Sublime

With the dawn of the new century, the public’s demand for an end to trusts and to the high protective tariff that was “the mother of trusts,” the tariff that robbed farmers and gouged consumers, and that had now been in place for almost fifty years—the demand, for legislation to ameliorate the injustices of the Industrial Revolution, that had begun

“Liberal?” Major Hackensack said it like the word “pedophile.” “You a liberal, British journalist?” I swallowed. The Iraqis were watching us too, wondering if their fates were being decided by this incomprehensible but clearly ill-tempered exchange. “You’ve been sent here because of the most conservative White House in living memory. Truly, Major,

These incidents of “political correctness,” amplified by right-wing media, whipped up hatred of elites out in Real America. The culture wars raged on, as bloody-minded and durable as the Thirty Years’ War, a full-employment program for pundits of every type. Some worried about a generation of ultra-sensitive children coddled by ultra-indulgent adul

Yet despite the establishment propaganda, every time the Republicans have run a right-winger in the last forty years they have won the White House—and every time they’ve run a moderate they have lost. George H. W. Bush was especial proof of this, winning as Reagan II in 1988 before hiking taxes and moving to the center in time for a 1992 defeat.

No one

Mill held that truth emerges from an unfettered competition of ideas and that individual character is most improved when allowed to find its own way uncoerced. That vision was insufficient for 20th-century American liberalism.

He is only a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of the Conservative.

"Conservatism," argued the journal, "is as much due to mental laziness as it is to fear of change.