American Left

• David Bentley Hart: Defining Socialism

  I just came across this NY Times op-ed written by Hart in 2019. It’s a useful retort to Hazony’s anti Neo-Marxism, and worth the read because, if nothing else, it shows why Neoplatonists like Hart (and me) are naturally drawn to a ‘genuine’ Left politics. Here’s a shortened version— … It may be amusing to

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• Continuists vs Discontinuists: Setting Up a Critical Look at Yoram Hazony

  Let me start by saying that I don’t think that Yoram Hazony is an ideological hack, even if he's associating with hacks that I think diminish his credibility with the non-hack community. Nevertheless, I think he's writing in good faith, and his ideas have to be taken seriously if for no other reason that they

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• The Phony Left: Pawns in a Game It Doesn’t Understand

  Few communities in America prospered as much as Texarkana during President Joe Biden’s four years in the White House, and few communities were more ungrateful than the voters of that region, which is anchored around twin cities spread across the Texas-Arkansas border. In 2024, in spite of economic growth under a Democratic president at rates

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• Enlightenment v. Counter-Enlightenment: Hamann’s Particularism

  I’ve started Hazony’s most recent book, Conservatism: A Rediscovery, and find it a better book than the one on nationalism. There is much in it I agree with because when push comes to shove, I am a small ‘c’ conservative. The problem for me is that in the condition of Postmodernity, there’s nothing left to

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• Hazony v. Klein v. Me

  I listened to Ezra Klein’s podcast interview with Yoram Hazony shortly after posting “Taking a Step Back" yesterday about the Good Society. This is a very interesting conversation, and I encourage you to listen to it. Hazony and Klein in their different ways would find my ‘Rescuing Aristotle’ argument weird, so I thought it might be

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• Taking a Step Back: Here’s an Overview of My Argument

  What I’m trying to do here is probably not ideal for blog or Newsletter, but should rather be in a book. I’m not particularly motivated to write a book that nobody is going to read, but it might be useful exercise for me and for the few people who are interested to try to integrate

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• Is a Post-Liberal Open Society Possible?

  I have no truck with the Illiberalism of either the Right or the Left, and yet I look at the Liberal Order as no longer sustainable. We are moving into a Post-Liberal world whether we like it or not. I want to defend an open, pluralistic society, but it seems clear to me that the

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• Are You Feeling Politically Homeless?

  If you are an ordinary, i.e., non-overclass, American, Michael Lind explains why you might be feeling that neither party represents your values or your interests:  …the center of gravity of the overclass is center-right (promarket) on economic issues and center-left (antitraditional) on social issues. In comparison, the center of gravity of the much larger working

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• The Historical Significance of This Moment

  Over the years, [Ian Bassin] said, that kind of alliance has mobilized against autocratic movements in countries including the Czech Republic, France, Finland, and, most recently, Poland, where the center-right joined with its opponents on the left to topple the antidemocratic Law and Justice party. The chilling counterexample, Bassin noted, is that during the period

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• The Nihilism of the Intersectional Left

  What I cannot understand is endorsing, validating, or standing in solidarity with war crimes. That so many student organizations did so is stunning. It commits them to positions anathema not only to the conservatives they often tangle with but to left-leaning liberals and progressives, many of whom now perceive a frightening difference in core values

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