Every new regime not born from revolutionary violence must win the support of an elite to survive. Mere theories of sound social arrangements do not suffice. A powerful cohort must be invested in the regime’s success, ready to uphold its ideals. Lacking allies to enforce its vision, a regime’s framework may ironically undermine the principles it is designed to uphold. An entrenched opposing elite can turn the discretion inherent in all political settlements against the objectives of their proponents. In American history, for instance, consider how a Federalist elite, entrenched in the federal ..read more

A joke told often in Budapest says that World War III will be lost by whichever side Hungary is on. Balázs Orbán, the political director for Prime Minister Viktor Orbán (the two are not related), notes in his new book, Hussar Cut, that the political compromise of 1867 that incorporated Hungary into the Austrian Empire “involved the voluntary surrender of our independent foreign policy, so we had no say on whether or not to participate in the first great global military conflagration of the twentieth century.” Hungary had little choice in the Second World War, either: in 1944 it fell under Germ ..read more

I was in broad sympathy with Professor McGinnis’s recent Law & Liberty review of Ingrid Robeyns’s book, Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth, though I am somewhat less sanguine than he about the benefits of wealth (beyond a certain level). I would put it like this: while increased wealth above a certain level is not guaranteed to increase happiness, or what is now routinely called human flourishing, attempts to limit wealth to that level are almost guaranteed to result in increased human unhappiness. I was struck, however, by the following sentence in the review: While the left ..read more

Daniel Miller has offered us a critique of American political culture by way of European reactionary thought, with an emphasis on analogies from the French Revolution to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. His argument is primarily conceptual, meaning that he identifies key concepts as primary drivers for the events. The central and eponymous concept, American counterrevolution, is never directly defined. But toward the end of the essay he slips in the following unannounced: Perhaps the most important shared fact [between the French Revolution and American counterrevolution] is the presence of the ..read more

The year 2023 witnessed two significant anniversaries related to the life and thought of the political philosopher Leo Strauss: the 70th anniversary of the publication of his best-known and most synoptic work, Natural Right and History (1953), and the 50th anniversary of his death in 1973. A figure of controversy in his life, Strauss and his students (so-called “Straussians”) remain polarizing today. On the one hand, left-wing academics and the journalists who endlessly recirculate clichés and terrible simplifications see in Strauss-influenced scholars an elitist and anti-democratic cabal; tho ..read more

In Book I of his Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli dedicates chapters 7 and 8 to the theme of accusations, calumnies, and their impact on free republics. As with much of his writing, he praises the Roman Republic for how it dealt with these matters and condemns contemporary Florence. Specifically, he considers that accusations are an important venting mechanism to be used against a citizen who is alleged to have wronged the republic in some way. If such a mechanism does not exist, Machiavelli argues, then factions will form in the republic and lead to the potential intervention of a foreign powe ..read more

In land acknowledgments, there is to be found a fatuous mix of nerve and naiveté. The former comes to light in the public pronouncement that some present-day site was once the ancestral homeland of another people and that those currently occupying it and making the pronouncement have absolutely no intention of giving it back. Imagine finding a lost dog, keeping it, and solemnly proclaiming that this dog traditionally belonged to the Thompsons who live down the street. If the people issuing such statements were not so thoroughly neutered, one might say upon hearing a land acknowledgment: that t ..read more

Like a drunken but unforgettable one-night stand between Jay McInerny’s Bright Lights, Big City, and Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, Tara Isabella Burton’s Here In Avalon rips up the map of genre fiction, breaking walls and blurring boundaries that normally keep romance, thriller, fantasy, and literary fiction safely separated. The result is a bittersweet, romantic ride, but also a work that inspires us to think more deeply about the very nature of the genres we enjoy, to question, in effect, the genre of our own dreams and desires, and the writerly magic inherent in all fiction. All writers are tri ..read more

The best scenes in Masters of the Air, a nine-part series on Apple TV, arrive at 25,000 feet, as squadrons of B-17 Flying Fortresses cruise in formation to bomb Germany during World War II. Oxygen masks strapped on, the crews man their posts and brace for flak and Luftwaffe fighter planes. The ball turret gunner squeezes into his glass globe in the underbelly, the waist gunners swing their weapons to the ready, the navigator hunches over crinkling charts, the bombardier readies his Norden bombsight. On the flight deck, the pilot and co-pilot grimly watch as flak shells burst and pop. The gray ..read more

Since the smash hit of Jordan B. Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life, publishers have been looking for other notable figures who might provide self-help for young, conservative men. I reviewed another such entry for Law & Liberty, and now I turn to one by Eduard Habsburg, from the storied European aristocratic family that once ruled over half of Europe, most of South America, and even part of North America. Indeed, on the cover, Habsburg includes his title, “Archduke of Austria,” a claim now of only symbolic importance, as Austria is a republic that abolished titles of nobility in 1919. Habsburg ..read more