Politics

About a year ago I published an American Compass essay on “The Five Deadly Sins of the Left.” In that essay, I addressed the surprising fact that the left has not performed as well as one might expect, given the poor performance of free-market capitalism in the 21st century. Even the financial crisis of 2008–09 […]

Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam, by Vivek Ramaswamy (Center Street, 320 pp., $15.99) Vivek Ramaswamy opens his book on the perils of woke capitalism by declaring himself a traitor to his class. He’s got the perfect elite resume: Harvard undergrad, partner at a hedge fund, Yale Law School, and founder of a […]

The recent post by Guy Stickney got me thinking about why it’s so hard for politicians to discuss things openly and honestly—and why we have a hard time doing it, too. Politics never used to pique my interest—maybe because my parents endured World War II, and I experienced those tragic, tumultuous days of the Vietnam […]

Political trends in the U.S. and United Kingdom have mirrored each other for decades—and Britain’s recent local elections (and the Hartlepool by-election) are no exception. Predictably, there has been much discussion of the stunning collapse of working-class support in areas that have long been staunchly pro-Labour and the implications for the Democratic Party across the […]

In my Catholic corner of the world, a surprising number of people are talking about “integralism.” The term comes from nineteenth and twentieth century French debates about the relation of the Church to the state. The liberal and secularist forces insisted that the Church should have no power over civic affairs. Traditionally minded Catholics argued […]

Before I suggest, humbly and carefully, that there is a silence from many of them that should be addressed, I would be remiss not to acknowledge the efforts of nearly 50 years by pro-life activists to protect unborn life in America. By every measure but their own—for Roe v. Wade is still not overturned and […]

Jonah Goldberg, Cliff Asness Chair in Applied Liberty at the American Enterprise Institute, had a lot to say about American Compass on a recent podcast, beginning around the 15:00 mark (and still going at the 25:00 mark…).

The New Right, which stands for nothing if not resuscitating a long-moribund communitarian– and nationalism-inspired strand of conservative thought, is not per se “illiberal,” but certainly questions the limitations of a “conservative” right-liberalism defined by little more than values-neutral proceduralism. Various shades of “illiberals,” “post-liberals,” and even plain-old conservative skeptics of our overly liberalized post-World War II “conservative […]

Like so many others here on The Commons, I have been delighted by the recent explosion of intellectual energy on the American Right as it pertains to family policy. Considering the near-ubiquitous rhetorical rebranding of the post-Trump GOP as a working-class party, and the party’s envisioned future political base as that of a multiracial working-class […]

In his introduction to the “Home Building” forum on American Compass, Oren Cass opens by drawing upon Ronald Reagan’s warning that the American culture of freedom must be renewed in every generation. Shoring up the family is a crucial element in this process. It’s worth meditating on why this is the case. How, exactly, do […]

In our populist moment, the categories of left and right are losing their currency. Underlying recent events—the Capitol riot of Jan 6 (a populist political uprising) and the GameStop saga (“the first populist uprising in finance”)—is the belief that the system is rotten. It’s a belief shared by populists on both sides, even as party […]

Democrats and Republicans alike should feel free to contradict their putative leaders, for they contain multitudes.