Populism

October 19, 2022

The Next American Economy Is Cause for Hope

Let me start with my summary judgement of The Next American Economy: Nation, State, and Markets in an Uncertain World: Samuel Gregg has written an outstanding contribution to the theory and practice of political economy for our times. Continue Reading...

October 06, 2020

Fratelli Tutti is a familiar mixture of dubious claims, strawmen, genuine insights

One of the first things that will strike readers of Pope Francis’s new social encyclical Fratelli Tutti is its sheer length. At about 43,000 words in English (including footnotes), that’s more than the Book of Genesis (32,046) and three times the size of the Gospel of John (15,635). Continue Reading...

July 22, 2020

The Tucker Carlson-Sean Hannity showdown: Who was right?

The underlying tensions between national conservatism and a more pro-business Republican orthodoxy burst into the open during a 24-second, primetime exchange on Fox News Channel. During the hand-off between hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity on Tuesday night, Hannity seemingly rebuked his lead-in for criticizing Jeff Bezos’ fortune. Continue Reading...

August 23, 2019

Italy’s usual political turmoil

I appeared on EWTN News Nightly yesterday to talk about the collapse of the Italian government. Such turmoil is nothing new in Italy. Discontent with the political class is the main reason there was a populist coalition government in the first place. Continue Reading...

June 26, 2019

Compulsory vote and populism — an urgent problem in Latin America

In the United States there is a significant amount of criticism on the political left towards the Electoral College Voting System. The ones making this argument normally state that the “winning takes all” measure creates a bias against minorities, destroying the country’s popular vote. Continue Reading...

May 28, 2019

Can intellectuals actually win elections?

In my previous Letter from Rome, I asked whether populists have the capacity to govern, given the failings of the Italian coalition made up of left-wing and right-wing populists and their apparent disdain for ideology. Continue Reading...

January 10, 2019

In Spain, collectivism is rising on the Right

Spain closed out 2018 by witnessing the rise of a new and growing populist party named Vox, writes Ángel Manuel García Carmona in a new essay for Acton’s Religion & Liberty Transatlantic website: Since 2016, right-wing populist parties have been on the rise in Europe: National Rally (formerly the National Front) in France, the League in Italy, the Party for Freedom in Netherlands, Vlaams Belang in Flanders, and the Alternative for Germany are but a few examples. Continue Reading...

October 15, 2018

How the populist moment can become the liberty moment

Since the War of Independence, the American self-image has set individual liberty against oligarchic power. Abraham Lincoln encapsulated this when he described the American experiment as a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Continue Reading...

April 23, 2018

The decline of Western civilization, redux

A review of Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics Is Destroying American Democracy by Jonah J. Goldberg, Crown Forum, 2018, 442 pp., $28. Suicide of the West is intended as a “serious” work, which it is indeed. Continue Reading...

November 03, 2017

Renewed covenant or populism? Rabbi Lord Sacks on the West’s alternatives

The deepest division running through the West is not between Right and Left, or liberty and collectivism. Western civilization must choose this day whether it is grounded in a covenant or a degraded and authoritarian form of populism, according to the former Chief Rabbi of the UK. Continue Reading...

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