Tag Archives

Archive of posts published in the tag: conservatism

Liberalism and Paternalism

“Strongman democracy is in practice very much like ordinary monarchy or dictatorship, and the strongman usually outlasts the democracy. It is democracy without liberalism.”

Read More

Liberty is Boring

“Because the hatred of adjacent heretics is more intimate and more intense than the hatred of distant infidels, these rightists end up doing things that would be otherwise inexplicable,”

Read More

The Nature of Knowledge

Levin observes that for the left it is forever 1965 and we are just one huge federal program away from supreme social justice. For the right it is forever 1981 and we are just one big tax cut away from economic nirvana. The conditions of 1965 or 1981 no longer exist.

Read More

Entitlement and Gratitude

“The American Founding’s glory is that those English colonists took their cousins’ tradition, purified it into a political ideology, and extended it farther than the English ever dreamed. “

Read More

Passion and Persuasion

“Our political system was designed to be deliberative. Deliberation is a waste of time if minds cannot be changed. But today, partisans left and right value purity and passion over persuasion. Opponents aren’t potential converts; they’re an abstract and unredeemable them, and their tears, we’re told, are delicious.”

Read More

Artificial Tribes

“Populism, which always wants the national government to solve local problems, is in vogue on left and right precisely because local institutions and civil society generally no longer do their jobs. “

Read More

Progressives, Libertarians, and Conservatives

by Henry Oliner The Libertarian believes that fundamentally man is driven by economic self-interest.  Ironically, socialists are driven by the same belief in the fundamental motivation of man. Progressives and Libertarians are driven to quite different responses to this belief.

Read More

Wholes Apart

From a book review of Conserving America? by Patrick Deneen- review by Micah Medowcroft-  Trump Didn’t Kill Conservatism in The Wall Street Journal: In our republic, argues Mr. Deneen, a conception of men “not as parts of wholes, but as wholes apart” has

Read More

Classical and Progressive Liberals

From a book review of Conserving America? by Patrick Deneen- review by Micah Medowcroft-  Trump Didn’t Kill Conservatism in The Wall Street Journal: The two dominant alternatives to this fixation on the present are progressivism’s focus on the future and what

Read More

Change and Vandalism

from Charles Cooke at National Review, Conservatives Refuse to Repeat the Mistakes of History (a fundraising letter) Tricky as it may be to acknowledge, the eternal verities care little for the zeitgeist. Fashions may change, and the shape of the mob

Read More

Can The GOP Be Populist AND Realistic

from Daniel Greenfield at Sultan Knish, Conservatism Isn’t Dead: If conservatives want to win elections, their platform is going to have to be populist and realistic. That means small government, but the cuts have to start with the left’s sacred

Read More

No Conservative Utopia

From  Jonah Goldberg in National Review, When We Say ‘Conservative,’ We Mean . . . This points to one of my greatest peeves with the liberal caricature of conservatism. We’re constantly told that conservatives are opposed to change. And, to be

Read More

Non Compliant

From  Jonah Goldberg in National Review, When We Say ‘Conservative,’ We Mean . . . Man is flawed. This world is imperfect. Youth is fleeting. Life isn’t fair. Conservatives are comfortable acknowledging all of these things. That doesn’t mean we are

Read More

Beyond Liberal and Conservative

On an interview on the C-Span TV  show, Booknotes, Jonah Goldberg, author of Liberal Fascism (highly recommended), spoke of two kinds of conservatives.  The first is anti-liberal; they believe that there is a place for central government control, but that

Read More