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Articles are sorted in descending order by date. To find articles based on keywords, use the search function above.

Between the warring camps vying for ownership of the true “American conservatism,” a remarkable consensus has emerged around the status of Abraham Lincoln and his legacy. In the conservative house divided, almost everyone agrees that the president was the prophet of democratic imperialism and that his war with the South was a mere dress rehearsal for global crusades for democracy which began half a century after his assassination. Naturally, the so-called paleoconservatives and neoconservatives disagree on the merits of Lincoln’s putative policy, but they don’t disagree that he led the advance guard of this project to create the world in America’s image and likeness. This dispute is no mere academic matter, since those who control the Lincoln legacy also manufacture the grist for any number of ideological mills. [Read More]

On April 20, 1968, on a Saturday afternoon, Enoch Powell delivered his “Rivers of Blood” speech at the Midland Hotel in Birmingham. He went there fully aware that what he was going to say would be of historic importance. Earlier in the week, he had told his friend Clement Jones: “I’m going to make a speech at the weekend and it’s going to go up ‘fizz’ like a rocket; but whereas all rockets fall to the earth, this one is going to stay up.” In his speech, Powell warned of the dramatic and tragic results which mass immigration from the undeveloped world was going to have on Britain. He referred to the Roman poet Virgil, who has the Sybil prophetize, in Book 6 of the Aeneid, “the River Tiber foaming with much blood.” [Read More]

Prediction is famously difficult, as one wag put it, especially if it is about the future. So now that we've passed the five year mark in the Iraq adventure, who was in fact right about the likely costs of it? Certainly it wasn't those proposing the invasion, some of whom proposed numbers as low as $50 billion in total costs. Of all that did, indeed, try to add up the costs, the only one who gave us a figure even remotely comparable was William Nordhaus. If Nordhaus has indeed been that one good predictor on one subject, perhaps we should be paying especial attention to his predictions on other matters as well? Like, for example, the area where his reputation really comes from, the predictions about the costs both of climate change and attempts to mitigate it through reductions in emissions. [Read More]

In the candidacy of Barack Obama, one sees the history of the American Left writ small. Obama is an heir to the paternalist dynasty of the populists, progressives, New Deal, and Great Society; the Hull House-style passivism that demands city hall, the state legislature, and bodies more distant solve personal problems; the social gospel of Reverend Wright that makes politics of religion and a religion of politics; and the anti-Americanism of Ayers and Dohrn. Obama’s insistence that he offers fresh ideas stems from a refusal, common on the Left, to reflect on where those ideas came from or how those ideas fared. To remain ignorant of the Left’s abysmal track record is to perpetuate an ideology that would be dead if not for weak memories. [Read More]

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]

Christians on the right are used to witnessing attacks on their faith from atheistic leftists. Ever since the highly influential “cultural Marxists” of the Frankfurt School, it has become de rigeur for the chattering classes in the media and academe to tear down the historic faith of Western civilization. What often goes unnoticed among conservative Christians is that large elements of the Right often despises Christianity as well. This right-wing attack on Christianity has become a cultural phenomenon on its own, and one not yet properly understood. [Read More]

Made your plans for the upcoming financial Armageddon yet? Betting upon a second Great Depression, or are you like me and thinking that yes, we've got some tough times coming, but the only people that can create disaster are the politicians? Sadly, that last isn't quite as comforting as it could be for it was the politicians and bank regulation itself that created the first depression: as long as we don't make the same mistakes again (or newer and even more inventive ones) the disaster, although perhaps not a recession, can be avoided. [Read More]

There was a time, roughly between the mid-1980s and the early 1990s, when the paleoconservatives looked like an insurgent force. In 1992, they found in Pat Buchanan a powerful presidential contender, and one who listened to their advice. The paleoconservatives and the paleolibertarians had patched up old disputes and come together in the John Randolph Club, a group whose meetings in Washington drew journalistic dignitaries, including but by no means limited to Buchanan. At one such gathering on Jan. 18, 1992, Murray Rothbard gave legendary speech in which he famously envisioned the “repealing the twentieth century." The paleos were insurgent. But eventually the weaknesses of the paleo side eventually came to show: excruciatingly limited funding, exclusion from the national media, vilification as “racists” and “anti-Semites,” and finally, strife within their own ranks. In retrospect, this was all predictable, although for me it was hard to grasp how totally the fall came when it did. [Read More]

The fifth anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War was marked by a deluge of retrospective commentary, much of it focused on the past: how we got into this conflict and how it has been conducted. Fine, it is always appropriate to assess lessons learned. But why and how we got into Iraq and what choices could have been made differently are not central to when and how we get out. Washington loves to exaggerate differences in nuance into appearing as major and substantive differences—“My opponent sees six eggs, but I say there are half a dozen”—but the difference between the McCain and Obama positions is largely one of emphasis rather than degree. Language in one may appeal to neoconservatives, in the other appear to concede to liberal sentiments, but when one puts campaign rhetoric aside, the fundamentals are largely the same. The Iraq “debate” now largely recycles the same ground, and given these parameters, it is not surprising that there is not much creative thinking among Washington politicians about what to do next in Iraq. We will continue to meander in Iraq—and continue to bleed in terms of lives and treasure—until we have a serious debate, not about the Iraq we would like to see, but the Iraq we are prepared to live with. [Read More]

How did Matt Welch, who knows nothing about libertarianism, ever get in the position of becoming editor of Reason, the emblematic libertarian magazine? It is a position, after all, that has a bit of history to it, one that covers the life span of the modern libertarian movement from its very inception. It is a position, therefore, of some honor, one that has been a bit tarnished in recent years, and yet not indelibly damaged until recently. Surely Welch has accomplished exactly this, however, with his laughably ignorant attempt to slander Lew Rockwell and Ron Paul as “racists” – and not only that, but to discredit an entire argument and way of looking at race relations and politics that differs significantly from his culturally leftish version of political correctness. [Read More]