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The New American Right

What, exactly, do you want?” Liberal critics put the question to the post-fusionist American right in various ways. At times they ask it earnestly, at times with a sneer, and not infrequently with undisguised contempt. It seems that no political argument can be properly digested unless it comes . . . . Continue Reading »

The Outsider

“I want to read something to you. I want you to really listen to this.” Rush Limbaugh opened his radio show on January 20, 2016, in the tone he normally reserves for breaking Clinton scandals. But his topic that afternoon was less sensational, and he would spend the next thirty minutes reading . . . . Continue Reading »

Christian Universalism and the Nation

Christianity requires no specific political form. It has adapted to kingdoms, empires, and republics. But Christianity opposes any political project that pretends to a universal mission or dominion. In the Christian view, only the Church can overcome divisions and restore unity to the human . . . . Continue Reading »

Goodbye to “So What?”

The case for American nationalism is clear. The United States is the most diverse nation on earth. If we will not have a nation and its constitution, then we will have anarchy. If we will not have a nation and its constitution, we will have Hobbesian war, figuratively or literally. What, after all, . . . . Continue Reading »

Embarrassed by Our Nations

Among conservatives today there is an emerging confidence about the nation. But it remains a timid confidence, expressed among fellow-travelers but not in the broader political culture. Awkwardness still prevails. We are living “after ­globalism,” yet we are embarrassed by our return to the . . . . Continue Reading »

A Nation of Americans

America is a nation of immigrants. America has always been a nation of immigrants. Or so we are constantly told. Strange, then, that the phrase did not become common until John F. Kennedy published a book with that title in 1958. “All Americans have been immigrants or the descendants of . . . . Continue Reading »

Broken Family, Broken Country

My Father Left Me Ireland:  An American Son’s Search For Home by michael brendan dougherty sentinel, 223 pages, $24 Irish artists face a problem unknown to artists in, let us say, uninterrupted nations. It is possible for things, places, people to be “too Irish”—the gist of a note I . . . . Continue Reading »

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