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VOLUME XIX, NUMBER 4, FALL 2019 A Journal of Political Thought and Statesmanship William Christopher Voegeli: Caldwell: e Politics Green Is of Race the New Red Mike Gonzalez: Peter Inventing Skerry: Hispanics Becoming White Mark Helprin: Unfair Harvard Nicholas Eberstadt: Charles Horner: Working Democracy Man Blues in China Christopher Michael Anton Flannery: Hadley Arkes David James L. Buckley McCullough’s D. Alan Heslop Pioneers Wilfred M. McClay and Jean M. Yarbrough: John J. Remembering DiIulio, Jr.: Michael M. On Marijuana Uhlmann A Publication of the Claremont Institute PRICE: $6.95 IN CANADA: $8.95 Hillsdale College VAN ANDEL GRADUATE SCHOOL OF STATESMANSHIP M.A. POLITICS Ph.D. POLITICS A First Principles Approach to Graduate Education in Political Philosophy and American Politics THE FACULTY Larry P. Arnn · Adam Carrington · Mickey Craig · John W. Grant Khalil Habib · Mark S. Kremer · Matthew Mendham · Ronald J. Pestritto Kevin Portteus · Paul A. Rahe · Kevin Slack · Thomas G. West Based on the core texts of the Western and American Traditions Offering Competitive Scholarships and Fellowship Stipends For more information or to apply: gradschool.hillsdale.edu | [email protected] | (517) 607-2483 HC_GradSchool_CRB_6-19.indd 1 6/13/19 3:55 PM mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK Charles R. Kesler: Trump and Our Political Stalemate: page 5 CORRESPONDENCE: page 6 ESSAYS Michael Anton: The Empire Strikes Back: page 8 Mark Helprin: Pride and Prejudice at Harvard: page 55 What the effort to impeach President Trump is really about. An essay and reminiscence. William Voegeli: Liberty, Equality, Reality: page 15 Charles Horner: China’s Democratic Future: page 73 Questions we’d rather not ask about race. Would Confucius approve? Mike Gonzalez: The Invention of Hispanics: page 24 Joseph Epstein: A Philosophe in Full: page 83 What it says about the politics of race. Denis Diderot’s Enlightenment. Christopher Caldwell: From Saving the Earth to Ruling the World: page 40 Jacob Howland: Odysseus Against the Matriarchy: page 98 The transformation of the environmental movement. A Homeric battle of the sexes. IN MEMORIAM Michael Martin Uhlmann, 1939–2019: page 66 Tributes from Michael Anton, Hadley Arkes, James L. Buckley, D. Alan Heslop, Wilfred M. McClay, and Jean M. Yarbrough. REVIEWS OF BOOKS Peter Skerry: Becoming White: page 21 Steven F. Hayward: Practical Wisdom: page 65 Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration, and the Future of White Majorities, Old Whigs: Burke, Lincoln, and the Politics of Prudence, by Eric Kaufmann. by Greg Weiner. Nicholas Eberstadt: The Future of the Work Ethic: page 30 John J. DiIulio, Jr.: Reefer Madness: page 80 The Forgotten Americans: An Economic Agenda for a Divided Nation, Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and by Isabel Sawhill; and The Once and Future American Worker: Violence, by Alex Berenson. A Vision for the Renewal of Work in America, by Oren Cass. J. Eric Wise: Christian Science?: page 87 Christopher Flannery: Land of the Free: page 37 Aristotle’s Revenge: The Metaphysical Foundations of Physical and The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the Biological Science, by Edward Feser. American Ideal West, by David McCullough. Carnes Lord: Saving Persuasion: page 91 Daniel Johnson: Eric the Red: page 45 Aristotle’s Art of Rhetoric, translated by Robert C. Bartlett. Eric Hobsbawm: A Life in History, by Richard J. Evans. Spencer A. Klavan: Twilight of the Gods: page 92 David P. Goldman: Time Out of Joint: page 48 Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare, edited by Jan H. Blits; Time and Power: Visions of History in German Politics, from the and Antony & Cleopatra, by William Shakespeare, Thirty Years’ War to the Third Reich, by Christopher Clark. edited by Jan H. Blits. Max Eden: Not Worth It: page 62 Robert R. Reilly: Lend Me Your Ears: page 94 Restoring the Promise: Higher Education in America, The Classical Music Lover’s Companion to Orchestral Music, by Richard K. Vedder. by Robert Philip. Bradley C.S. Watson: Based on a True Story: page 63 Kyle Smith: Breaking Bad: page 96 Conservatives and the Constitution: Imagining Constitutional Pop Culture and the Dark Side of the American Dream: Con Men, Restoration in the Heyday of American Liberalism, by Ken I. Kersch. Gangsters, Drug Lords, and Zombies, by Paul A. Cantor. SHADOW PLAY Martha Bayles: A Tale of Two Markets: page 103 Hollywood is choosing Chinese profits over American liberties. PARTHIAN SHOT Mark Helprin: What Iran Sees: page 106 Claremont Review of Books w Fall 2019 Page 3 Cambridge Is Politics Titles on statesmanship and conservative politics Author Title Title MATT GROSSMANN Red State Blues Subtitle “In Red State Blues, Matt Grossmann, one of the nation’s most astute political scientists, Back copy challenges fundamental orthodoxy in much of academia and the media. He argues that the Republican revolution that swept took over state after state at the behest of the Koch Brothers, ALEC and other architects of the insurgency was in practice of relatively minor consequence. The conservative movement ran into a brick wall – the electorate’s demand for public services. Grossmann goes against the grain in this wise and illuminating book.” Illustration credit How the Conservative Revolution Designed by Cover designer Stalled in the States Thomas B. Edsall, New York Times Columnist, Columbia Graduate School of Journalism COMING SOON October 2019 | $24.99 ‘Conservative Parties and the Birth of Conservatives and the Constitution 'In an engaging review of some Full of insights and information for Democracy is written in fire. It delves examines the post-war conservative 2,500 years of tyranny - drawing on scholars, students, and citizens, this deep into long-forgotten electoral histories movement in the US to shed light a considerable knowledge of Western volume is a guide to understanding to emerge with insights of Tocquevillian on how visions of constitutional history and literature - Waller Newell the constitutional design, purpose, and power, to illuminate not only the past but restoration and redemption were masterfully sorts out tyrannies, ancient institutional practices envisioned by also the present and future.’ mobilized during the heyday of and modern, to remind us how they Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, American liberalism to unite a rise and why they fall - again and and John Jay - the authors of David Frum, The Atlantic fractious and diverse political again.' The Federalist. April 2017 | $29.99 coalition. Victor Davis Hanson, November 2019 | $34.99 May 2019 | $34.99 Stanford University March 2016 | $29.99 Follow us on social media CUP_PoliSci cupacademic CambridgeUniversityPressPolitics mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm from the editor’s desk Trump and Our Political Stalemate by Charles R. Kesler espite his reputation as a disrupter, donald trump n our era, voters are fickle, never trusting either has not been able to break the political stalemate afflicting party with undivided control for very long, and more or less DAmerica for half a century. Ialternating the parties’ hold on the presidency. Here is the list: Since 1968, neither major political party has been able to com- eight years of Republican Presidents Nixon and Ford, four years of mand an enduring electoral majority. Such stasis is unusual in Democrat Jimmy Carter, 12 years of Reagan and Bush the Elder American politics, if one can call unusual something that has been (R), eight years of Bill Clinton (D), eight of Bush the Younger (R), happening for 50 years. Still, the older pattern, now almost forgot- eight of Barack Obama (D), and three, so far, of Trump. That’s 31 ten though still longed for by strategists of each party, was quite dif- years of GOP presidents, and 20 of Democratic ones—a Republi- ferent. To draw the most striking contrast, in the 72 years between can edge, to be sure; but the more impressive fact is the sustained Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860 and Herbert Hoover’s crushing alternation between the parties. In the past half century, the voters loss in 1932, the Republican Party controlled the presidency for all have experimented with undivided government for only 14 years, but 16 years. Only Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson inter- eight under the Democrats and six under the GOP, and never for rupted the GOP’s electoral serenity. longer than four years in a row. (I don’t count the confusing year In turn, the Democrats began their own reign, holding the presi- after the close 2000 election, when George W. Bush had, and then dency from 1932 to 1968, with the exception of Dwight Eisenhow- lost within months, a one-vote Republican margin in the Senate.) er’s two terms in the 1950s. That’s eight years of a Republican chief Mr. Trump succeeded a president of the other party, came into executive to 28 for the Democrats. But Ike had been courted by office with his fellow Republicans in control of both the House and the Democrats before he agreed to run on the GOP ticket, and his Senate, promptly lost that shot at undivided government in his first agenda of “Modern Republicanism” stressed its continuity with New midterm election (in 2018, even as Obama did in his first midterm Deal foreign and domestic policy. So the era seemed even more un- in 2010), has faced a torrent of criticism and Resistance doubting his relievedly Democratic than the presidential numbers would suggest. legitimacy and fitness for the office, and now faces a difficult reelec- Add to that the Democratic Party’s lopsided control of Congress tion race. In all of these particulars he fits squarely into the larger in those years—and beyond—and the full picture emerges. In the patterns of post-1968 American politics. 36 years between Franklin Roosevelt’s roaring entrance to, and His nationalism, “populism,” brusque way with subordinates Lyndon Johnson’s meek exit from, the White House, Republicans and allies, addiction to Twitter, love of tariffs, criticism of illegal enjoyed control of the U.S.
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