Reciprocal Solidarity and Our National Project
by Pete SpiliakosThe solution to the problems of populist nationalism is to become more authentically nationalist, by becoming more inclusively populist. Continue Reading »
The Insanity of the Regular Republican
by Pete SpiliakosThe best politicians on the right have wasted the years since Mitt Romney’s 2012 defeat.
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Letters
by VariousR. R. Reno is sympathetic to nationalism because he sees it as a reaction against disenchantment (“Return of the Strong Gods,” May). While I agree that “the banishment of love from our politics is creating the populism that presently troubles us,” it doesn’t strike me that this populism . . . . Continue Reading »
Nationalism After Trump
by Pete SpiliakosThe Davos class might look pretty good to voters who have tried populism and found it wanting. Continue Reading »
Time for a “Populist” Bioethics Commission
by Wesley J. SmithEven chaotic debate (about cloning, gene therapy, and three-parent embryos) is preferable to our current, aimless drift. Continue Reading »
Restraining Populism
by Samuel MoynGerman Chancellor Angela Merkel wrote Donald Trump a public letter the day after his election. “Germany and America are connected by values of democracy, freedom and respect for the law and the dignity of man, independent of origin, skin color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political . . . . Continue Reading »
The New Status Signaling
by Robert MarianiFor those of upper-middle class sensibilities, the neoliberal order predicted by the 1990s remains inevitable. It’s as dreamy and poetic as it ever was, separated from practical reality only by the thin veil of a populist interregnum. Continue Reading »
The Loss of Peace
by R. R. RenoThe title of New York Times columnist Charles Blow’s post-election column was an anguished cry: “America Elects a Bigot.” David Leonhart, another New York Times regular, expressed horror: “We’ve just finished an election that included unprecedented violations of America’s long-held . . . . Continue Reading »
First Things in the Year Ahead
by R. R. RenoWhat we need in 2017 and beyond is a renewal of covenant, of the paradoxically empowering bondage of loves and loyalties we gratefully affirm. Continue Reading »
Lasch, Populism, and Conservatism
by Dale M. CoulterThe recent issue of Modern Age contains a commemorative essay by Susan McWilliams marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of Christopher Lasch’s The True and Only Heaven: Progress and its Critics. McWilliams reminds readers that Lasch offers a positive analysis of populism that speaks to the current political malaise. As part of his critique of the cult of progress, Lasch attempted to ground politics in the intuitions of the petty bourgeoisie and the populist tradition that gave life to those intuitions. He saw in petty-bourgeois culture a moral realism that recognized the cost and limits of human existence, reinforcing a healthy skepticism of progress. The “small proprietors, artisans, tradesmen, and farmers” of the petty-bourgeois world were the least likely “to mistake the promised land of progress for the true and only heaven.”
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