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Yoram Hazony's book outlines the religious foundations of American conservatism.

Conservatism: A Rediscovery, by Yoram Hazony (Regnery Gateway, 2022), 256 pages.

I began reading Yoram Hazonys Conservatism: A Rediscovery with the expectation that it would be an update of sorts of Russell Kirks The Conservative Mind. There are similarities between the books that have been noted elsewhere, but in some ways, Hazonys book is more comprehensive than either Conservative Mind or Kirks Roots of the American Order.

Americans use a different taxonomy for politics than Europeans do; there is a liberalism in the American founding that can make semantics blurry. Hazony, thankfully, cuts through the confusion and boldly states historical truths that are self-evident. The United States was at its formation an Anglo-Protestant nation committed to upholding the traditional pillars of human society: religion, family, the common good, and authority.

None of this is controversial, but in the post-Trump intellectual milieu, to be a historically conscious American conservative is increasingly to be labeled an integralist or a Christian nationalist, terms so imprecise that their use amounts to slander. Ideas like nationalism, conservatism, the common good, ordered liberty, and rightful authority are not merely fever dreams of a nefarious new right out to destroy the libertarian, or neoconservative, or neoliberal paradise created by the wiser minds of the post-war era. Hazony is a practicing Orthodox Jew, so the charges that he is interested in resurrecting a medieval Roman Catholic order is ridiculous on its face.

As an Israeli, Hazonys distance from the United States contemporary political cacophony allows him to see clearly what is obvious from the historical record. George Washington and the Federalists, for example, were nationalists by most measures. Moreover, the religious disestablishments of the 1780s did not secularize society. Instead, the Christian religion and the state stopped their 1,300-year-old tendency to meddle in each others affairs and became allies in the creation of the Early Republic United States. All of this is self-evident in American history, but few recent authors have dared say so. The threat of being labeled a theocrat has cowed scholars, pastors, and laypeople of goodwill into conceding the specious historical claims of neoconservatives and neoliberals as much as outright leftists.

Religions, and more specifically Christianitys, self-evident place in the history of American political and social life takes center stage in Conservatisms narrative. Political theories in the conservative tradition, Hazony rightly notes, cannot be made to work without the God of scripture. Uncharitable readers will hear a dog whistle in his claim, but Hazonys is no different than the claim of many Western thinkers. The Judeo-Christian, or Abrahamic (Muslims rightfully have a place in the narrative of conservatism) Gods presence in political life is necessary, as the knowledge of God makes man aware of human limitation and the subsequent limits on human power.

Family joins religion as an essential pillar of sustainable conservative social and civil life. Hazony unambiguously lays out the Mosaic foundations for the traditions that allow human beings to create and sustain healthy families. Traditional families, Hazony notes, are not identical to the nuclear families of the mid-20th century. They are multigenerational and religious by nature. In his view, clans and close kinship networks are not the seeds of a future cultish society, but instead are a natural, timeless part of human life.

Since societys foundations are, in Conservatism, bound up in family and religion, it is no surprise that Hazony sees creating, maintaining, and protecting those two institutions as the essential purpose of government. Again, this is not actually controversial or historically ambiguous. The Protestant intellectuals and politicians who dominated civic and social life in the United States until the middle of the 20th century were not social libertarians, or even social progressives as that term is understood today. Franklin Roosevelt and his secretary of State, Cordell Hull, gladly claimed the mantle of Christian nationalism. So did most Republicans before World War II. The idea that the American nation owed its laws and political order to Protestantism, or at least to Christianity more broadly, was not a controversial opinion. And laws oriented towards the health and prosperity of families were always prioritized over and against an individualist paradigm.

Propositions once widely accepted have nonetheless become taboo. Centrist Evangelicals, Roman Catholics, and Jews have embraced a sacralized form of liberalism shorn of biblical commitments. Hazony proposes that the Cold War bears some responsibility for this. Family and religion, however important they might be, were hard to see as important priorities in themselves in the post-war era. They became valuable because they were institutions that were anti-Communist.

Perhaps appropriately, there is very little that is new in Hazonys conservatism. Although it is not new, it is also not easy. Hazony believes that the libertarian telos of the early 21st century has valorized freedom and only freedom. Not enough is said in our contemporary politics about sources of stability, sanity, and peace, the virtues that necessarily constrain human behavior. Conservatism, in this view, is the way to heal families, communities, tribes, and the nation. And it begins at home. Conservatism in the United States is a living and breathing tradition with a history and a purpose. That history and that purpose, Hazony shows, are good and worth defending, ours, if we can keep it.

Miles Smithis visiting assistant professor of History at Hillsdale College. His main research interests are 19th-century intellectual and religious history in the United States and in the Atlantic World. You can follow him on Twitter at@IVMiles.

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Conservatism, If You Can Keep It - The American Conservative

The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by President Biden on Monday with the headline "My Plan for Fighting Inflation."

Biden began by acknowledging that "Americans are anxious" about inflation, which he said had been "exacerbated" by the war in Ukraine. According to a Gallup poll released Tuesday, Americans' confidence in the economy is at its lowest point since early 2009, when the Great Recession was just reaching its end.

The president also touted his achievements, which he said include a reduced federal deficit, rapid declines in unemployment, and strong economic growth relative to other developed countries.

"With the right policies, the U.S. can transition from recovery to stable, steady growth and bring down inflation without giving up all these historic gains," Biden wrote.

To achieve this goal he proposed passing clean energy tax credits to bring down gas prices, improving infrastructure, cracking down on greedy corporations, ramping up housing construction, reducing the cost of child care, and empowering Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies.

Matt Yglesias of Slow Boring tweeted approvingly that Biden's op-ed was "not a comprehensive solution to everything but certainly points the way to a possible deal on a reconciliation bill."

Brad Polumbo of the libertarian Based Politics had a different interpretation. Biden, Polumbo argued, failed to acknowledge that out-of-control government spending was also behind inflation or that the new spending he proposed would only make things worse.

Read the original post:
Biden lays out plan to fight inflation in Wall Street Journal op-ed - The Week

As the Republican party primaries play out across the US, the most sought after endorsement is still that of former president Donald Trump. But when it comes to the most vital part of any American campaign money another figure is emerging on the right of US politics who is becoming equally significant.

Peter Thiel, the PayPal founder and former CEO referred to as the don of the original PayPal Mafia, a group that included Elon Musk, is establishing himself as a serious power player in American rightwing politics by wielding the power of his vast fortune.

Thiel, styled as a billionaire venture capitalist and tech entrepreneur, plowed more than $10m into a super Pac backing Hillbilly Elegy author JD Vance, winner of the Republican primary for an open US Senate seat in Ohio.

In August, Thiels backing will be tested again after shoveling $13.5m into supporting former employee Blake Masters in the competitive Republican primary for a US Senate seat in Arizona.

In both cases, Thiel put his money his fortune is said to be in the region of $6bn to work behind candidates aligned with Trumps rightwing agenda in 2022 midterm elections.

Earlier this year Thiel stepped down from the board of Meta, where he was an early investor, and a long-serving adviser to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. He wanted to avoid being a distraction for Facebook, according to a person close to Thiel. With his resignation effective this month, the source told Forbes Thiel thinks that the Republican Party can advance the Trump agenda and he wants to do what he can to support that.

But there is a vacuum between the entire Trump political agenda and Trump himself. The former president is apt to pick candidates who promote his stolen election claims. Not all succeed, or are likely to. Trumps failed backing of David Perdue as Georgias Republican gubernatorial candidate looked like a personal grudge against incumbent Brian Kemp, who certified Bidens victory in 2020.

Thiel has so far helped Trump in that cause. By some estimates, Thiel has donated $25m to 15 other 2022 candidates for the House and Senate towing the Trump election fraud line.

Max Chafkin, author of a Thiel biography The Contrarian, recently wrote that Thiels goal is to turn Trumps ideology into a disciplined political platform.

For Thiel, endorsements of Vance and Masters follow a $300,000 donation to the campaign of far-right senator Josh Hawley, then running for Missouri attorney general in 2016. He also donated money to help elect Trump president and spoke on his behalf at the Republican National Convention.

Thiel stayed out of the 2020 presidential race, and instead donated $2.1m to a super Pac supporting Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state who had proposed creating a registry of Muslim immigrants and visitors.

Thiel is one of the conservative mega donors that has the ability to shore up candidates that might need additional support. His spending is targeted, and his ability to spend millions can be impactful, said Sheila Krumholz at OpenSecrets.

Where Trump often seems a single issue political player obsessed with the 2020 election loss Thiel is more flexible in terms of what he represents, Krumholz says.

Often when youre talking about party-aligned mega donors, there are people who have been active over decades, so Peter Thiel strikes a different figure. Hes an entrepreneur, hes tech industry, super successful, seen as part of the young conservative vanguard that some see as more libertarian.

They might be Trump supporters, but their portfolio and persona waters down the connection, Krumholz adds.

Like Musk, Thiel called The Dungeon Master by the New York Review of Books because he played Dungeons & Dragons as a teenager and read J R R Tolkiens trilogy ten times presents a contradictory picture.

As an undergraduate, he founded the conservative Stanford Review and in 1995 Thiel co-authored The Diversity Myth, a book sought to question the impact of multiculturalism and political correctness at Californias higher education campuses.

In bright and shallow Silicon Valley, Thiel stands apart for having retained the intellectual intensity of a bookish undergraduate, a quality that has made him an object of curiosity, admiration and mockery, the publication noted. He stands apart amid the orthodoxy of tech-world social progressivism as much for his conservatism as for his business sense.

In 2003, he co-founded Palantir Technologies, a firm to assist US intelligence agencies with counter-terrorism operations. Last week, Palantir and global commodities trader Trafigura announced a new target market to track carbon emissions for the oil, gas, refined metals and concentrates sector. BP is among its customers, Reuters reported.

Thiels libertarian credentials, and perhaps in part his political motivation, were publicly established in 2016 when he funded an invasion of privacy lawsuit filed by Terry Bollea, known more popularly as wrestler Hulk Hogan, that bankrupted the news website Gawker. Gawker had outed Thiel in 2007.

Its less about revenge and more about specific deterrence, Thiel said of the action. I saw Gawker pioneer a unique and incredibly damaging way of getting attention by bullying people even when there was no connection with the public interest I thought it was worth fighting back.

Funding the lawsuit, he added, was one of the greater philanthropic things that Ive done.

Blake Masters, the 35-year-old Republican US senate candidate for Arizona, has suggested he would use the same tactics after the Arizona Mirror wrote that the candidate opposes abortion rights and wants to allow states to ban contraception use. Masters denies those positions.

If I get any free time after winning my elections then youre getting sued, and Ill easily prove actual malice, Masters wrote in a tweet. Gawker found out the hard way and you will too.

Thiel, said Masters last year, sees some promise in me, but he knows Ill be an independent-minded senator.

But the larger issue for Thiel may be intense cross-currents in the US around big tech, social media and free speech. His former PayPal Mafia consigliere, Musk, is also emerging from the tech world to have influence in US politics where he recently declared himself a Republican and free speech as he seeks to buy the social media platform Twitter.

[Tech is] an industry on the cutting edge and caught in the cross-fire between the parties, said Krumholz. There are a lot of conflicting pressures on and from within the tech industry. Tech is being scapegoated by some, and held responsible for much of the disinformation, excesses of social media, partisan division and radicalization we see.

Moira Weigel, a professor of communications at Northeastern University and a founding editor of Logic magazine, argued in the New Republic last year that Thiel does not really matter: What matters about him is whom he connects.

At the moment, Thiel is busy connecting some of the most rightwing politicians in recent US history.

Excerpt from:
Don of a new era: the rise of Peter Thiel as a US rightwing power player - The Guardian

High-profile MC members espouse hateful rhetoric and collaborate with white nationalists and individuals linked to former President Donald Trump. Should they win control of the LP, they will take over a party that averages over 1% of the vote in national elections, peaking at 3.3% in 2016. Commentators argue libertarian candidates cost Trump at least three crucial swing states in the 2020 election Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin all of which President Joe Biden won by less than 1%.

Collaboration between the LP and hard-right wing of the Republican party would stop this from happening again, LP members told Hatewatch.

The MC has already won control or decision-making influence over several state parties. These include such swing states as Arizona, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Colorado. Florida and California are also close to the MC.

Now that the MC has risen to power within the LP, some critics say they fear bigotry and bullying will flood LP ranks.

LP donations have missed targets and members are fleeing the party, according to David Valente, a former alternate member of the Libertarian National Committee (LNC) and LP member since 2012.

The purpose of what is going on with the MC is to sabotage the LP to sideline it over the next few years for Donald Trump, Valente told Hatewatch.

Valente resigned from the LNC on Oct. 2, 2021, citing health concerns. Rising bigotry and harassment inside the LP, stemming from the MC, also contributed to his resignation, he said.

Angela McArdle, chair of the Libertarian Party of Los Angeles County, Mises Caucus member and candidate for the 2022 LP national chair, told Hatewatch bigotry is not part of the MC strategy. Were grateful for the opportunity to help people let go of collectivism as they search for the truth and find their way to liberty. We will always fight for the freedom of all people."

The MC has adopted a hard-right approach to attract supporters, mimicking the paleo strategy from the early 1990s created by Murray Rothbard and Lew Rockwell. Rothbard and Rockwell used the strategy to appeal to far-right conservatives and authored a newsletter that trafficked in anti-immigrant talking points, race science and anti-LGBTQ ideas.

The MC and its members have argued for limited immigration enforced by property owners on the border and police action against Black Lives Matter and antifa protesters. Theyve also made anti-trans remarks. Mises-controlled Montana removed the right to abortion from its platform.

Ashley Shade, the former chair of the Massachusetts LP, resigned her post after her state party expelled Mises Caucus members over claims of harassment and demands to hold an early convention. Shade, who is trans, asserted in an April 10 Facebook post that MC bigotry and harassment had prompted her recent absence from social media.

Shade wrote she was successful in teaching many people about Trans rights and issues, but she experienced more harrasment [sic] and threats than support. Shade called the MC a cult and a tool of the Republican Party.

MC positions mirror the Trump-aligned hard right. But Libertarians, who view personal freedom and non-aggression as their core beliefs, have historically held pro-migration, pro-choice and pro-LGBTQ positions.

The MC has links to Trumps orbit. John Hudak, an LP member and former member of the Mises Caucus, shared screenshots of private Mises Caucus-linked groups on social media. Hudak also runs Fakertarians, a blog dedicated to addressing bigotry in the LP.

Screenshot show Michael Heise, the MC chairman from Pennsylvania, claims to have received donations and solicited advice from Patrick Byrne, former CEO of Overstock.com.

Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne leaves his hotel in New York on June 21, 2017. Photo credit: WENN/Alamy

Byrne was a regular visitorto the White House in the waning days of the Trump administration. He spoke at the Jan. 6, 2021, Trump rally in D.C. that preceded the insurrection. He authored a book based on spurious claims that election fraud cost Trump the 2020 election and was the main financierof the audit of the Arizonas Maricopa County election results.

In one screenshot, Heise announced a private meeting with Byrne and others on July 11, 2018.

Heise claimed in a Sept. 12, 2019, post that Byrne donated $5,000 to the caucus in 2017 after the two met at the Nexus conference, a gathering dedicated to a cryptocurrency Collin Cantrell founded. Cantrells father, Jim, is on the Mises political action committee advisory board and the Mises Caucus board. Jim Cantrell was on the founding team of Elon Musks SpaceX.

Heise said in the Sept. 12, 2019, post he would contact Byrne for another meeting.

Byrne did not respond to Hatewatchs request for comment.

In March, Heise nominated Daryl Brooks for the LP candidate for Pennsylvania governor after the caucus swept leadership elections at the state convention.

Brooks has runfor state and local office in New Jersey as a Libertarian since 2009.

Trumps former attorney and adviser, Rudy Giuliani, called Brooks as his first witness alleging widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election at the infamous press conference outside the Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia.

Brooks is also a convicted sex offender. His nomination was invalidated due to residency requirements, according to LP insiders who spoke to Hatewatch.

Heise did not respond to Hatewatchs request for comment sent to the email listed on the MC website.

The MC first made national headlines in June 2021, when members of the Mises Caucus won control of the New Hampshire state party, prompting an internal power struggle and resignations.

An August 2021 report on the power struggle prepared by the LP noted several Libertarians were concerned by talk of Steve Bannon working with the Mises Caucus to take the Libertarian Party off the ballot in New Hampshire and other states, which Heise rejected.

The New Hampshire Mises Caucus includes Jeremy Kauffman, who authors anti-trans tweets on his own account. Kauffman was a spearheading member of the New Hampshire takeover and is the LPNH nominee for a New Hampshire senate seat. Kauffman is CEO of LBRY, a decentralized, blockchain-based network service. LBRY owns Odysee, a YouTube alternative that hosts far-right and neo-Nazi content.

Three LP members also claimed Kauffman and Bannon met in Massachusetts after Biden was inaugurated.

Bannon did not respond to Hatewatchs request for comment.

Kauffman did not respond to Hatewatchs request for comment sent through his campaign website.

When Vice President Kamala Harris tweeted in support of Biden signing an anti-lynching bill that made the heinous act a hate crime, Kauffman responded, As a Senator, I promise to legalize lynching anyone who works for the IRS.

The MC has also welcomed antisemitic speakers. The California MC invited Bryan HotepJesus Sharpe, a prominent figure in the Hotep movement, to speak at an event in May 2021.

Sharpe makes antisemitic remarks on social media and espouses conspiracy theories.

McArdle defended inviting Sharpe at the Alabama LP State Convention. McArdle rejected the premise of an audience members question about Sharpes invitation to speak. McArdle called Sharpe a truth seeker.

In response to a question about Sharpes antisemitism, McArdle told Hatewatch the Libertarian Party and broader liberty movement have always been led by and included brilliant Jewish people, and we welcome members of the black community to our movement, as well.

Critics of the Mises Caucus expect the group to nominate comedian Dave Smith for president. Smith, too, has floated the idea.

Smith, who is Jewish, has long invited extremists and hard right and fringe figures including HotepJesus on his podcast, Part of the Problem (PotP). Smith has also appeared on podcasts hosted by extremists.

Smith posts PotP episodes on his YouTube channel, which has over 77,000 subscribers. Recent videos receive roughly 25,000 views, as of early April 2022.

Smiths fans frequently post racist and antisemitic thoughts online. A source gave Hatewatch screenshots of Part of the Problem Inner Circle, a group dedicated to the podcast hosted on MeWe, an alternative to Facebook popular among libertarians.

The posts include racist, antisemitic and homophobic slurs. They also shared links to articles supportive of Trumps Stop the Steal conspiracy theory that claimed Democrats stole the 2020 election. The conspiracy theory culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Smith is active in the group, though screenshots of Smiths activity that Hatewatch reviewed were taken after the slur-filled posts. Hudak, a former member of the group, said members post racist and antisemitic posts all the time. He knows his fans are like this.

Smith did not respond to Hatewatchs request for comment sent through his personal website.

Smith has appeared alongside white nationalist Nick Fuentes three times, most recently in December 2021, on hard-right podcaster Ethan Ralphs Killstream. Ralph was convicted earlier this year of disseminating revenge porn.

Smith also twice invited Fuentes to appear on PotP. Fuentes uses antisemitic tropes, engages in holocaust denialand openly uses racial epithetsto refer to Black people.

Fuentes and Smith debate their respective viewpoints, with Smith arguing for hard-right libertarian viewpoints while Fuentes advocates for using the U.S. government to protect the interests of white people.

Smith pushed back on the idea of a white ethnostate during the 2021 debate. However, he has leaned on the history of Mises figures like Murray Rothbard working with paleoconservatives such as Pat Buchanan, whom Fuentes and his followers admire.

During their first debate, Smith argued for limited immigration, freedom of association that would allow workplace and housing discrimination and limiting migration to combat demographic change.

Smith made similar remarks in a podcast with Michelle Malkin, a conservative commentator with longstanding ties to the racist right. Smiths YouTube channel made private its copy of their discussion.

Smith has also appeared on white supremacist Stefan Molyneauxspodcast. Molyneaux promotes scientific racism, the unfounded notion that intelligence varies across racial groups.

The appearance caused controversy among his supporters. The comic addressed the issue in a podcast, which is now private. Hatewatch obtained a copy of the episode.

Smith acknowledged concerns but said the notion there are racial differences in intelligence is scientific fact.

Researchers and scientist overwhelmingly agree genes alone do not provide an explanationfor differences in intelligence between individuals. Geneticist and neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell wrote in The Guardian in 2018that differences in intelligence between races are inherently and deeply implausible.

Three days after the deadly August 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Smith hosted neo-Nazi Christopher Cantwell.

Smith told Cantwell on his podcast he was sympathetic to the alt-right to a large degree but he disagreed with the alt-rights tactics.

Smith said the left-wing interpretation of you guys is complete bullsh*t. During the conversation, Smith made anti-trans remarks, calling transgender people liars.

The conflict between Mises libertarians and elements of the LP began in 2017. Jeff Deist, the president of the extremist Mises Institute, wrote a blog calling for a new libertarian to replace the establishment leadership of the LP.

Deist wrote that blood and soil still matter to people, and libertarians should not ignore it. Deist did not elaborate on his meaning in selecting that phrase, but blood and soil is a known hate slogan with origins in Nazi Germany that white nationalists still use today.

The Mises Institute published the blog on July 28, 2017, two weeks before white nationalists chanted blood and soil in Charlottesville ahead of the deadly rally.

Nicholas Sarwark, chair of the LP from 2014 to 2020, signed an open letter against fascism in the libertarian movement after Charlottesville. Several organizers of the white nationalist rally, Cantwell, Michael Peinovichand Augustus Invictusall claimed to be libertarians at some point.

The open letter condemned any attempt to connect white supremacy and fascism to libertarianism.

Tom Woods, a Mises Institute fellow, co-founderof the neo-Confederate League of the Southand board member of the Mises Caucus, rejected the letter, denying there was a growing bigotry problem within the LP. This prompted an online debate between himself and Sarwark.

In an April 10 post, Fakertarians accused Woods of grooming his ex-wife when he was 26 and she was 15. Woods has denied this.

Smith, who openly admires Woods, debated Sarwark on the blood and soil question in 2019. In a YouTube video titled Whos allowed in?, Smith proposed a bigger tent for the LP by asking Sarwark if he does not want to bring [racists] into a philosophy that believes in peace?

Sarwark said no, not until they disavowed their racism.

Sarwark told Hatewatch the MC wants to change fundamental aspects that are definitional to Libertarian philosophy, to suit their preferences.

In Pennsylvania, Heises state, libertarians broke from the LP and formed the Keystone Party, which launched on April 4.

Sasha Cohen, a Libertarian voters elected as city clerk in DeKalb, Illinois, resigned over what he saw as clear MC bigotry in July 2021, after the New Hampshire controversy.

Cohen told Hatewatch he wanted the LNC to do the right thing and disassociate from the MC-controlled party.

Cohen said using a big tent approach to expanding LP membership is "great in theory, but the MC strategy closes the party to too many people.

Theres no tent big enough to hold racists and people of color, Cohen said.

Photo illustration by SPLC. Pictured are, from left, Jeremy Kauffman, Michael Heise and Patrick Byrne.

See original here:
Mises Caucus: Could It Sway the Libertarian Party to the Hard Right? - Southern Poverty Law Center

INDIANAPOLIS - Today in New Albany, Tom McDermott (Mayor of Hammond, Candidate for U.S. Senate), Destiny Wells (Candidate for Indiana Secretary of State), Keil Roark (Candidate for Indiana House District 72)), Nick Marshall (Candidate for Indiana Senate District 45), and the Libertarian Party of Indiana will continue the 2022 Town Hall Series, an effort by the Indiana Democratic Party to hear from all voters about the top issues facing Hoosier families ahead of the 2022 state and federal elections.

WHO: Tom McDermott, Mayor of Hammond, Candidate for U.S. Senate

Destiny Wells, Candidate for Indiana Secretary of State

Keil Roark, Candidate for Indiana House District 72

Nick Marshall, Candidate for Indiana Senate District 45

WHAT: 2022 Town Hall Series

WHEN: 5:30 PM, May 25, 2022

WHERE: 40/8 Veterans Hall

221 Albany Street, New Albany, Indiana 47150

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Democrats, Libertarians hosting town hall tonight in New Albany - Evening News and Tribune