounter Books, 2018

Any book that celebrates the 2016 election while denying the crucial role that race and ethnonationalism played in the rise of Donald Trump is just asking not to be taken seriously. (more…)

Jeb Bush with a supporter

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It’s easy to look back in anger. But is it always the right thing to do? The present, armed with hindsight, will always trump the past. It’s like an unfair fight that way. Nothing seems more obvious than a painful mistake when viewed in hindsight. But without hindsight, much less is obvious.

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I’ve always thought of Lindsey Graham as a milquetoast and a useless RINO. But – surprise, surprise – last Thursday he emerged as the man of the hour, with his impassioned defense of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Graham’s unscripted remarks (totaling less than five minutes) are fascinating in part because they give us a window into the mind of a conventional establishment conservative – (more…)

David Duke in 1989

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The time has come, to paraphrase Caspar Gutman in Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, for plain speaking and clear understanding. Last November, David Duke failed to win the  governorship of Louisiana, but he did gain some 39 percent of the popular vote and carried a majority — about 55 percent — of the white vote. (more…)

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Scott Greer
No Campus for White Men
WND Books, 2017

The point of American conservatism is misdirection. It is a movement designed to fail, a program organized to lose, a racket masquerading as resistance. For that reason, much of what passes as “intellectual conservatism” is an attempt to disguise the obvious and to funnel political momentum into pointless dead ends. (more…)