Conservatism
November 1, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Michael Doran efficiently demonstrates three qualities of Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts’s diehard defense of the think tank’s relationship with Tucker Carlson in a few short paragraphs on X: Roberts’s statement is dishonest, bigoted, and stupid. The guy leading one of America’s preeminent conservative think tanks is unfit for the job. As it turns out, Roberts’s statement may have served a constructive pupose in making that clear. In the Wall
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October 30, 2025 — Scott Johnson
It’s a time for choosing and the Heritage Foundation has chosen poorly. Heritage president Kevin Roberts has chosen to stand with Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes. Roberts has posted the pitiful statement below via X. There has been speculation that @Heritage is distancing itself from @TuckerCarlson over the past 24 hours. I want to put that to rest right now—here are my thoughts: pic.twitter.com/F8bcxBIqKI — Kevin Roberts (@KevinRobertsTX) October 30,
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October 30, 2025 — Scott Johnson
As I did yesterday in “Arc of a groyper,” I’ve been saying for a while now that Tucker Carlson has made this a time for choosing. Every writer, every public figure, every publication, and every institution that lauded Carlson in years past is obligated to speak out against the figure he has become — deceitful and destructive in his own right and a discredit to everyone with whom he associates.
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October 29, 2025 — Scott Johnson
The historian Dominic Green recently observed: “If there is to be a movement conservatism for the 21st century, the New Right must break with Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens, and the chorus of clickbait Charles Coughlins who blame the Jews for America’s troubles. Their mind map has already caused moral brain death in the left lobe, and it is bleeding into the right lobe.” Take, for example, Carlson’s two-hour
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October 22, 2025 — Scott Johnson
It appears that the release of Peter Robinson’s most recent interview with Thomas Sowell — posted here yesterday — was timed to coincide with Monday’s celebration of The Sowell Legacy: Ideas, Impact, and Intellectual Freedom. The Hoover Institution event included a lineup of speakers expounding Sowell’s “diverse” contributions to the wide range of subjects covered in his books. Among them: Glenn Loury, Niall Ferguson, Victor Davis Hanson, Coleman Hughes, Steven
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October 21, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Via X I learn that the Hoover Institution has just has just posted Peter Robinson’s special Uncommon Knowledge episode with Thomas Sowell, recorded this past December (video below): This special episode of Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson features our most requested guest: Hoover senior fellow and acclaimed economist and author Dr. Thomas Sowell. But rather than discussing Sowell’s many books, this conversation explores the full arc of Sowell’s life —
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October 16, 2025 — John Hinderaker
The Democratic Party has become the party of the rich, but its members haven’t figured out how to deal with that fact. They still pretend to be the party of the working man, even as working men and women have been abandoning the Democrats in droves. Thus, the DFL Party smeared my organization in a press release last week, intimating that we are an organization supported by plutocrats. This is
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October 15, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Steve Hayward identified the source of my approximation of the Buckley quote in “A fool’s house.” Steve kindly advised that the quote appears in Buckley’s essay “Notes Toward an Empirical Definition of Conservatism,” published first in Frank Meyer’s 1965 collection What Is Conservatism?. Buckley subsequently collected that essay in The Jeweler’s Eye and then drew on it for the introduction to two editions of Did You Ever See a Dream
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October 5, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Dominic Green is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Mr. Green examined the documentary evidence bearing on Ilhan Omar’s marriage to her brother in the pseudonymous Spectator column “‘I am legally married to one and culturally to another’: How Ilhan Omar desperately tried to shut down accusations of bigamy amid claims she was briefly married to her BROTHER to ‘commit immigration fraud’ while she was still with her current
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September 22, 2025 — Scott Johnson
I have faithfully followed Tucker Carlson’s descent into the gutter of vile anti-Semitism. The documentation can be found in an admittedly tiresome series of posts here. In my opinion, every writer, public figure, every publication, and every institution that lauded him in years past is obligated to speak out against the figure he has become — deceitful and destructive in his own right and a discredit to everyone with whom
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September 21, 2025 — John Hinderaker
The Charlie Kirk memorial was a phenomenon. Something like 200,000 people showed up for it in Phoenix, and around 70,000 were inside the stadium. Millions watched online and on television. I think we are only beginning to see the consequences of Kirk’s murder by Tyler Robinson. They may be more profound than we could have guessed, eleven days ago. Here are a few observations on the memorial: * It went
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September 19, 2025 — John Hinderaker
The video below has brought home to me more than anything else the human tragedy, as opposed to the political outrage, of Charlie Kirk’s murder. It appears to be an outtake from an episode of the Charlie Kirk Show in which Charlie introduced Erika as his fiancé. I won’t describe it further except to say that I think it will strike you as it did me: The board of directors
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September 15, 2025 — John Hinderaker
On Saturday, a huge crowd turned out for a “Unite the Kingdom” rally in London. It was led by Tommy Robinson, and Elon Musk appeared via video link. The crowd also honored Charlie Kirk. Official estimates put the crowd between 100,000 and 150,000. I am no expert on crowd size, but it looked much bigger than that. Some partisans claimed it was as many as three million. English and United
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September 15, 2025 — John Hinderaker
To a degree that is really touching, memorials and vigils for Charlie Kirk have been taking place across the Western world. Here, several thousands of Canadians in Calgary sing our national anthem during one such event: POWERFUL! Thousands of Canadians in Calgary sing the American National Anthem at a memorial for Charlie Kirk. pic.twitter.com/NvcQGMCzJD — Kian Simone (@kiansimone44) September 15, 2025 This puts me in mind of the Alberta independence
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September 11, 2025 — Scott Johnson
The assassination of Charlie Kirk represents an incalculable loss to his young family, to the conservative movement, and therefore to the United States. We mourn his death but we also feel deep anger in our breasts. If we did not represent the forces of constitutional order, it feels like it could be the opening salvo of a civil war. It provokes us to wonder what might have happened if the
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September 10, 2025 — John Hinderaker
I knew Charlie Kirk, a little. My organization collaborated with his in a number of ways, over a period of years. Charlie and I spoke together at an event in Fargo when we launched American Experiment North Dakota. We have attended a number of Turning Point events through the years, including two in the White House and two at Mar-a-Lago. There was one TPUSA event in Washington when we had
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September 8, 2025 — Scott Johnson
With the publication of Sam Tanenhaus’s long-awaited and disappointing doorstop bio of William F. Buckley, Jr., this is the season of Buckley. Not so much because of the bio itself as because of the reflections on the book by such friends and colleagues of Buckley as Charles Kesler, Neal Freeman, James Piereson, and Daniel Oliver. By contrast, in its September 25 issue, the New York Review of Books has now
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