In the Tradition of Liberty.
In the Tradition of Liberty.
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FUSION’s archive of commentary.
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70 years ago, in the halls of Congress, Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin met an ignoble public close to his years-long efforts to investigate and excavate the threat of Communism from the American State Department. In the subsequent years and decades, few would remember individual cases, especially the ones where history proved McCarthy right. But many would remember the words uttered by U.S. Army lawyer Joseph Welch: “Have you no decency, sir?” McCarthy’s legacy has been subsumed by the pejorative “McCarthyism” in our political discourse. Free speech advocates have…
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“America is not just an idea. America is a nation.” That was J.D. Vance’s big applause line at the National Conservatism (NatCon) conference last month. That theme seamlessly transferred over to his speech at the RNC after being named the Vice Presidential nominee. Josh Hawley’s NatCon speech used similar language: “Since the days of the city-state, the republican tradition has always viewed self-government as a project bound to a particular place, practiced by citizens loyal to that place and loyal to the way of life they share together.” To any traditional…
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The second film by writer and director Whit Stillman, the male Jane Austen of the nineteen-nineties, is Barcelona. It turned thirty this July. Much like Austen, Stillman is a gentle ironist most loved, and I suspect much misunderstood, by the kind of people at whom he is most likely to poke fun. The sort of sexed-up melodrama one sees in the most popular Austen adaptations–Keira Knightley brought to gasping in a flesh-moistening downpour by the sheer animal magnetism of a furiously arrogant Matthew Macfayden–is reflected in a sort of upside-down…
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America’s political parties present a host of paradoxes. Recent events illustrate these paradoxes vividly. In the months leading up to this week’s national convention, Democratic leaders successfully pressured the incumbent president, who won over 87% of the votes in the party’s primaries and caucuses, to step aside. Those leaders essentially told their voters who the new nominee was going to be. To this point the voters seem not only to have accepted direction from the party leaders, but have done so unhesitatingly and enthusiastically. Meanwhile in Congress, bipartisan legislation is exceedingly rare, and party…
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During my final semester at Yale, I stumbled across popular course offerings like “Japanese Screens” and “Anthropology of Outer Space.” In fact, these courses were more than popular—students competed to snag a spot in such coveted classes. At the same time, I was hard-pressed to find an accounting class listed in the course catalog, even though “Accounting” presumably falls at the beginning of the alphabetical list. Although wonderfully well-rounded, my experience with the course catalog makes me question what career advantages American students are paying exorbitant amounts to receive. After…
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Nearly all observers of our body politic are now agreed: the patient is very sick. Such unanimity is bracing and clarifying; no more false reassurances to seduce the patient into complacency. But what to do? It’s hard to say without a clear diagnosis. By some lights, the patient is sick unto death and we had best start sorting through the claimants to his inheritance congregating outside, or euthanize him to get it over with. Others think the disease is a cancer in certain members of the body politic, which must…
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Last winter, I sat at my laptop and attempted to finalize my spring syllabus for a class on “American political and social thought.” At the small liberal arts college where I work, I am the sole political theorist, which means that my classes span the scope of Western political thought. My upper-level classes are broad, roughly chronological, and taught on a four-semester rotating basis: ancient and medieval political thought, American political and social thought, modern political thought, and contemporary political thought. Of the four, American political and social thought is…
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No American president or vice president has hailed from the state of Arizona. It ain’t for lack of trying. In 1964, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater famously went head-to-head with President Lyndon B. Johnson. While his run is credited with reigniting America’s conservative movement and paving the way for Ronald Reagan’s political revolution, his presidential aspirations went down in flames. He rose to become one of the most powerful men in Washington, but the White House eluded him. Congressman Mo Udall, who represented Arizona in Congress from 1961 through 1991, ran…
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In a not-too-distant, not-entirely-inconceivable future, we may no longer produce. At least, not economically. The question we intend to tentatively answer is two-fold: if we don’t need to learn to be more efficient producers, what will education comprise? Second, considering the importance we assign to their economic productivity, what will we do to earn self-esteem outside the economy? What is the purpose of our education in a post-scarcity world? We argue that everything intrinsically valuable to humanity demands concentration, action, and the virtues requisite thereto. If this is true, then…
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Taking America Back: The Conservative Movement and the Far Right, by David Austin Walsh, Yale University Press, 303 pages, $35. Since 2016, trained historians and writers of popular histories have sought to explain the rise of populism by looking to the distant past for its origins. Such works seek to reconceptualize our understanding of American conservatism and its relationship to the so-called far right. Usually, they aim to blur or erase the distinction between the two. Entering this crowded field is David Austin Walsh’s Taking America Back: The Conservative Movement.…