Conservatism Archives - Public Seminar

Disability

Greg Abbott’s Wheelchair

Cripnormativity rewards crips like Abbott for distancing themselves from other disabled people

June 10, 2025 • by Andrew Joseph Pegoda

On July 14, 1984, an 8,000-pound oak tree fell down in the River Oaks suburb of Houston, Texas. The tree stuck a young man out doing one of his favorite pastimes—running—leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. But the young man, who had just received a law degree from Vanderbilt ...

Kinships

Family Values or Family Exclusion?

How right-wing policies fail working mothers

January 22, 2025 • by Elide Vincenti

Parental entitlement policies represent a complex interplay of cultural, social, and economic priorities for far-right leaders in both Italy and the United States. On the one hand, many religiously minded conservatives uphold traditional family values, which would seem to support policies that promote marriage and the growth of families. At ...

Podcast

How the GOP Killed Dissent

Episode 61: Marsha E. Barrett on her new book, Nelson Rockefeller’s Dilemma: The Fight to Save Moderate Republicanism

October 24, 2024 • by Claire Potter

Ana Navarro is probably best known for her work on the popular daytime talk show, The View. But she also has serious chops as a Republican political strategist. She served on Florida Governor Jeb Bush’s staff—you may recall that Bush was leveled by Donald J. Trump early in the 2016 ...

North America

How Moderate Republicans Went Extinct

Reconsidering Nelson Rockefeller and his legacy

September 18, 2024 • by Henry Tonks

At the Aspen Ideas Climate Summit in spring 2022—one of those gatherings of the well-informed and the well-to-do so beloved by American politicians—Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the House of Representatives, urged Republicans to “take back” their party from Donald Trump. “This country,” the veteran Democratic leader opined, “needs a ...

North America

Project 2025 and Its Imaginative Hellscape

Apparently, Marxist elites have even compromised the fighting fiber of our troops

August 28, 2024 • by Carl Landauer

Over the summer, I committed myself to reading the entirety of Project 2025, a policy document compiled by the Heritage Foundation, with contributions from many veterans of the Trump administration, which I printed out in four thick three-ring binders. What follows is a review of the vision of governance the ...

Project 2025 and Its Imaginative Hellscape

Podcast

Who Do You Love?

Episode 50: A conversation with Neil J. Young about Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right

March 28, 2024 • by Claire Potter

Battling detractors on their left and homophobia to their right, gay Republicans have nevertheless played power politics for over 80 years....

Feminism

When Fascism Is Female

In Europe, right-wing feminism is on the rise—and nationalist women are taking power

August 31, 2022 • by Sophie Boulter

This fascist “fire” that Meloni references and kindles is burning throughout Europe, and she is not alone in tending to its flames....

The Right

Why a Far-Right Activist Slapped President Macron

France’s culture wars are being fanned by a racism that cannot be discussed in public—but that followers of Marine Le Pen understand all the same

June 30, 2021 • by Hannah Leffingwell

_____ French President Emmanuel Macron was greeted at a recent press event with a slap in the face. Damien T., the man who delivered the slap, was heard yelling “Montjoie! Saint-Denis!” and “A bas la macronie” the former being a Royalist battle cry, the latter translating as “Down with Macronism!” The reason ...

Why a Far-Right Activist Slapped President Macron

The Right

The Furor over Critical Race Theory is 200 Years Too Late

Where were conservatives when theories justifying white racial supremacy propped up slavery, imperialism and genocide?

June 30, 2021 • by Russ Castronovo

_____ Following a script being used in at least 16 other states, lawmakers in my home state of Wisconsin are taking aim at “critical race theory.” The proposed GOP legislation would ban anyone teaching in a public classroom, from kindergarten to college from promoting the notion that “any race is superior ...

The Furor over Critical Race Theory is 200 Years Too Late

The Right

Magical Thinking, Machiavellian Politics and the Future of the Christian Right

A visit to the Creation Museum in Kentucky shows how deeply rooted distrust in science is now embedded in the culture of white evangelicals

June 30, 2021 • by Chelsea Ebin

_____ Following Liz Cheney’s ouster from the GOP House leadership, there have been murmurings among some Republicans about starting a break-away party committed to upholding traditional conservative policies rather than defending Donald Trump’s false assertion that he, not Joe Biden, is in fact the duly elected President of the United States. ...

Magical Thinking, Machiavellian Politics and the Future of the Christian Right

The Right

A Tale of Two Democracies

How a movement that claimed to be democratic undermined the rule of law

June 28, 2021 • by Sidney Tarrow

_____ “Democracy,” wrote Charles Tilly, “does not resemble an oilfield or a garden, but a lake. A lake,” he continues, can come into being because a mountain stream feeds into a naturally-existing basin, because someone or something dams up the outlet of a large river, because a glacier melts, because an earthquake ...

Columnists

The stink of treason clings to the Republican Party

Big profit-seeking corporations can smell it, same as everyone else.

May 5, 2021 • by John Stoehr

_____ My friend and fellow New Havener Tom Krattenmaker has a new piece in USA Today worth amplifying, in my own modest way, but also worth setting in the larger context of ideological shifting taking place in the country. Tom argues that big profit-seeking corporations aren’t “woke.” They just believe the ...

Conservatism

Greg Abbott’s Wheelchair

Cripnormativity rewards crips like Abbott for distancing themselves from other disabled people

Family Values or Family Exclusion?

How right-wing policies fail working mothers

How the GOP Killed Dissent

Episode 61: Marsha E. Barrett on her new book, Nelson Rockefeller’s Dilemma: The Fight to Save Moderate Republicanism

How Moderate Republicans Went Extinct

Reconsidering Nelson Rockefeller and his legacy

Project 2025 and Its Imaginative Hellscape

Apparently, Marxist elites have even compromised the fighting fiber of our troops

Who Do You Love?

Episode 50: A conversation with Neil J. Young about Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right

When Fascism Is Female

In Europe, right-wing feminism is on the rise—and nationalist women are taking power

Why a Far-Right Activist Slapped President Macron

France’s culture wars are being fanned by a racism that cannot be discussed in public—but that followers of Marine Le Pen understand all the same

The Furor over Critical Race Theory is 200 Years Too Late

Where were conservatives when theories justifying white racial supremacy propped up slavery, imperialism and genocide?

Magical Thinking, Machiavellian Politics and the Future of the Christian Right

A visit to the Creation Museum in Kentucky shows how deeply rooted distrust in science is now embedded in the culture of white evangelicals

A Tale of Two Democracies

How a movement that claimed to be democratic undermined the rule of law

The stink of treason clings to the Republican Party

Big profit-seeking corporations can smell it, same as everyone else.

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