R.I.P. GOP
Born of a righteous conviction that no person should be enslaved, the Republican Party died this week, a victim of its leaders’ lust for power and abandonment of the Union which Lincoln fought to save. At its zenith, the GOP advanced a freedom agenda derived from the ideals of the American experience and the European enlightenment. A commitment to free labor, free markets, free trade, and free institutions provided the … Read More
Authoritarian Powers in the Age of America First
PICKS OF THE WEEK “The Authoritarian Challenge: China, Russia and the Threat to the Liberal International Order” | Aaron L. Friedberg “Making China Great Again” | The New Yorker “The Rise and Rise of Viktor Orban” | The Financial Times “A Sober Trump Reassures the Davos Elite” | The New York Times In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, Western policy elites—basking in the glow of their perceived success—came to believe that the … Read More
Picks of the Week: Creeping Authoritarianism
The Governing Cancer of our Time | The New York Times The best predictor of Trump support isn’t income, education, or age. It’s authoritarianism. | Vox More than five years ago in The Providence Journal, I wrote of a specter haunting America. Then I was concerned about impatience on the left of the political spectrum and my growing sense that authoritarianism was gaining in popularity. I repost those … Read More