Understanding America

On this episode, Oren and Chris dive into our latest survey results on American attitudes toward the role and scope of government.

On this episode, Oren and Chris discuss the results of our new poll of GOP primary voters, which shows an economic realignment is well underway.

American Compass’s Wells King joins Emily Jashinsky to discuss his American Conservative cover story on the decline of NASCAR.

American Compass’s Oren Cass and the Heritage Foundation’s Kevin Roberts join the Reagan Institute for a conversation about the future of conservatism.

At ISI’s “The Future of American Political Economy” conference, American Compass’s Oren Cass discusses political economy and the American System’s lessons for today.

The authors of “Dignity” and “Hillbilly Elegy” reflect on Ruy Teixeira and Henry Olsen’s essays, describe the dynamics that lead to a politics disconnected from the economic and cultural mainstream, and identify possible glimmers of hope.

Even among Republicans, few can identify major areas where they’d like government to do less

The president’s polarizing policies are ones that divide Democrats and the upper class from everyone else

For the American economy to boom again, financial markets will have to return to their proper role promoting productive investment.

A strong industrial base is vital to workers and their communities, the rate of technological and economic progress, and national security.

For 50 years, businesses have been finding ways to succeed while offering fewer secure jobs to American workers, leading to surging growth and profits while wages stagnated.

Stagnating wages have prevented workers from keeping up with the costs of attaining middle-class security in America.

We need and value expertise, yet our public square tends to amplify precisely those least worthy of our trust. How should we decide who counts as an expert, what topics their expertise properly addresses, and which claims deserve deference?

America’s most Southern sport has betrayed its own fan base, writes American Compass’s Wells King in this cover story.

Most so-called snowflakes accumulate not in society’s quiet valleys where we might expect to find gentler souls genuinely struggling to cope with conflict, but rather atop the peaks of elite institutions to which our most aggressive strivers have clawed their way.

The path to a more secure and generous American welfare state lies not in rejecting the work ethic and the distinction it makes between contributory social insurance and non-contributory social assistance, but rather in embracing it.

Identity Politics. Retro-Socialism. Catastrophism. Growthphobia. Technopessimism.

Market Fundamentalism. Snobbery. Hubris.

The era of “the era of big government is over” may itself now be over, writes Oren Cass in the Financial Times.

Oren Cass discusses the Cost-of-Thriving Index and the affordability of middle-class life in America at the American Enterprise Institute.

American Compass policy director Chris Griswold discusses the “blue-collar blueprint” for infrastructure and how DC politicos fail to listen to their actual blue-collar voters.

Some right-of-center analysts have absolute conviction that basic statistics describing some of America’s challenges are obviously wrong

I’m writing this as a letter because we’ve often had this conversation aloud, but this lets you return to it at your leisure. Nothing that I say here will be new to you, but I’m writing this so that others can read it, too. Because there’s something to the intergenerational warfare narrative of our moment, it is fitting to frame these issues as a grown child’s reflection on the status of his parents.

American Compass’s Oren Cass argues that elections tell us simply who will govern us, not who we are, and it is critical to understand our fellow Americans who voted differently.