Conservatism
Story Stream
The Stale Poundcake of Freedom Conservatism March 04, 2025
I found my mind wandering repeatedly to Homer Simpson as the “Freedom Conservatives” soldiered dutifully through their conference agenda last week. This is surely the least inspiring panel conversation I’ve ever attended, I would think, and then remi...
Moderation as Pursuit of Justice February 04, 2025
There are perhaps no more cited words of poetry, at least poetry of a genuinely high order, than the opening stanza of W. B. Yeats’s haunting 1919 poem “The Second Coming.” There the Irish poet evokes a true apocalypse where “Things fall apart; the c...
Is It Cool to Be Right-Wing Now? January 31, 2025
If you’ve been on X this week, you’ve probably caught yourself reading a lot about the image on the front of the latest issue of New York magazine.Not since Paper had Kim Kardashian pop champagne onto a coupe perched on her own tush has a cover set o...
New Right Needs Conservative Eclecticism January 30, 2025
In a rousing speech last summer, Vivek Ramaswamy presented the New Right as at a crossroads between two competing visions of American conservatism: “National Libertarianism” or “National Protectionism.” In his telling, the former is focused on disman...
How the New York Post Wins January 10, 2025
Explaining the New York Post to anyone who is not from New York is always difficult. This left-leaning city has a daily newspaper that is owned by a right-wing media tycoon and this newspaper’s politics, generally, aren’t aligning with the 68 percent...
Scrutonian Conservatism Reconsidered January 07, 2025
Sir Roger Scruton died just shy of his 76th birthday on January 12, 2020, after a short but valiant struggle with cancer. For many of us, he was the very model of personal and intellectual integrity, a courageous thinker and writer whose adamant “No!...
A Prophet of Modern Politics January 03, 2025
Edmund Burke’s Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770) is the most notable among his early political pamphlets, and perhaps his most famous overall alongside the Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). While the Reflections ha...
Scruton and the Roots of Modern Conservatism December 06, 2024
If you could be transported back 50 years, to the London of 1974, where would you choose to be a fly on the wall? Surely at 52 Campden Hill Square in Holland Park, the home of Sir Hugh Fraser — the charismatic war hero, Scottish aristocrat and Tory M...
Conservatives Can Curate Art for Themselves December 04, 2024
Does Philip Kennicott know what year it is? The Washington Post arts critic just published an essay that seems to have arrived in a time portal from 1986.“In Grim Times, Art Finds a Way” is a pious, flowery, and tiresome essay about how “the arts com...
Cormac McCarthy's Gnostic Conservatism November 25, 2024
But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!”—Matthew 6:23In 2005, arts critic Richard B. Woodward travelled to Santa Fe to profile Cormac McCarthy...
Would Bill Buckley Yell Stop? November 22, 2024
The year 2025 marks the centenary of modern conservativism’s founder, William F. Buckley Jr. But given the takeover of the Republican Party by Donald Trump, whether conservative still means what it once did is an open question. In these times it’s na...
Sex and Conservative Hot Girls October 07, 2024
“Who is the conservative hot girl, and what does she mean for politics?” Newsweek asked earlier this week. To answer this question, the article purports to speak with “experts” on the matter who ended up, (shocker), chalking it up to “gender stereoty...
The Revenge of the Conservative Hot Girl October 04, 2024
There’s a new weapon in the culture wars and its assets are considerable. In America, Republicans have become obsessed with the “conservative hot girl”: an unreconstructed, curvaceous and unashamedly flirty young woman who counts as Right-coded simpl...
Watering A Nation’s Roots September 18, 2024
In 1967, Pepperdine College commissioned the historian and conservative man of letters Russell Kirk to write a history textbook for the southern California Christian college. The result, seven years later, was a book entitled The Roots of American Or...
Constructing Conservatism September 17, 2024
Conservatives rightly recognize that the common good, and thus a coherent politics, requires a shared definition of virtue derived from a shared moral vision and set of values, which in turn must reflect the traditions and character of the nation and...
The Babbitt School of Conservatism September 10, 2024
In the 2020s, “conservatism” sounds passé, and its failure is taken for granted. A new right finds inspiration less in Russell Kirk or Edmund Burke than in Carl Schmitt, and the history of the conservative movement up to 2016 seems largely irrelevant...
iThink Therefore iAm September 06, 2024
Steve Jobs named his company “Apple” after a pleasant trip to an apple orchard. The bite mark in the logo was added to give the silhouette a sense of scale, lest someone think it a cherry. Yet that name and that symbol, evoking consumption of the for...
An Interview With George Nash September 06, 2024
JMC Resident Historian Elliott Drago sat down with JMC Network Scholar George Nash to discuss conservatism, Herbert Hoover, and the American theme of freedom....
New Right, New Fights September 06, 2024
With primary season having already been underway in the United States, June of last year may seem an odd time for Encounter Books to have released Arthur Milikh’s sensational compendium of essays, Up from Conservatism (2023).Presidential aspirants an...
Conservatives Need a Positive Governing Vision August 29, 2024
When Ronald Reagan said, “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help,’” he articulated perhaps the core Republican philosophy of governance. It’s a negative philosophy, one based on what ...
Our Home Sweet Home? August 28, 2024
“America is not just an idea. America is a nation.” That was J.D. Vance’s big applause line at the National Conservatism (NatCon) conference last month. That theme seamlessly transferred over to his speech at the RNC after being named the Vice Presid...
What the Right Gets Wrong About Art August 14, 2024
"Nice things are nicer than nasty ones.”—Kingsley AmisIthought about organizing this essay around Kingsley Amis’s seemingly simple remark. How much forgotten wisdom is contained in those seven short words? And what profound application do they have t...
Glenn Loury on Economics, Conservatism & Crack Cocaine August 06, 2024
"All you need, besides the cocaine, is a lighter, water, baking soda, some Q-Tips, high-proof alcohol, a ceramic mug, and a piece of cheesecloth or an old T-shirt," writes Glenn Loury in his riveting Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservati...
Celebrity Fine Artist Nick Cave August 06, 2024
When I turned 18, I already knew I wanted tattoos. Back then, in 2006, it was still rare to have them, and felt like an easy way to subvert the dry, stiff, Cape Cod conservatism that I was brought up in. I somewhat regret getting so many of them now,...
Conservatives Should Care About Cities July 24, 2024
It’s no secret that big cities vote heavily Democratic. In fact, population density is a very good predictor of voting habits. So it’s no surprise that Republicans have made a habit of not even trying to compete electorally in cities. In fact, in som...
