Support TAC this Labor Day. The post How Long Will the American Worker Pay for Endless War? appeared first on The American Conservative .
In a 2011 Labor Day column, our co-founder Pat Buchanan described the transformation of the American social contract in the postwar period. “What happened to this idea that made America a self-sufficient republic, producing almost all it consumed, a nation that could stay out of the world wars as long as she wished and crush the greatest powers in Europe and Asia in less than four years after she went in?” he asked. As was so often the case, Pat had the answer: “A new class came to power that looked on tariffs as xenophobic, on economic patriotism as atavistic and on national sovereignty as an antique idea in the new world order it envisioned.” The results have been clear: the hollowing out of the American industrial base, the…Open
The current Republican president got elected repudiating the last one. Now, he’s melding Bush-Cheney with his own legacy. The post Trump Does Nation-Building in ‘Bush Country’ appeared first on The American Conservative .
Politics Politics Trump Does Nation-Building in ‘Bush Country’ The current Republican president got elected repudiating the last one. Now, he’s melding Bush-Cheney with his own legacy. There are a number of things one could observe about the Trump-endorsed Sen. Darline Graham (R-SC) winning her primary last week as she seeks to keep her late brother Lindsey Graham’s seat: her status as a novice , President Donald Trump’s staying power , hereditary succession . Here’s another. I was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1974. For half my life, my state has been considered …Open
A new book surveys the right’s dramatic transformation since 2015. The post Why Is This Highly Respected Commentator Smiling? appeared first on The American Conservative .
Books Why Is This Highly Respected Commentator Smiling? A new book surveys the right’s dramatic transformation since 2015. Photo by Mark Makela/Getty Images Whitepill: The Online Right and the Making of Trump’s America by Scott Greer, Passage Publishing, 2026 264 pgs. $34.95 Last month I received an email even more bothersome than the average inbox fodder of a magazine editor. It wasn’t a barely English, 3,000-word cold submission on “the political philosophy of Sydney Sweeney’s subversive sex appeal,” which, come to think of it, would probably do numbers for the website. It was instead about a piece already…Open
Progressive candidates make the case that they prioritize U.S. interests more than MAGA Republicans The post Is the Left Capturing ‘America First?’ appeared first on The American Conservative .
Politics Is the Left Capturing ‘America First?’ Progressive candidates make the case that they prioritize U.S. interests more than MAGA Republicans. Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images On the eve of Abdul El-Sayed’s Democratic U.S. Senate primary victory over Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), CNN aired a segment featuring Michigan voters. “I’m not voting for anybody who takes money from AIPAC,” declared Democratic voter Rome Moore. “Why is that?” CNN asked. Moore replied, “Because the money should be spent here, not over there.” While not naming specific Michigan candidates, Moore could have been…Open
In Latin America, the White House abandons its own strategic doctrine for democracy promotion. The post Marco Rubio’s “Democratic Hemisphere” vs. the National Security Strategy appeared first on The American Conservative .
Foreign Affairs Marco Rubio’s “Democratic Hemisphere” vs. the National Security Strategy In Latin America, the White House abandons its own strategic doctrine for democracy promotion. Photo by YAMIL LAGE/AFP via Getty Images Earlier this month, Daniel Ortega, the dictator of Nicaragua, announced that his country would no longer hold elections. In response, Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a statement condemning Ortega and declaring that Nicaragua “cannot expect to maintain business as usual with other nations when it is thwarting the basic tenets of our democratic hemisphere.” There is no doubt that…Open
A new way of understanding America’s enemies obscures more than it reveals. The post The Problem With Third Worldism appeared first on The American Conservative .
Foreign Affairs The Problem With Third Worldism A new way of understanding America’s enemies obscures more than it reveals. Remember Islamofascism? For many neocons at the height of the War on Terror, this was the term of choice to describe America’s enemies. Compared to the alternatives, the label had much to recommend it. As William Safire noted in the New York Times in 2006: Islamic radicalism seems long, bookish and weak, because a radical need not be any kind of terrorist…[and] militant jihadist is redundant if you take jihad to mean “holy war.” Plus some Muslim scholars translate the Arabic word as “spiritual…Open
Will Iran be a “blip”? The president certainly hopes to keep it that way. The post The Iran War As History: The Box Scores Of Foreign Wars appeared first on The American Conservative .
Foreign Affairs The Iran War As History: The Box Scores Of Foreign Wars Will Iran be a “blip”? The president certainly hopes to keep it that way. President Donald Trump is determined to put the Iran War in the rear-view mirror. On the other hand, the two countries have been trading fire in recent days, and Trump calls Iranian leaders “scum.” He further says they want to assassinate him . So the situation is, shall we say, fluid. Still, it’s clear that Trump wants a deal more than he wants war. In symbolism-heavy speeches on July 3 and 4, the president cast the Iran conflict as a great American victory, past tense. At Mt.…Open
Neocon speech policing dumbs down our discourse—and doesn’t work anymore. The post Far-Left Dem Says 9/11 Was Blowback. So Did Pat Buchanan appeared first on The American Conservative .
Politics Far-Left Dem Says 9/11 Was Blowback. So Did Pat Buchanan Neocon speech policing dumbs down our discourse—and doesn’t work anymore. (Photo by Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images) Last week, far-left Democrat Melat Kiros won her Denver, Colorado, U.S. House primary against 15-term incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette, making the 29-year-old the latest in a slew of democratic socialists to have defeated establishment Democrats in this midterm election cycle. In Kiros’s race and the others, almost all of the Democrats involved have been considered progressive, but the older, incumbent guard still hews closely to the party…Open
A new biography from one of his students examines Richard Pipes, the historian and Cold Warrior. The post The Russianist appeared first on The American Conservative .
The Man Who Knew Russia: Richard Pipes, Humanist and Cold Warrior Jonathan Daly Stanford University Press, 408 pp. $65.00 In 1985, I invited Richard Pipes to speak at Oberlin College. As chairman of the College Republican club, I hosted a variety of neoconservative and conservative thinkers, ranging from Carl Gershman, who headed a fledgling organization called the National Endowment for Democracy, to William Rusher, the publisher of the National Review. But my biggest, or at least most controversial, catch was Pipes. Pipes was a professor of Russian history at Harvard and a former Reagan administration national security council adviser on Soviet and Eastern European affairs. At Oberlin, then as now a hotbed of political…Open
The Kentucky congressman and his admirers need to understand why he lost. The post ‘Zionists’ Didn’t Destroy Massie’s Political Career—Massie Did appeared first on The American Conservative .
Politics ‘Zionists’ Didn’t Destroy Massie’s Political Career—Massie Did The Kentucky congressman and his admirers need to understand why he lost. (Photo by Luke Johnson/Getty Images) In the leadup to Thomas Massie’s primary defeat last week, I was struck by how popular the Kentucky congressman had suddenly become among people who don’t vote in Republican primaries—indeed, among people who don’t like Republicans, don’t like Kentucky, and until the day before yesterday never liked Thomas Massie. This, I thought, didn’t augur well for the congressman’s reelection, which would depend on actual…Open