The pro-life problem
The pro-life movement has reason to be grateful to Donald Trump, even as it has reason to feel exasperated as…
What is war good for in the twenty-first century?
What exactly is war good for in the twenty-first century? The US should have asked itself this before embarking on…
Biden’s base rebels over Gaza
Joe Biden’s reelection campaign is a multifront war. Unfortunately for him, the youngest soldiers in his coalition would rather fight…
Lessons from costly wars past
Money is often a substitute for strategy in US foreign policy. We spent $2 trillion in Afghanistan, only to lose…
Donald Trump and the clash of realities
As Donald Trump marches to the Republican nomination a third time, Americans are divided into two radically opposed camps. On…
The future looks Republican
In presidential elections there’s no such thing as a Pyrrhic victory. Winning is everything — and neither party would ever…
NATO’s post-Cold War strategy has been a disaster
NATO is fighting for its life — and dying. The alliance has only grown larger as a result of Russia’s…
The rise of the popcons
The Republican Party has to come to grips with populism. Donald Trump’s commanding lead in the race for the 2024…
The once and future president?
Donald Trump is having a better year than Joe Biden, notwithstanding an indictment or two. Both men hold commanding leads…
Will DeSantis lose if he runs to the right of Trump?
“Negative partisanship” is a notorious feature of American politics. In presidential elections especially, voters don’t vote for the party and…
Why Ron DeSantis should wait for 2028
Maybe Niccolò Machiavelli was not the first political consultant, but he remains one of the best. Ron DeSantis might solicit…
How Pat Buchanan redefined the twenty-first century
Pat Buchanan recently ended his syndicated column, essentially completing his retirement from public life. Yet it’s hard to think of any…
Tocqueville’s warning about the Democrats
Cassandra was a Trojan princess with the gift of prophecy — or the curse. For while she could foresee the…
The liberal-conservative tug of war for the GOP
For the last thirty years, the Republican Party has been a battleground between two competing ideologies. One of these is…
What conservatives lack
A famous passage in the preface to Lionel Trilling’s book The Liberal Imagination is widely quoted and just as widely…
This election was no loss for Trump
If conservatives interpreted Barry Goldwater’s defeat in 1964 the way Trump supporters are being told to interpret the 2022 midterms,…
Life after liberalism
Liberalism is dying, and the American right is ascendant. That’s the lesson of the last six or eight years of…
Brave new wombs
Sometime this century, or early in the next, women will no longer have to give birth. Already conception can take…
Liberalism gave us this hard new right
The future of conservatism will look like Friedrich Nietzsche meets Beavis and Butt-Head if things continue the way they have been going. As…
How conservatives concede the culture
Conservatives suffer from a short attention span, and it largely explains their defeats in the culture war. They fight every…
The next chapter in American foreign policy
The new year begins a new chapter in American foreign policy. For the first time since 2001, we are not…
Who won the Cold War, anyway?
Thirty years ago this December 26, the impossible happened. One of the bloodiest states of the twentieth century (a horrific…
The age of entropy
Americans and other westerners have long been accustomed to thinking that history has a clear direction. Sometimes the direction is…
The vanishing presidency
Joe Biden is beginning to feel like an ex-president after only nine months in office. The last two Democrats to occupy…
The War on Terror is a war of religion
Compare the world 20 years after the 9/11 attacks to the world two decades after Pearl Harbor. World War Two…
