The 1970s saw the proliferation of single-issue interest groups that constituted the New Right. The first Conservative Political Action Conference was held in 1973. In 1977, a year after losing the Republican nomination to incumbent Gerald Ford, Reagan addressed the conference. “The new Republican party I am speaking about,” he said, “is going to have room for the man and the woman in the factories, for the farmer, for the cop on the beat, and the millions of Americans who may never have thought of joining our party before, but whose interests coincide with those represented by principled Republicanism.”
.. American Affairs got its start as a blog, the Journal of American Greatness, whose objective was to provide, in the words of its most famous contributor, “a sensible, coherent Trumpism.”
.. It is not Trumpism but this larger concept that needs to be made sensible and coherent. I am speaking of nationalism.
.. It is not Trumpism but this larger concept that needs to be made sensible and coherent. I am speaking of nationalism.
.. When the Cold War ended, Mitchell writes, victorious elites in Washington, London, and Brussels began constructing a world where attachments to national identity would be attenuated or even severed. One would belong to a group above the nation — be a “citizen of the world,” an employee of a multinational corporation or NGO, a partisan of Davos, a subject of the EU — or to a hyphenated group below it.
.. Increasingly, power is shifted away from individuals elected to represent the political community toward unelected officials qualified to hold the positions responsible for administering the government — that is, providing for consumption. Like all managers, they derive their power from the administrative expertise and credentials that qualify them for office rather than from democratic legitimacy. They are accountable, that is, not to the political community but to the other managers that define their qualifications.
.. This lack of accountability has been highlighted again and again over the last 16 years. First 9/11 happened and no one was fired. Then Saddam turned out not to have had WMD and no one was fired. The economy came close to collapse — and the banks were bailed out.
.. This lack of accountability has been highlighted again and again over the last 16 years. First 9/11 happened and no one was fired. Then Saddam turned out not to have had WMD and no one was fired. The economy came close to collapse — and the banks were bailed out.