Populism
Story Stream
The Power of American Originals February 26, 2025
“In the US, voters just loosed a genuine bull into the china shop of the ruling class.”Karl Zinsmeister, 2025BACKBONE: Maverick Essays in Middle America: Why American Populism Should be Welcomed, Not Feared is a collection of short essays about Ameri...
Every Woman’s Romantasy February 19, 2025
Romantasy is the hybrid of two genres serious readers love to sneer at: romance and fantasy. Populated by fairies, goblins, shapeshifters and sorcerers, these novels turn up the charm with fantasy’s high stakes and epic tropes....
It's Always High School February 18, 2025
The writer Elizabeth Ellen earned my admiration in October of 2022 when, as the Deputy Editor of literary journal Hobart Pulp, she defied the then-reigning orthodoxy of cancellations and speech-policing and published an interview containing taboo, fo...
Today’s Populist Rebellion Shouldn’t Alarm Us January 23, 2025
Establishment voices are expressing alarm these days about the rise of political populism. All around the globe, workaday citizens are offering new resistance to authorities. In the U.S., voters just loosed a genuine bull into the china shop of the r...
Island Royalty January 22, 2025
Forty years ago, most white Americans had no idea that, hard on the heels of the American and French revolutions, an enslaved population on a Caribbean island had claimed its freedom by force of arms and founded a new Black nation called Haiti. Today...
We Also Need Democracy in Aesthetics January 21, 2025
In a new book entitled BACKBONE: Why American Populism Should Be Welcomed, Not Feared, author Karl Zinsmeister reports on middle Americans living all across the country, and why they want dramatic change in the direction of our country. He examines p...
Lola Kirke's Reading List January 15, 2025
One time I was visiting a very smart and wise friend of mine (she went to HARVARD but tells people, should it come up, that she “went to school in Cambridge”) who lives in the very intellectual city of Berlin. In need of something to entertain myself...
Who Should We Emulate? January 13, 2025
“The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.” This aphorism appears in Meditations, a collection of philosophical musings written by Marcus Aurelius, a 2nd century Roman emperor.Aurelius is considered one of the less tyrannical, ev...
"BACKBONE" by Karl Zinsmeister January 13, 2025
Middle America is in rebellion today. Ordinary people are objecting to bureaucratic coercion, manipulations of speech, redefinitions of sex and family, racial nostrums, strictures on economic freedom, and pressure to conform with new progressive narr...
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...
How Professors Killed Literature November 18, 2024
In our quest for relevance, we teachers of literature have ended up becoming unnecessary. This thought comes to mind every time I read the latest news about the crisis in the humanities. English degrees have declined by almost half since their most r...
The History of Wokeness November 14, 2024
Over the summer, I drove down to one of the numerous beach towns in Ocean County, New Jersey with two friends: one is a cop, the other a special ed teacher and athletic coach; both are black Americans in their late 20s. Over a dinner of chicken franc...
Is the Gen Z Bro Media Diet to Blame? November 08, 2024
Among the many questions that will be sure to plague Democrats in the months following Kamala Harris’s defeat in the 2024 presidential election: What is happening with Gen Z men?Could it be that growing up in a fundamentally different media environme...
God Bless the Misfits October 10, 2024
Both those who oppose populism and those who look at it with favor seem to broadly agree that populism is engendered by rapid and deep changes in a society. One way or another, change is supposed to trigger a sense of insecurity. This is the common g...
The Faith of Michel Houellebecq October 09, 2024
For the miserable loners who populate Michel Houellebecq’s novels, there is no refuge from the modern world’s awfulness—“no Israel,” as one of them says. Over three decades, the French novelist has tallied the grim costs of “l’extension du domaine de...
The Professional Idiots Are in Trouble October 09, 2024
Jimmy Donaldson is one of the most popular entertainers in the world. Millennials know him as MrBeast, and for ten years, millions of us have haunted his YouTube channel, where he posts videos of insane, insanely expensive stunts with titles like I G...
The Death and Life of Progressive Urbanism October 03, 2024
There is an asymmetry between America’s political tribes. Republicans venerate their red states, gushing about the “free state” of Florida and the wonders of Texas—guns anywhere, anytime—and reveling in news of population loss from Democratic-run loc...
One Cheer for Populism September 19, 2024
Donald Trump and his supporters are often called populists, although Trump himself does not use the term.In some quarters, calling someone populist implies badness. But is populism inherently bad? Populist comes from the Latin word populus, which mea...
The Ultimate Bond Film Turns 60 September 13, 2024
“You expect me to talk?”“No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!”Even that small minority of the Earth’s population who wouldn’t normally watch a James Bond movie can quote that exchange from Goldfinger, spoken as Bond follows the progress of a laser beam...
Celebrating the Centennial of the Most Underappreciated American of Our Time September 06, 2024
The following essay is adapted from the recently released book Lessons in Liberty: Thirty Rules for Living from Ten Extraordinary Americans (HarperCollins) September 7th marks the one-hundredth birthday of one of the most extraordinary and inspiring...
Language and Leonard Michaels September 05, 2024
All that great writing, trapped in mediocre books! —Elif BatumanCatachresis leads to anthropophagy. —David Bentley HartOrdinary people have a right to feel harassed when their language is criticized. We have grammar school for that kind of thing afte...
