American Right
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Crazy Always Wins…
…in a culture that has lost its mind. This isn't a statement of hopelessness, because I believe that we will eventually recover our minds, even if it takes fifty or sixty years to do it. I haven't said anything about the mass shootings of the last few weeks because no solution seems possible until we
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The Danger of the Moment 2
In what follows I imagine a conversation with someone like Sohrab Ahmari, about whom I wrote in a post entitled Radical Elites on the Right 1. I say someone like Ahmari, because I don't want to put words in his mouth. I'm just looking for someone who is smart enough to understand that Trump is
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Radicalized Elites on the Right 2
Appelbaum on Ezra Klein this week: I remember having a conversation — must have been about 2017 or 2018. I was in Texas, and I sat next to some people at a dinner. And they were pro-Trump, and we started talking about that. And I asked them, you know, aren’t they bothered by Trump’s corruption?
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Radicalized Elites on the Right 1
And I think this is why it is now the case that the Right finds it easier to move left on economic issues than the Left finds it to move right on social issues. And this is why, whether you like it or not — and this is not going to result from our conversation,
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The Danger of This Moment 1
“Unlike the bulk of their colleagues who are eager to remain in office, Romney and Cheney have decided continuing to serve in Congress is not worth the bargain of remaining silent about an individual they believe poses a threat to American democracy,” Jonathan [Martin] told me. “They also can’t understand why Republican colleagues they respect
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The Praying Coach of Bremerton
Teachers are state employees, but they are not the state’s robots. When they clearly speak on their own, the First Amendment should apply. Whether they kneel in prayer or protest, it’s not just acceptable for students and parents to see teachers as people and citizens; it’s imperative. The best way to teach pluralism is to
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Reactionary Chic
Whereas the old Christian conservatism was about defending an old order, the new social conservatism is about overthrowing a new one. The transformation of the right is a direct response to a shift on the left. In the years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when the G.O.P. was the party of the traditional
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Imagining a Positive Human Future
The anti-liberals Rose profiles all believed that liberalism prescribed a life without sacrifice, an age when individual contentment reigned supreme and collective struggle disappeared. This was not true then, and it is not true now. What they missed is what liberalism actually believes: that there is a collective identity to be found in collective betterment,
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Ukraine and the Politics of Inevitability
Because the politics of inevitability assures you that whatever the good things are, they’re being brought about automatically by some invisible hand, right? The market is like Mom. You know, it’s going to take care of you with that invisible hand. And you don’t have to think about what the values might be, what you