Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
“The Republican party,” he wrote, “must be known as a progressive organization or it is sunk. I believe that so emphatically that I think that far from appeasing or reasoning with the dyed-in-the-wool reactionary fringe, we should completely ignore it and when necessary, repudiate it.”
Jean Edward Smith • Eisenhower in War and Peace
A principle that progressives approve of is frequently followed by positive exclamations like “This isn’t hard!,” whereas a bad principle is “silly” or “simplistic.” Radical ideas are “innovative” when they pass muster but “crackpot” or “paranoid” when they don’t. Similarly, if ideas are simply being used as postulates for further analysis, they’re
... See moreMichael Malice • The New Right: A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics
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.
Charles Krauthammer • Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics
One measure of the movement’s impact was that starting in 1973, and for successive decades afterward, the public’s trust in government continually sank. If there was a single unified message pushed by those financing the conservative movement, it was that government rather than business was America’s problem. By the early 1980s, the reversal in pub
... See moreJane Mayer • Dark Money
David Foster Wallace • Deciderization 2007—a Special Report
Ironically, Wilson had appealed for black votes in 1912 and had actually won the largest number ever given to a Democratic presidential candidate. But the anti-Negro bias of the administration caused most blacks to return to the Republican Party, where they remained until FDR ran in 1932.
Jean Edward Smith • FDR
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.
Michael Malice • The New Right: A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics
ANDREW J. BACEVICH,
Andrew J. Bacevich • American Conservatism: Reclaiming an Intellectual Tradition
It’s easy to caricature Jones as a lunatic or a clown. But Jones subtly and consistently preaches several essential New Right ideas. The first is that politics is often a public sideshow, a distraction that grants the illusion of choice when actual decisions are made covertly and secretly without even the pretense of public input. The second is tha
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