Departments

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conservatism

  • SOURCE: The New Republic
    2/19/2021

    The Rise and Fall of the L. Brent Bozells

    by Timothy Noah

    The charging of L. Brent Bozell IV with disorderly conduct for entering the Senate chamber on January 6 prompts reflection on how a series of men named L. Brent Bozell trace the evolution of American conservatism. 

  • SOURCE: The New Republic
    2/19/2021

    Rush Limbaugh and the Nineties Roots of “Cancel Culture”

    by Alex Pareene

    Rush Limbaugh's career ended in a siloed media environment where the right occupied its own channels. But it began in a mainstream media that was eager to profit by marketing his brand of down-punching reactionary grievance. 

  • SOURCE: Radical History Review
    2/19/2021

    His Ignominy Is His Triumph: a Counter-Obituary of Rush Limbaugh

    by A.J. Bauer

    "You’d be hard pressed to find a better popularizer of the concept of counter-hegemonic struggle (“culture war” in the vernacular), albeit on the right, or a more “organic intellectual” of the U.S. white upper middle class."

  • SOURCE: Washington Post
    2/18/2021

    We Wouldn’t Have Had President Trump Without Rush Limbaugh

    by Max Boot

    Rush Limbaugh stripped conservative politics of principle, policy, and argument, broadcasting a show based on "assertion, mockery, and resentment." Donald Trump's presidency has proven that this was enough. 

  • 2/18/2021

    The Texas Weather and Power Catastrophe

    by HNN Staff

    The combination of severe winter storms and persistent cold and a deregulated energy supply system without compulsion to invest in winterization has left Texans without power, heat or drinking water for days. Senator Ted Cruz appears to have decamped to Cancun while politicians blame wind and solar power for frozen natural gas refineries.

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    2/15/2021

    McConnell’s Task: Purging the Crackpots and Bigots

    by Kevin M. Schultz

    William F. Buckley Jr. was able to advance conservative ideas by publicly dissociating from antisemites, Ayn Rand cultists and John Birch conspiracists on the right-wing fringes. Mitch McConnell's problem leading America's conservative party is that all those groups are back with a vengeance. 

  • SOURCE: Stanford Daily
    2/12/2021

    A Tragic Day at the Senate

    by David Palumbo-Liu

    A Stanford scholar of Asian American Studies decries the university administration's dismissal of faculty complaints that the conservative Hoover Institution has produced disinformation about both COVID-19 and the integrity of the 2020 presidential election under the imprimatur of Stanford's academic reputation. 

  • SOURCE: Dissent
    2/14/2021

    Backlash Forever (Review Essay)

    by Gabriel Winant

    Historian Gabriel Winant reviews two recent books about the past and present of reactionary white working class politics and considers whether this tendency can be overcome. 

  • 2/14/2021

    What Becomes of a Broken Party?

    by James Robenalt

    The Republican Party seems to be refusing the opportunity to save itself by rejecting Trumpism. His acquittal in a second Senate trial means he will be free to demand the party bend to his will or be destroyed. 

  • 2/14/2021

    Trumpism after Trump: Beyond Fascism

    by Gavriel Rosenfeld

    Understanding the future of the far-right grievance politics catalyzed by the Trump presidency, it might be helpful to think of it as "MAGA-ism," a 21st century American phenomenon.

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    2/5/2021

    Marjorie Taylor Greene Knows Exactly What She's Doing

    by Jamelle Bouie

    Historians Lisa McGirr, Sara Diamond, and Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld argue that the Republican Party has always had to keep a porous border between itself and the hard right groups who led its activist base since the Goldwater years. The borders today seem to be dissolving.

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    2/4/2021

    How the GOP Surrendered to Extremism

    by Ronald Brownstein

    Historian Matthew Dallek says that the prominence of conspiracy theorists and the far right in the Republican Party's base means that there will be no move to push extremists out like there was after Barry Goldwater's 1964 candidacy.