Charlie Kirk, the pro-Trump pundit who spends most of his time rallying college students to a combative form of conservative populism, regularly appears on the weekends at evangelical megachurches. He is currently visiting churches as part of his “Saving America […]
conservatism
The GOP anti-Ukraine caucus
There members of the Congress who love Russia. Here is William Saletan at The Bulwark: After years of defending a pro-Putin American president and dismissing Russia’s interference in American elections, Republicans have returned to their old shtick: accusing Democrats of […]
Rod Dreher says that America has “few champions” like Viktor Orban, but Florida governor Ron DeSantis gives him “hope”
We covered this yesterday, but Dreher continues to drool all over of the pro-Putin/anti-Zelensky Hungarian president. Here is a taste of his post: “Viktor Organ or Joe Biden?: We cultural conservatives in America have very few champions like Orban. Maybe […]
How the Right gets Gramsci wrong
Check out Alan Wald‘s longform review of Laura Marriss’s translation of Jean-Yves FrĂ©tignĂ©’s To Live Is to Resist: The Life of Antonio Gramsci. There is a lot in Wald’s piece, but I want to call your attention to this passage: […]
When Harvard grads attack the American “elite”
Someone recently left a message on my voicemail asking me if I saw myself as part of the “liberal elite.” He is one of the regular callers who leaves voice mails whenever I write something here or elsewhere that they […]
Salon covers Hillsdale College’s outsized influence on K-12 education
Yesterday the left-leaning Salon stated a three-part series on Hillsdale College’s influence on local school boards. Here is a taste of Part 1: The mood in Costa Mesa on Feb. 2 was more love bomb than fire bomb: yet another […]
Religion News Service covers the Grove City College CRT debate
Here is a taste of Kathryn Post’s piece: Warren Throckmorton, a professor of psychology who signed the second faculty letter, told Religion News Service that some faculty are unsure how to respond to the board’s rejection of critical race theory […]
The “Leftist Bros” who teach fellow leftists about conservativism
Some of us at Current are regular listeners of the “Know Your Enemy” podcast. Matthew Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell have a great “on-air” rapport, they generally treat their subject matter fairly, and have great guests as conversation partners. Now The […]
Putin is rarely mentioned at CPAC
The speakers at the pro-Trump Conservative Political Action Conference this week are in a tough spot. I am sure many of them condemn the Putin invasion of Ukraine, but they can’t do that publicly without invoking the ire of their […]
No one should take Tucker Carlson seriously
This morning we called your attention to Carlson’s Father Coughlin-like support of Vladimir Putin. Over at The Washington Post, Margaret Sullivan reminds us of what a Fox News lawyer once said about the right-wing pundit. Here is a taste: Carlson […]
Anti-Trump Republicans will gather for the “Principles First” summit
They will meet this weekend at the National Press Club. Speakers include Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Denver Riggleman, Geoff Duncan, Brad Raffensperger, Alexander Vindman, Joe Walsh, Barbara Comstock, Bill Kristol, Charlie Sykes, Tom Nichols, Peter Wehner, and Harry Dunn. Meanwhile, […]
How Hillsdale College, the “champion of American exceptionalism,” is shaping civics education in Tennessee
In November 2020, then president Donald Trump announced his 1776 Commission, a commission charged with delivering a conservative alternative to The New York Times 1619 Project. There were no American historians on the commission, but there was plenty of room […]
The bridge from Reaganism to Trumpism
Here is a taste of Jonathan Chait’s New York Magazine piece, “New Gingrich Invented Donald Trump’s Lock-Them-Up Politics”: A popular belief, especially among political centrists, holds that Trump is the antithesis of the old Republican ethos. On one side of […]
National Review turns on Fauci
The editors of one the leading (and still reasonably sane) conservative magazines in the country is calling for Joe Biden to relieve Dr. Anthony Fauci of his “duties at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as chief medical adviser […]
Ivy leaguers who are trying to destroy American democracy
What do Josh Hawley, Steve Mnuchin, Ben Carson, Wilbur Ross, Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon, Mike Pompeo, Ted Cruz, Elise Stefanik, and Kayleigh McEnany have in common? They all have degrees from Ivy League institutions and they are all, in one […]
Historian Michael Kazin reviews conservative pundit Mark Levin’s book on Marxism
Michael Kazin is a history professor at Georgetown and former editor of Dissent. Some of you may recall his Current review of Anthea Butler’s White Evangelical Racism. Over at The Nation, Kazin reviews radio and Fox News personality Mark Levin’s […]
The political philosophy of candidate J.D. Vance
As many of you know, the author of Hillbilly Elegy is running for a United States Senate seat from Ohio as a national (Trump) conservative. Over at The Washington Post, Simon van Zuylen-Wood offers one of the best profiles of […]
George Will on the premodern origins of identity politics…
…and national conservatism. This is a really interesting column. A taste: Prophecy is optional folly but an irresistible end-of-year temptation. So, at the risk of allowing a wish to be the father of a thought, a plausible prediction is that […]
Resounding gongs and clanging symbols at Charlie Kirk’s “America Fest”
Charlie Kirk’s pro-Trump, God and country organization Turning Point USA recently hosted a conference called “America Fest.” Thousands of college students, fresh off of final exams, showed-up in Phoenix to attend the event. Let’s see how things went: Colorado congresswoman […]
The 1877 Project?
It sure sounds like the Dunning School to me. Here is Eric Levitz at New York Magazine: In a recent column for The American Conservative, Helen Andrews argues that Reconstruction — that brief slice of the 19th century during which Black Southerners enjoyed extensive political […]