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Keywords: paul gottfried neocon, 50 results
| Title | Excerpt |
Nationalism and the Conservative Country Club: Part Two |
It is reasonable to believe that some beneficial domestic policies will emerge from the American nationalist movement. Tucker Carlson, Oren Cass, Julius Krein, and others are capable advocates of economic and social policies that would serve ordinary Americans and families, instead of corporate oligarchs. Nationalists know there are lots of problems with immigration—above all, depressed […] |
Nationalism and the Conservative Country Club: Part One |
“With the ancients…it was all or nothing, with no fear of disaster. The fall of states, cities, and kings was considered glorious. That is something utterly alien to us.” —Jacob Burckhardt I should have liked to have been present at the National Conservatism Conference in D.C. on July 15, where my blunt friend Amy Wax, […] |
Kevin Williamson’s Hilarious Sophistry |
“Things are in the saddle,/And ride mankind.” —Emerson Last week National Review published an unintentionally funny bit of sophistry by Kevin Williamson. “The division of labor is the meaning of life,” the article begins, and lest anybody should be confused, Williamson explains: I do not mean this metaphorically or analogically, but literally. Life begins with […] |
Prayers for Neocons |
There’s been a lot of talk among neoconservatives lately about some frightful subjects: nationalism, populism, and nativism. It’s been a touching spectacle, the air so thick with virtue that one can barely breathe, and we can only hope that the day will finally come when this group’s characteristic moralism, neuroticism, and effeminacy will be synonymous […] |
Antifa Comes for Tucker Carlson |
Once a neoconservative, Tucker Carlson is now a man of the right. Therefore, to use the president’s essential phrase, Carlson puts America first. But there’s a price to pay for being the best conservative pundit on television. After all, so dumbed down, so decadent, and so suicidal is our culture that any public figure who […] |
The Most Hated Man in America |
In an age of individuals, when many people have never felt a deep and abiding sense of duty to something external to themselves, it is only too easy to be dismissive of a collective good such as nationalism, or to simplistically equate it with “white supremacy.” For many of us today, the state is merely […] |
Useful Idiots in the NFL |
On Sunday, just before their teams squared off in South Philly, Carolina Panthers safety Eric Reid confronted Philadelphia Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins. Television footage showed an angry Reid in Jenkins’ face, using language that was certainly unkind. According to Reid, Jenkins—the founder of the NFL Players Coalition—used the protest movement started by Colin Kaepernick to […] |
Ben Shapiro’s Morality Play |
“Indifferent hacks and mediocrities tower, by pushing their forces to a lucrative point, or by working power, over multitudes of superior men.” —Emerson It is a common error of intellectuals, and pundits in particular, to assume that the nature of politics is determined by their own moral idealism and confusion. Consider, for instance, the influential […] |
The Centrist Illusion |
Like many of us, Michael Shermer is troubled by America’s increasing polarization. In a recent article in Quillette, “How Classical Liberalism Can Heal the Bonds of American Affection,” he says, “The social-justice left now casually portrays whiteness (and sometimes maleness) itself as a sort of moral disease. The alt-right embraces nativism and vilifies immigrants.” Fair […] |
Paul Gottfried’s Calm Despair |
Gottfried, Paul. War and Democracy: Selected Essays 1975-2012. London; Arktos Media, Ltd., 2012. The last time I saw Paul Gottfried was at the Mencken Club bash last November. At one point between lectures I passed him in a hallway having an animated conversation in French with some French visitors. A year or so before that, […] |
It’s My Party and I”ll Leave if I Want To |
I have never voted for a Republican Party candidate despite being a registered member of the GOP. The first time I voted for an American president was in 1996, and I marched down to Hunter College on 68th Street and Lexington Avenue to cast my ballot. For two years I had been a proud and […] |
Behind the Crack-up of the Right |
In introducing his new book, Leo Strauss and the Conservative Movement in America, Paul Gottfried identifies a fundamental divide between neoconservatives and the traditional right. The divide is over the question: What is this nation, America? Straussians, writes Gottfried, “wish to present the construction of government as an open-ended rationalist process. All children of the […] |
The Neocons’ Intellectual Codpiece |
My first exposure to Straussian ideas was in college via a photocopy handout of passages from Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind. It was an eerie experience. The instructor seemed nervous, as if we were Soviet dissidents passing around samizdat literature. It was somewhat heartening at the time. I had wondered if there […] |
The Old Right’s Jewish Problem |
The Alternative Right website has posted an interesting symposium on the topic: Is the traditional Right anti-Jewish? Taki starts it off with a fiery rant against the vindictiveness of neoconservatives like Podhoretz and Kristol, presumably the senior ones. They have, Taki says, called him a fascist (a thing they surely would not have done if […] |
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