In the afterglow of last weekend’s gathering of Porchers, which featured a panel on American exceptionalism, a piece by Walter McDougall over at the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s website comes at a good time. (Is there ever a bad one…
Do you love America? If so, how much? Do you wear an American flag on your lapel (and look askance on those who don’t)? Do you drive only American cars? Do you prefer home-style fries to French fries because, well,…
Kearneysville, WV.… As this election cycle grinds on, and as Washington prepares for CPAC’s 2012 event, each Republican candidate continues to claim that he best represents the conservative ideal. In this on-going contest over a word, the various contenders have
If you are planning to run for president, here’s a word of advice: you must assert regularly and with great conviction your belief in American Exceptionalism. This seems especially true if you are vying for the Republican nomination. The particular…
After reading David Brooks’ “The Rugged Altruists,” which romanticizes the “giving” zeal of contemporary Americans who engage in overseas missions and relief-work, one wonders about the appropriate limits for American internationalism and charity. Many of Brooks’ anecdotes about Americans who experience…
Conservatives are awfully fond of referring to America as a “city upon a hill;” it would be a wonderful thing if they actually made some attempt to understand what that image is supposed to signify. When it is used by…
The gloom and doom is contagious. We live in a time when a certain respectability seems to attach to those who predict the demise of America, freedom, prosperity, or even the world.
A book I’ve co-edited with Michael Federici and Richard Gamble has just been published. It’s titled The Culture of Immodesty in American Life and Politics:…