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