conservatism 
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7/3/2022
The Edmund Burke Foundation Betrays its Namesake and Threatens Liberty with "National Conservatism"
by Thomas Lecaque and J.L. Tomlin
The Edmund Burke Society has claimed the mantle of the foundational conservative in its recent manifesto, but what the document articulates is a blueprint for an authoritarian, theocratic society that owes more to European fascism.
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SOURCE: Freethinker
6/14/2022
Is the Right Now Post-Religious? If Only!
by Jacques Berlinerblau
A high-profile op-ed by Nate Hochman obfuscates the continued significance of strains of Christian nationalism to the rising far right and falsely claims this movement is a secular one.
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SOURCE: New Statesman
6/9/2022
What's Really New about the "New" American Right?
by John Ganz
There's something familiar about a secular nationalist movement that mobilizes property owners through a narrative of national decline and the promise of controlling or purging enemies of a unified people through force, recently described in a Times op-ed. If only there were a word for it....
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SOURCE: Public Books
5/30/2022
Rick Perlstein on the Influence of Garry Wills
The author of a popular and rigorous history of modern conservatism discusses the influence of the prolific public intellectual on his research and writing.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
5/24/2022
The CRT and "Don't Say Gay" Panics Aren't About Controlling Public Schools, but Destroying Them
by Adam Laats
In the 1920s, the KKK sought to strengthen and control the public schools as vehicles to teach their version of "100% Americanism"; today's culture warriors hope to undermine trust in schools as a way to defund and privatize them.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
5/19/2022
Bringing CPAC to Hungary Betrays the Roots of the Conservative Movement
by Lauren Lassabe
It is a bitter irony that the postwar American conservative movement was energized by the anti-Stalinist Hungarian revolution of the 1950s; today the movement takes inspiration from a repressive regime and its autocratic leader.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
5/20/2022
Midge Decter: An Overlooked Intellectual Forerunner of Trumpism
by Ronnie Grinberg
By connecting social turmoil to the decline of traditional family and gender roles even before Roe or the rise of second-wave feminism, Midge Decter created a foundation for the politics of family values.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
5/16/2022
What Everyone Gets Wrong about the Evangelical-Abortion Connection
by Gillian Frank and Neil J. Young
A widely-accepted narrative holds that conservative Christian leaders pushed their followers to oppose abortion as a galvanizing issue when their first concern, resisting school desegregation, became politically unpopular. This obscures the movement building at the grass roots as Christians considered and debated the issue.
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SOURCE: The Nation
5/19/2021
When a Right-Wing Attack on Textbooks Was Stopped
by Jonathan Zimmerman
A McCarthy-era attack on a leading civics textbook fell short because of both organized resistance and the unpopularity of the ideas behind the ban. Supporters of academic freedom today can potentially draw on both of those elements, too.
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SOURCE: The Guardian
5/19/2022
Alito's Opinion Shows Roe is Only the Beginning
by Thomas Zimmer
The entire idea of substantive due process under the 14th Amendment is called into question by the draft opinion, potentially threatening reproductive rights, civil rights, and sexual freedom in service of a reactionary ideal of patriarchal society.
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SOURCE: Substack
5/3/2022
Republican Right is Forcing the Birth of the Society it Wants (and Most Americans Don't)
by Claire Potter
"Memo to radical conservative activists: despite your wettest fantasies, “libs” don’t cry at moments like this. We get angry, really angry. And we fight."
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
4/25/2022
False Accusations of "Fascism" at Democrats, Like Those Biden Faces, are Nothing New
by Jon Marshall
Glenn Beck's accusation that Biden is leading a global elite cabal of fascists doesn't have to make sense when it spreads around the world on social media and cable TV.
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SOURCE: Boston Review
4/5/2022
"Father Knows Best": Anti-LGBTQ Legislation and the Patriarchy
by Judith Levine
The elision of children’s interests and parents’ rights is not just bad grammar, however. It is an expression of conservative “pro-family” ideology, which posits the family as an indivisible unit where everyone’s interests are unanimous.
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SOURCE: CNN
4/7/2022
Disney Controversy Puts Right-Wing Children's Entertainment Industry in Spotlight
by Nicole Hemmer
A growing array of conservative children’s literature and programming coincides with right-wing attacks on schools and children’s entertainment that conservatives claim are sites of political and sexual indoctrination.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
4/3/2022
Why Can't Mike DeWine Succeed as a Reasonable Republican?
The Ohio governor increasingly seems to fit a political mold of pragmatic conservatism that lacks a constituency in a polarized political environment driven by a radicalized Republican Party.
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SOURCE: The New Republic
3/30/2022
The Lesson from Republicans' Embrace of "Classical Education"
Calls for "transparency" in curriculum are working hand in hand with an agenda to divert public school funding to charter schools using a curriculum steeped in Christian nationalism. But liberals would do well to heed the connection these plans draw between education and citizenship, and parents' desire to connect them more firmly.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
3/25/2022
Antiabortion Movement Gunning for Contraceptive Rights, Too
by Anya Jabour
A century ago, sex researcher Katharine Bement Davis was silenced because she fought to redefine women's sexuality and contraceptive use as normal and fight for its decriminalization. The right today wants to undo her legacy through the courts.
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SOURCE: Rolling Stone
3/27/2022
Historian Jeff Shesol: Ginni Thomas's 1/6 Involvement Poses Unprecedented Crisis for Court's Legitimacy
"In a very real sense, Clarence and Ginni Thomas are answerable only to Clarence and Ginni Thomas. The Trump Administration gave us all a hard lesson in how few actual rules bind the behavior of our national leaders."
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SOURCE: The Guardian
3/21/2022
The Right Isn't Just Rejecting the 2020 Election – It's Worse than That
by Thomas Zimmer
For a growing number of Republicans, the illegitimacy of an election reflects not the process but the results – Democrats winning.
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SOURCE: Christianity Today
3/22/2022
Why Have No Evangelical Christians Served on Supreme Court?
Evangelicals are arguably the most politically engaged religious group in America, with strong views on issues before the court. Yet Ketanji Brown Jackson could become the first nondenominational Protestant to sit on the highest court.
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