In the Tradition of Liberty.
In the Tradition of Liberty.
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FUSION’s archive of commentary.
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Former President Donald Trump had a message for women ahead of the today’s presidential election. He would be “great” for them and their “reproductive rights,” he vowed in a social media post. The statment came after Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination for the third time, tying Richard Nixon (who, unlike Trump, did not do so consecutively) and one more time than Ronald Reagan, who lost on his first serious try in 1976. The convention where Gerald Ford fended off Reagan marked the first time the Republican platform took a…
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As a libertarian, my rudimentary understanding of the still budding national conservative movement is that it rejects the old traditional conservative consensus of limited government, in exchange for a more aggressive Right unafraid to wield government power for conservative ends, even if that meant crossing traditional boundaries like private property and free speech. If progressive and centrist Democrats seek to ignore constitutional limits without hesitation to impose their vision, national conservatives would now do a rightwing version of this. If a fusionist mission was to restrain government, national conservatism would…
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Tim Burton’s Batman and Batman Returns might be the perfect Halloween movies. They were big successes back in 1989 and 1992, grossing together more than a billion dollars (adjusted for inflation). They are fun popcorn movies, but also weird artistic experimentsthat embrace the juvenile character of American pop culture while revisiting cinema history. Batman and Burton deserve credit or blame for turning cinema toward superhero stories, which have since become the dominant film genre. But they were funnier than comic book stories have been since, better able to mix various…
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“The Great Society,” President Lyndon B. Johnson explained, “rests on abundance and liberty for all.” He added, “It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice.” Achieving such noble ends, however, would not be an easy feat: “The challenge of the next half century is whether we have the wisdom to use [the nation’s wealth] to enrich and elevate our national life, and to advance the quality of our American civilization.” In “The Tangle of Pathology Revisited,” Charles Fain Lehman reminds us that the Great Society represents both a monumental…
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On October 10, the Department of Justice suggested that it would seek the breakup of Google’s online search system following a victory at the District Court level. Although the company is expected to appeal the ruling, the initial victory and shocking suggestion that Google be forced to divest major parts of its business represents a milestone for proponents of the Biden antitrust agenda which has been largely stifled by the judicial system. Proponents of this agenda seek to push American doctrine away from the efficiency maximizing consumer welfare standard to a…
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The Paris Observatory was one of the first federally funded research institutes, and it produced serious scientific output. Louis XIV funded a plethora of high-resolution maps, water tables, and astronomic discoveries. The head of the observatory was an Italian mathematician and astronomer named Giovanni Domenico Cassini. Cassini’s ability as an astronomer earned him part of the namesake for the NASA probe investigating Saturn, which he discovered possessed rings. This began a long tradition of federal funding for scientific research in the West. But would Louis XIV have swooned if Cassini had…
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The House of Lords is one of the largest legislative chambers in the world, with over 800 members. Composed partly of hereditary peers but mostly of appointed legislators, Britain’s upper chamber of government is seen by many as an anachronism out of place in modern government. Yet it remains stubbornly resistant to abolition. Much like the British constitution, the Lords has been slowly reformed over centuries, even against its will, ostensibly creating a space as a chamber where expertise acts as a check on the popularly elected House of Commons. There are…
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In a weird way, sitting in a near-empty movie theater drove home the sheer scale of what Francis Ford Coppola aimed to accomplish in his new film Megalopolis. The acclaimed director spent decades trying to produce this film, with disruptions ranging from the terrorist attacks of September 11 to Coppola’s firing of much of the visual effects department in 2022. He reportedly liquidated much of his net worth to finance this passion project, which is estimated to have made only $4 million in the American market on its opening weekend. These are high…
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On March 20, 1981, two months after his inauguration, Ronald Reagan delivered a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference outlining the ambitious agenda of his new administration. This was not your traditional Reagan speech, delivered to everyday voters or citizens, but a detailed account of Reagan’s intellectual philosophy. For those dismayed by the fractured nature of the conservative movement in our time, Reagan’s speech has much to teach. It offers a roadmap for fusionists to traverse in the years ahead, one that might hope to unite the factions of the…
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In a recent post on X, progressive linguist George Lakoff declared, “The language we use in politics is not just about policy; it is about values. It is about what we care about, what we believe is important, and what kind of society we want to build.” This insight, seemingly sound and even uplifting, was immediately followed with: “Always use your own moral frames and words—never use the opposition’s frames or words.” What at first looked like an appeal to our better nature thus quickly transformed into a strategy for the…