Quotes from Matthew Continetti

In the liberal imagination, the money is the government's by default, and the president and Congress determine through the tax code how much to give back to the people.

The realities of the modern global economy require government to play a substantial role in ensuring the national and economic security of the people.

On economics, crime, and welfare, the Clinton presidency offered plenty for conservatives to like. They never forgave him for it.

At headquarters, Goldwater raised a toast to his staff and to his nation. "Here's to the greatest country in the world," he said. "As Harry Golden says, only in America would the first Jewish presidential nominee be an Episcopalian.

Having seen what the Earl Warren Court did with judicial power, Antonin Scalia and Robert Bork advocated an ethic of judicial restraint and deference to legislatures. Over time, however, conservative judges focused more and more on restraining legislatures through the courts by invalidating some laws as unconstitutional. Originalism was both a "shield" against judicial overreach and a "sword" to be used against acts of Congress.

An avid reader, he found himself agreeing with the former Soviet dissident turned Israeli political figure Natan Sharansky, whose The Case for Democracy (2004) distinguished between "free societies," where dissent flourished, and "fear societies," where unpopular opinions risked imprisonment and death.

we would, as I say, be in deep kimshee."36 The limited reach of the Manhattan Declaration was an unwelcome reminder to conservatives that the Republican Party remained the only viable—and unreliable—political instrument for their ideas.

For the editors of the Standard, Buchanan not only represented a neo-isolationist populist insurgency but also threw into relief the brittleness, fragility, and cowardice of the Republican establishment.

Buckley warned, "Those conservatives who take sly pleasure from Wallace's techniques should reflect that that kind of thing is do-able against anybody at all; do-able for instance by the Folsomite Wallace of yesteryear, who roared his approval of his candidate's attack on the 'Wall Street Gotrocks,' 'the damned decency crowd,' and 'them Hoover Republicans

He found it funny that his socialist friends did not actually want to live in such places either. "I realized that socialism is not a political proposal, not an economic plan. Socialism is the residue of Judeo-Christian faith, without religion. It is a belief in community, the goodness of the human race and paradise on earth.

Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper wrote after his testimony. "He is opposed to all forces that seek to curb or destroy individual liberty. 'Our highest aim,' said he, 'should be the cultivation of freedom of the individual, for therein lies the highest dignity of man. Tyranny is tyranny, and whether it comes from right, left, or center, it's evil.'"24

Center, where doctors could better monitor his condition. The administration did a poor job of informing the public about the president's health. Then Trump took a limo ride around the Walter Reed campus while he was sick just to wave to supporters. When he returned to the White House on October 5, he dramatically unmasked himself while standing on the balcony. These cavalier acts erased whatever momentum had been building for the incumbent in the polls.

These radicals and liberals opposed communism precisely because Soviet-style regimes outlawed independent unions and the right to strike.

And the Trumpified Right had far greater confidence in the ability of the state to coordinate activity and attain its desired outcomes. The basis of this faith was unclear.

For the first time since 1856, the Republican Party did not issue a platform.

Because of the coronavirus, states had liberalized mail-in and early voting, and millions of Americans had voted before Trump's last-minute comeback. The exit polls suggested that Trump won late deciders. But late deciders matter less when most ballots are cast early.

In the space of four years, Republicans had gone from running the White House, the House of Representatives, and the Senate to losing all three.

The Trump method of bluster, ambiguity, threat, and parry created a sense of ongoing crisis. It alienated critics, strained overseas alliances, and exhausted the patience of the electorate. Populism identified real problems and acted as a check on unaccountable elites, but it was also susceptible to demagoguery, scapegoating, and conspiracy theories.

The character of President Ronald Reagan may have affected Kristol's rosy assessment of populism. The fortieth president injected the populist rebellion of the late 1970s with his peculiar qualities of optimism, sunniness, humor, and unflappability.

Every bad habit of the Right was on display in the Capitol riot that left five dead, $30 million in damage, close to three hundred arrested, and Capitol Hill an armed camp.

He espoused a Burkean conservatism of adaptation to changing circumstances. "A conservative in government expects such changes in society as time goes by," he wrote in The Conservative Soul (2006). "His job is to accommodate them to existing institutions." But the Right no longer widely practiced this sort of institutionalism.

I think that we have to keep in mind that the purpose of the Bill of Rights was to forever put our right to control our own destiny beyond the reach of majority rule,

In the Randian cosmology the dollar replaced the crucifix. Christianity, she said, is "the symbol of the sacrifice of the ideal to the nonideal.

Then there are other conservatives—many I know—who have more in common with Andrew Jackson than with Edmund Burke. Their hope is to build cultural siege-cannon out of the populist steel of Idaho, Mississippi, and working-class Milwaukee, and then blast the Eastern liberal establishment to ideo-institutional smithereens.