1,365 words
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…)
1,898 words
Steven F. Hayward
M. Stanton Evans: Conservative Wit, Apostle of Freedom
New York: Encounter Books, 2022
Is it possible to be a real old-school conservative or Man of the Right, and not — sooner or later — cut corners, betray your principles, sell out? Or — as we liked to put it seven or eight years ago — cuck?
This question was in the forefront of my mind as I dipped into this richly entertaining new biography of M. Stanton Evans by Steven Hayward. Surely, I thought, Stan Evans is going to disappoint us sooner or later. (more…)
Phyllis Schlafly’s critique of the Republican Party changed its focus and direction.
2,020 words
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…)
3,777 words
“The Day After, ABC‘s much-discussed vision of nuclear Armageddon, is no longer only a television film, of course; it has become an event, a rally and a controversy, much of it orchestrated.”
— The New York Times, November 20, 1983
I have a somewhat morbid fascination with nuclear war. It is one of the absolute worst and unimaginably nightmarish things that could theoretically happen. When you step back and think about the bullet that the human race dodged during the Cold War, it is truly mind-blowing. (more…)
2,219 words
Czech version here
Samuel Francis
Leviathan and Its Enemies: Mass Organization and Managerial Power in Twentieth-Century America
Arlington: Washington Summit Publishers
Leviathan and Its Enemies has the subtitle Mass Organization and Managerial Power in Twentieth-Century America, which seems curious, given that it was first published in 2016. (more…)
1,335 words
So they want to ban Gone With the Wind? Pity, because a movie they would really like to strangle is Santa Fe Trail. Made in 1940, Santa Fe Trail is an Errol Flynn/Olivia de Havilland Western with lots of action and romance that discusses slavery and the Southern point of view in rational terms.
Errol Flynn plays Jeb Stuart, and Ronald Reagan plays George Custer. They are classmates at West Point in 1854 (more…)
2,379 words
Rick Perlstein
The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014
The Invisible Bridge is a look at the link between Richard Nixon’s reshaping of American politics and the Republican Party and the rise of Ronald Reagan. In the 1970s, Ronald Reagan was considered very far to the Right, indeed. (more…)
1,664 words
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…)
Lynchburg, Virginia
3,758 words
Now that it is past Labor Day, I want to tell the traditional “what did you do last summer?” story. Most of my summer was spent doing what I normally do: working out, attending civic and cultural events in my home base in the state of Washington, and supporting Counter-Currents. (more…)
1,992 words
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.
Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, and Ross Perot at a 1992 presidential debate
2,310 words
Perhaps the greatest irony of the periodic political revolutions that occur in American democracy is that most of the voters who make them possible have not the foggiest notion of what they are doing. In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt won the White House by running on a platform that promised to balance the budget and reduce the scale and power of the federal government, and there is no doubt that most of the Americans who sent him to Washington supported him simply because of the desperate economic straits in which they found themselves and their country, not because of any passion they shared with him for the socialist and internationalist experiments that he and his brood immediately imposed. (more…)