What Does American Conservatism Exist to Conserve? (2023)
What Does American Conservatism Exist to Conserve?
Quadrant, November 2022
Hungarian Conservative, Winter 2023
Political conservatism has certain general characteristics, notably prudence and practicality. Conservatives regard inherited social customs and political arrangements as a form of wisdom—even if they cannot be fully understood and rationalized, they have survived the test of time and embody trial-and-error experience across many generations and historical epochs. That leads conservatives to be dubious about proposals for large-scale departures and to favor reforms that are incremental and provisional.
But political conservatives bring these dispositions to bear in a variety of times and places. The American experience is a vivid example of how conservatism adapts itself to a particular national circumstance. In what follows, I will attempt to describe, from the perspective of an American conservative, why and how our conservatism is distinctive and what it should attempt to conserve in our deeply troubled age.
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America’s Right Confronts the 20th Century (2022)
America’s Right Confronts the 20th Century
The Wall Street Journal, November 22 2022
Political conservatism has general characteristics, notably prudence, practicality, and respect for settled traditions and institutions. But conservatives bring these dispositions to bear in a variety of times and places. The American experience is a vivid example of how conservatism adapts to a particular national circumstance.
American conservatism isn’t in thrall to the status quo. We have always been a nation of bustling aspiration and earnest self-criticism, perpetually seeking to remake the status quo. Conservatives have been as striving and critical as their neighbors, discontented with the circumstances at hand and impatient to set things right.
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The Nation is the Heart of the Matter (2022)
The Nation is the Heart of the Matter
Law & Liberty, April 9, 2022
This article is based on Mr. DeMuth’s opening address at the European National Conservatism Conference in Brussels, Belgium, on March 23, 2022.
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What is National Conservatism? (2022)
What is National Conservatism?
The Daily Signal; February 19, 2022; Podcast with Richard M. Reinsch II
A new group of thinkers and activists calling themselves national conservatives believe American politics and policy questions increasingly invite a national approach. They seek to combat the left’s attempt to bury our constitutional order and replace it with a matrix of identity politics, vast social spending, and other objectives.
Chris DeMuth, a leader of the national conservatism movement and former president of the American Enterprise Institute, joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explore the main trends of American conservatism and what national conservatism brings to the discussion.
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Long Live Ukraine, Taiwan, and the Nation-State (2022)
Long Live Ukraine, Taiwan, and the Nation-State
The Wall Street Journal, February 5, 2022
Russia wants to absorb Ukraine and rule its people. China wants to absorb Taiwan and rule its people. The two powers isolate and degrade their much smaller neighbors at every turn and invoke stale grievances to justify conquering them outright. They have served notice on the world that they are prepared to make war to impose their will. Frantic countermeasures are under way, focused for the time being on averting an invasion of Ukraine or a Moscow-backed coup.
The bellicose Russian and Chinese overtures have provoked wide fear and revulsion. Fear because either military resistance or successful annexations could lead to further aggression by Russia and China and wider wars involving other European or Asian nations and the United States. Revulsion because Taiwan and Ukraine are free democracies in the crosshairs of murderous dictatorships.
These are vital considerations for understanding and responding to the emergency. But there is another, more elemental consideration. Whatever their covetous neighbors say, Taiwan and Ukraine have the essential features of independent nationhood. Provenance and their own exertions have given them the moral right to national self-determination.
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Why America Needs National Conservatism (2021)
Address, National Conservatism Convention, Orlando, Florida, November 1, 2021
When the American left was liberal and reformist, conservatives could play our customary role as moderators of change. As Americans, we, too, breathed the air of liberalism, and there are always things that could stand a little reforming. We could be Burkeans—emphasizing incremental improvement, continuity with the past, avoiding unintended consequences, working within a budget. . . .
But today’s woke progressivism is not reformist. It seeks not to build on the past but to tear it down, by promoting as much instability as democratic politics allows. In 1968, Democratic mayors sided firmly with police and prosecutors against rioters, looters, and arsonists; in 2020, they sided with the lawbreakers. Last year, congressional progressives not only rejected Sen. Tim Scott’s police reforms but vilified and degraded him. This year they vilify any Democrat whose spending plan is less than revolutionary. Compromise is antithetical to their goals and methods. . . .
When the leftward party in a two-party system is seized by such radicalism, the conservative instinct for moderating the course of events is futile and may be counterproductive. Many conservative politicians will stick with the tactic, promising to correct specific excesses that have stirred popular revulsion. Republicans will win some elections that way—but what will they do next? That is where we come in. National conservatives recognize that, in today’s politics, the excesses are the essence. Like Burke after 1789, we shift to opposing revolution tout court.
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Which American Way? (2021)
Which American Way?
The Wall Street Journal, October 15, 2021
National Diversity is the Sine Qua Non of EU Reform and European Revival (2021)
National Diversity is the Sine Qua Non of EU Reform and European Revival
Mandiner Magazine, October 7, 2021
A conversation with Sándor Lénárd, Institute for American Studies, Hungarian University of Public Service
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The Freedom of Nations (2020)
The Freedom of Nations
The Wall Street Journal, February 12, 2020
Welcoming remarks at “God, Honor, Country: President Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and the Freedom of Nations—A National Conservatism Conference,” held on February 3–4, 2020 in Rome, Italy.
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The British Conservative Party Should Stop Cancelling Conservatives (2020)
The British Conservative Party Should Stop Cancelling Conservatives
With Yoram Hazony, Quillette, February 19, 2020
Objecting to some scurrilous political attacks on the National Conservatism Conference held in Rome, Italy, in February 2020.
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America’s Nationalist Awakening (2019)
America’s Nationalist Awakening
National Conservatism Conference, Washington, D.C., July 14–16, 2019
This is the text of my talk at a conference that included dozens of talks and panel discussions on “national conservatism.” The conference attracted widespread media coverage and sparked vigorous debate on the emerging national conservatism movement.
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Multiculturalism and Nationalism (2019)
Multiculturalism and Nationalism (2019)
Keynote address at Claremont Institute Conference, May 3, 2019
Multiculturalism is not an outgrowth of the civil-rights and women’s-rights movements. The previous movements were part and parcel of the American liberal tradition going back to the founding—that is, the progressive extension of freedom, equality, and opportunity to new groups and new circumstances. That tradition continues, to be sure, as in the extension of legal rights and status to gay individuals and couples. But, for the most part, multiculturalism is a sharp break with the liberal tradition…
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Trumpism, Nationalism, and Conservatism (2019)
Trumpism, Nationalism, and Conservatism
Claremont Review of Books, Winter 2018/19
Trumpism has an essence, and that essence is nationalism. It is the American version of the revival of the spirit of nationhood in the rich democracies of the North Atlantic. It is bigger than President Trump’s personality and program, and is certain to outlast the drama and fate of his tenure in office…
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Trump and the Revolt of the “Somewheres” (2019)
Trump and the Revolt of the “Somewheres”
The Wall Street Journal; March 2, 2019
This is an excerpted version of my essay, “Trumpism, Nationalism, and Conservatism,” posted immediately above on this website.
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Mending Walls: Essay (2018)
Mending Walls (Essay)
September 2018
This is an extended version of my review of Yoram Hazony, The Virtue of Nationalism (2018), published in the Fall 2018 issue of the Jewish Review of Books and posted immediately below on this website.