A proletarianized citizenry ruled by a class of insolent plutocrats is incompatible with the republican form of government established by the US Constitution. Without an effective majority of citizens who own property and whose character has been shaped by property ownership--a vibrant middle class--the Founders' Constitution will not survive. Our current age of Plutocratic Socialism is a specific manifestation of a pathology the Founders feared. Recovery must begin with a simple, yet prof...

In the United States the conventional left/right distinction has become increasingly irrelevant, if not harmful. The reigning political, cultural, and economic visions of both the Democrats and the Republicans have reached obvious dead ends. Liberalism, with its hostility to any limits, is collapsing. So-called Conservatism has abandoned all pretense of conserving anything at all. Both dominant parties seem fundamentally incapable of offering coherent solutions for the problems that beset ...

In the first half of the twentieth century, the rationalist tide had reached its high mark in the arts, politics, and work. But the Holocaust, the Gulag, and other failures have dimmed the popularity of rationalism. However, the evidence of those practical failures would not have been as convincing as it was if not for the existence of a theoretical diagnosis of the malady. This book compares and contrasts the ideas of some of the leading twentieth-century critics of rationalism: Hans-Geor...

In The Limits of Liberalism, Mark T. Mitchell argues that a rejection of tradition is both philosophically incoherent and politically harmful.The Limits of Liberalism identifies why most modern thinkers have denied the essential role of tradition and explains how tradition can be restored to its proper place. Mitchell demonstrates that the rejection of tradition as an epistemic necessity has produced a false conception of the human person—the libe...

Many Americans are longing for alternative politics rooted in strong communities, recognition of limits, and respect for the natural world. These issues are not the possession of one political party. Rather, they refer to ideas rooted deeply in the best aspects of our common tradition, and they represent yearnings that many, regardless of political affiliation, share. This book articulates a cultural and political vision that leads one off the couch and into the garden, out of the shopping...

Where did they come from, these furiously self-righteous "social justice warriors"?Having declared that "God is dead," Friedrich Nietzsche identified the "will to power" as the fundamental force of human life. There is no good or evil in a Nietzschean world—only the interests of the strong. Reason and the common good have no place there.As Nietzsche's ideas have permeated our culture, a new generation of radicals has embraced the rhetoric and tactics of the will to power. B...

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!A growing number of Americans want to tear down what it's taken us 250 years to build—and they'll start by canceling our shared history, ideals, and culture.Traditional areas of civic agreement are vanishing. We can't agree on what makes America special. We can't even agree that America is special. We're coming to the point that we can't even agree what the word America itself means. "Disintegra...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An urgent argument that America and other democracies are in peril because they have lost the will to defend the values and institutions that sustain freedom and prosperity.“Epic and debate-shifting.”—David Brooks, New York TimesOnly once in the last 250,000 years have humans stumbled upon a way to lift ourselves out of the endless cycle of poverty, hunger, and war that defines most of history. ...

America today is at a political impasse; we face a nation divided and discontented. Acclaimed political commentator E.J. Dionne argues that Americans can't agree on who we are as a nation because we can't agree on who we've been, or what it is, philosophically and spiritually, that makes us "Americans."Dionne places our current quarrels in the long-standing tradition of struggle between two core values: the love of individualism and our reverence for community. Both make us who we a...

The secret to good government is a question no one in Washington is asking: “What’s the right thing to do?”What’s wrong in Washington is deeper than you think.Yes, there’s gridlock, polarization, and self-dealing. But hidden underneath is something bigger and more destructive. It’s a broken governing system. From that comes wasteful government, rising debt, failing schools, expensive health care, and economic hardship.Rules have replaced leadership ...

Republished in a new translation, "The Green Book" provides fresh insight into the thinking of Muammar Al Qaddafi, and his Third Universal Theory for a new democratic society. Outlined first is his theory for direct democracy in society, or Jamahiriya, focusing on the authority of the people, renouncing representation or delegation of authority, and recognizing the need for organization of the people at lower levels of society. Part Two suggests an economic revolution, transforming societi...

An essential volume of essays commissioned by the American Spectator and edited by the philosopher Roger Scruton, Liberty and Civilization examines the intellectual and spiritual traditions of our belief in individual liberty, from its Judeo Christian origins on through Enlightenment philosophy. As we are confronted by belligerent atheism at home and jihadist Islam abroad, Liberty and Civilization is an invaluable tool for understanding why it is critical that we defend the cultural, relig...