Article Archive
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Nationalism is What We Need Now--The Case for an “Unpatriotic Conservatism”
In most intellectual circles on the right, as well many in the center and on the left, it is fashionable to damn nationalism. Among conservatives, patriotism is held to be something almost always worthy of praise—though exactly what patriotism might entail has never been settled upon. As is so often true, the conventional views of the Left and Right, if not entirely unfounded, are limiting and sometimes simply wrong. The United States, at present, suffers from an excess of patriotism and a generally defective sense of nationalism. European countries, too, would benefit from being more nationalistic, though in the Old World the excess is not of patriotism but of a leftist internationalism that has rendered Europeans helpless in the face of Islamic immigration. In the case of U.S. foreign policy, it has not been “jingoistic nationalism,” as many critics like to claim, that has driven our country into an interminable and unjust war in Iraq but a genuine, if misguided, patriotism. The United States should act more like a nation among nations: jealous of her own sovereignty and national borders, respectful of those of other countries. [Read More]
Life Beyond the Party
The antiwar, pro-life Right--including Ron Paul, Pat Buchanan, and others who've opposed the Iraq War--doesn’t fit the narrative that hawks and neocons have built over the past six or seven years. What is that narrative? Essays by Joseph Bottum in First Things and James Hitchcock in the Human Life Review reveal the outline: neocons want to co-opt pro-lifers by convincing them that the bloodshed involved in wars of choice is not inconsistent with an ethic of life that rejects abortion and euthanasia [Read More]
Huckabee: The New Huey Long
A tax-and-spend liberal like Huckabee has as little chance of uniting the Right as the untrustworthy Romney and socially liberal Giuliani. Ron Paul, on the other hand, already has the support of libertarians and antiwar moderates. [Read More]
The Kirk Wars Continue
The New Republic is about the last place anyone would look for a fair reading of traditionalist conservatism. The magazine’s review pages are often outstanding, with such contributors as American historian Gordon S. Wood and classicist Peter Green, and its exposes of Republican crooks can provide almost as much satisfaction to principles conservatives as to liberals. But let’s be clear: The New Republic started out as Herbert Croly’s vessel for evangelizing the gospel of foreign interventionism and modern liberalism, and in the 93 years since then it has changed very little. The political environment has changed considerably, however, and Croly’s then-newfangled liberalism is nowadays hardly distinguishable from what’s called neoconservatism. The difference is that The New Republic continues to court the center-left, while the neocons have occupied the center-right. Lately TNR’s approach hasn’t been working out so well, as hard Leftists have decided that they’ve had enough of these hawkish liberals and have canceled their subscriptions in droves, resulting in a dizzying decline in the magazine’s readership. [Read More]
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