Sublime

• When Trevor Phillips, the old Blair-era ethnic-policy guru, asserted that “the key aim of policy should not be zero immigration but orderly flow,” he was clearly stuck in the world of a generation ago, when opposition to immigration meant complaining about litter in ethnic neighborhoods—not today’s countrywide sense that that older generation

The oldest conflict in American politics is the one between individualism and centralism. Reagan changed the terms by inverting them: the descendants of Jefferson’s yeoman farmers, with their desire for independence, became sturdy car-company executives and investment bankers yearning to breathe free of big government. The heirs of Hamilton’s

In the twenty-first century, millions of American workers—most of them with no college education and no union to support them—lacked a political home. Without the alternative of economic populism, Americans were more susceptible to right-wing cultural populism. Eventually, this political void was filled by someone only pretending to be on their

However, since the global financial crisis of 2008 people all over the world have become increasingly disillusioned with the liberal story. Walls and firewalls are back in vogue. Resistance to immigration and to trade agreements is mounting. Ostensibly democratic governments undermine the independence of the judiciary system, restrict the freedom

a well-constructed welfare state can distribute education and nutrition more widely. The individuals supported by this state are not only better off, but they are more likely to be productive and pay taxes, and they are less likely to overturn public order. Other benefits of redistribution stem from political improvements. Social welfare programs

For most of the 2020s, the driving economic force will be low growth in productivity, decreased opportunities for investment of accumulated capital, and low interest rates. It will also be a period of increasing unemployment, driven by continued decline in industry and stagnation in high tech as the result of the maturation of the core technology.

The narrative of Free America shaped the parameters of acceptable thinking for Smart America. Free trade, deregulation, economic concentration, and balanced budgets became the policy of the Democratic Party. Culturally it was cosmopolitan, embracing multiculturalism at home and welcoming an increasingly globalized world. Its donor class on Wall

Virtually every leftist program was later adopted and championed by National Review after a couple of decades: the Civil Rights Act; Social Security; semi-open borders, to name a few. Conservatism is progressivism driving the speed limit.