Why are so many Christian conservatives refusing to criticize Donald Trump’s pay to play sex life? The news of a $130,000 settlement made to porn star Stephanie Clifford, a.k.a. Stormy Daniels, via alleged fixer Michael Cohen, is only the latest episode in which conservative religious leaders and the voters they influence seem unperturbed by personal … More For Conservatives, It’s Stormy Weather
The International Women’s Strike (IWS), which coincided with International Women’s Day, associates itself with every progressive cause there is, making Betty Friedan’s actual dream for feminism—not that it would be a radical movement for women, but that it would be a liberal equality movement for all people—a reality. But do we make a mistake when … More Is Women’s Solidarity Possible?
7:41 AM: Remember I said never to miss morning prayers at CPAC? People I missed yesterday by being late and leaving early: Wayne LaPierre, Mike Pence and Eric Trump. As I publish today, if you are a general ticket holder, it’s already standing room only, an hour before the pledge to God and country. If you followed my live blog or my … More LIVE from #CPAC2018, Day 2
9:00 A.M. For those of you not familiar with it, “CPAC” stands for Conservative Political Action Conference, an event that was launched in 1973 by Young Americans for Freedom and the American Conservative Union, two organizations that were both founded by William F. Buckley. The original purpose was to bring the conservative movement together and set … More LIVE from #CPAC2018
This post was originally published at Public Seminar on January 17, 2018. In the coming weeks, I want to write more about the meaning of free speech, how we understand free speech differently depending on how and where we are positioned, and whether our difficulty in listening to–and understanding–each other is a crucial context for … More The Campus Speech Wars
This post was originally published at Public Seminar on December 27, 2017 What happens in the aftermath of a crushing political defeat? In October, almost a year after the election that brought us Donald Trump, I was at the Library of Congress immersed in the archive of a man named Paul Weyrich, and thinking about … More Rebuilding Democracy in 2018
I can only imagine what my father, a lapsed Methodist, would have said about charges from multiple women that Judge Roy Moore, candidate for Senate in Alabama, and famous for having illegally planted the Ten Commandments in front of his courthouse, had groped them as teenagers. “Jesus!” my dad would have yelled. To which my … More Can Roy Moore’s Candidacy Survive?
Several years ago, I inaugurated this class in recent United States political history under the title “The Age of Reagan.” Like many historians, I presumed that the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 had been the culmination of a fundamental reorientation of American conservatism. I also presumed that it would have as lasting an impact … More From Goldwater to Trump, A Syllabus
