Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Conservatism

  • In What Sense are We Equal? Equality, Natural Rights, and Propositionism

    Michael Anton (Publius Decius Mus), in a review of Thomas G. West, The Political Theory of the American Founding  speaks of an "error,"  . . . from a certain quarter of the contemporary Right, which holds that any appeal to equal natural rights amounts to “propositionism”—as in, the “proposition that all men are created equal”—which…

  • Joseph Sobran: Notes for the Reactionary of the Future

    Don't be put off by the title.  This essay, which William F. Buckley published in December, 1985 in National Review, is bristling with insights and distinctions essential for clear thinking about political matters. (HT: Malcolm Pollack) The late Lawrence Auster offers a sympathetic but critical perspective. I'm very busy now. Commentary on Sobran's dazzling essay…

  • Gimme Shelter

    Sang the Stones. We conservatives need shelter and sanctuary. Leftists create sanctuary jurisdictions to shelter criminals and express their contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law. Push-back is now here in the form of gun sanctuaries.  We need liberty sanctuaries for free speech and open inquiry and religion as well.  The Stones' lyrics…

  • What a Conservative Is and Why George W. Bush Wasn’t One

    Robert W. Merry: In an influential 1957 essay entitled “Conservatism as an Ideology,” political scientist Samuel P. Huntington listed fundamental elements of the conservative creed, embraced by nearly all of its proponents: society is the organic product of slow historical growth, and existing institutions embody the wisdom of previous generations; man is a creature of…

  • Kevin Williamson and John Derbyshire

    The Atlantic's firing of Kevin Williamson elicited howls of protest from National Review writers. But then I remembered Derbyshire's Defenestration of a few years ago. Methinks there should be less howling and more examination of conscience among the boy-tie boys. The Left is inimical to free speech and open inquiry. They are deeply and diversely…

  • Strange Reasoning from David French

    Here: When I look back at my worst and most excruciating public statements, they most often suffer from a lack of proportion and perspective. For example, I once told a conservative gathering that the “two greatest threats to America were jihadists overseas and university radicals here at home.” Shortly after I made that idiotic statement,…

  • Joseph Sobran

    Here is an article worth reading if you know nothing about him. I wrote 'if,' not 'if and only if.'

  • Paul Gottfried on David Gordon and Right-Wing Celebrity Authors

    It is fun to play the public intellectual and drop the names of authors whose works one has never read with care. And it is very easy to get out beyond one's depth.  At the moment I am thinking of Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, and to a lesser extent, Rod Dreher. Their commentarial confidence …

  • One Year Ago Today

    I take a swipe at Never-Trumper David French.  2017 has provided massive vindication for those of us who rolled the dice for Trump. By the way, people should get the terminology straight. A Never-Trumper is a self-professed conservative of some sort. Every Never-Trumper is an Anti-Trumper, but not conversely. 

  • Conservatives, Liberals, and Happiness

    It turns out that conservatives are happier than liberals.  But why? Conservative explanation.  Marriage and religious faith are conducive to happiness.  More conservatives are married than liberals, and more practice a religion. Ergo, conservatives as a group are happier than liberals as a group. Liberal explanation.  Conservatives are happier because they turn a blind eye to…

  • What is to be Done?

    Here: So, again, the question remains what should conservatives do in the current situation, in the middle of an all-out attempt by powerful elements in the administrative state-cultural leviathan axis to nullify the 2016 Presidential election? Remain aloof, cultivate one’s own garden of the little platoons in quietist, and often, ironic fashion; talk mostly of…

  • Juan Donoso Cortés on Never-Trumpers as Una Clasa Discutidora

    I have on several occasions referred to Never-Trumpers as yap-and-scribble do-nothings who think of politics as a grand debate gentlemanly conducted and endlessly protracted and who think of themselves as doing something worthwhile whether or not their learned discussions in well-appointed venues achieve anything at all in slowing the leftist juggernaut.  It now occurs to…

  • ‘Liberals,’ Conservatives and Stereotypes

    Yesterday I said that an infallible mark of a 'liberal' or 'progressive' is a refusal to distinguish legal and illegal immigration. Another infallible mark is the refusal of 'liberals' or so-called 'progressives' to admit that there is truth in some stereotypes, that some of them have a basis in reality, and are not the product…

  • Will the Culture War Issue in Civil War?

    John Davidson: [. . .] For all their shortcomings, conservatives at least have a limiting principle for politics. Most of them believe, for example, in the principles enshrined in the Constitution and maintain that no matter how bad things are, the Bill of Rights is a necessary bulwark, sometimes the only bulwark, against tyranny and…

  • A Plea to Conservative Bloggers

    Please join me in promoting Prager U videos. They teach what isn't taught in the leftist seminaries that our so-called universities have become. And they are mercifully short, around five minutes in length. Do your bit.  Here is the man himself in Why Isn't Communism as Hated as Nazism? Full Disclosure: I don't know Prager…