These resources explore how the Enlightenment philosophers turned away from the classical inheritance expressed by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. These philosophers - considered to be foundational to both Western Roman Catholic and Eastern Byzantine civilizations - would have critiqued Enlightenment individualism.  While the Athenians did not believe in the equality of all human beings, the Classical Athenian philosophers - Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle - had philosophies that would challenge the political right today. Socrates made truth the highest criterion, and Plato argued that justice corresponded to truth. Aristotle asserted that community was natural, not foreign, to humanity, and we need to grow in virtue to live in a proper polity (contrary to Enlightenment individualism). Christian theologians accepted these political understandings as compatible with basic biblical truth about humanity.

White American Evangelical Political Attitudes and Behavior: Explanation and Correctives

White American evangelical political attitudes can be characterized by the debate between John Winthrop and Roger Williams, and their respective attitudes towards Native Americans, slavery, fairness, and faith in the civic space.  This is a presentation also explores Scripture and church history to argue that Roger Williams was correct.  Given to the staff of Emmanuel Gospel Center, Apr 18, 2018, as a follow-up to how Christian restorative justice impacts ministry; audio file here 

Christian Faith, Not Secularism, as the Basis for Political Pluralism and Economic Progressivism

A brief outline explaining from both biblical texts and early church precedent why Christian faith leads to a political posture of human rights without theocracy. There is a vision for relational obligations, and principled respect for other religions.

Patrick J. Deneen, Tocqueville on the Individualist Roots of Progressivism. The Imaginative Conservative, Nov 2013.  on conservative vs. progressive theories of history

Daniel McCarthy, Why the Tea Party Can't Govern. The American Conservative, Nov 12, 2013.

John B. Judis, Ten Books Any Student of American History Must Read. New Republic, Dec 26, 2013.

Rod Dreher, Winning the Culture War, Losing Far More. The American Conservative, Dec 31, 2013.

Edith Hall, Introducing the Ancient Greeks: From Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind. W.W. Norton and Company | Amazon page, June 2014.

Adam Gopnik, The People Who Pass: Pickpockets and Paranoia in France. New Yorker, Jan 13, 2014.  has a great explanation for why Enlightenment political philosophy leads to nationalism and the ill-treatment of certain minorities

Nicholas Kristof, Where the G.O.P. Gets It Right. New York Times, Apr 9, 2014.

Doug Muder, Not a Tea Party, a Confederate Party. The Weekly Sift blog, Aug 11, 2014.

Heather Cox Richardson, How the GOP Stopped Caring About You. Washington Post, Sep 19, 2014.  Richardson gives an excellent history of the party; Lincoln, Roosevelt, Eisenhower were exceptions who believed in broad economic growth

Sean McElwee, Why the GOP Hates U.S. History: Inconvenient Truths That Freak Out American Conservatives. Salon, Oct 5, 2014.

Noam Chomsky, On Property Rights, Equality, and Democracy. youtube video, Oct 11, 2014.

Daniel McCarthy, Why Liberalism Means Empire. The American Conservative, Jul 16, 2014.  regarding classical and secular liberalism, one wing of the Enlightenment, which challenges traditions and cultures without providing a substantive spiritual frame of reference to replace it; shows how Enlightenment liberalism is a thin parody of Christian missionary activity

Dylan Matthews, Three Reasons the American Revolution Was a Mistake. Vox, Jul 2, 2015.

Travis Gettys, SC Raised Confederate Flag in 1961 To Insult Nine Black Protesters - And Took It Down to Honor Nine Slain. Raw Story, Jul 9, 2015.

Eduardo Porter, The Myth of Welfare's Corrupting Influence on the Poor. New York Times, Oct 21, 2015.

William Saletan, The Terrorists Among Us:  Forget Syria. The Most Dangerous Religious Extremists Are Migrants from North and South Carolina. Slate, Nov 30, 2015.

Angie Drobnic Holan, All Politicians Lie, Some Lie More Than Others. New York Times, Dec 11, 2015.  Very helpful chart from fact checkers

Jared Wolczak, Which States Rely the Most on Federal Aid? Tax Foundation, Jan 6, 2016.  note the dependence of Southern States on federal money

David Brooks, What Republicans Should Say. New York Times, Jan 29, 2016.

Amanda Taub, The Rise of American Authoritarianism. Vox, Mar 1, 2016.  Taub says that authoritarian leaders are simple, powerful, and punitive; connected to Jonathan Haidt's thesis of moral impulses

David French, Working Class Whites Have Moral Responsibilities - In Defense of Kevin Williamson. National Review, Mar 14, 2016.

Sam Tanenhaus, The Three Faces of Republicanism. Bloomberg, Mar 22, 2016.  likening Trump to McKinley, Cruz to Goldwater, and Kasich to Kristol

John S Kiernan, 2016’s Most & Least Federally Dependent States. WalletHub, Mar 29, 2016.  looks bad for the South

Robert H. Frank, Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy. Princeton University Press | Amazon page, Apr 2016.

Glenn Beck, The Most Disturbing Thing About My Meeting With Mark Zuckerberg. Glenn Beck, May 19, 2016.

Ann Friedman, Thanks to Facebook's Trending Topics Problem, Conservatives Suddenly Believe in Unconscious Bias. Los Angeles Times, May 24, 2016.

Sarah-Anne Buckley, The Catholic Cure for Poverty. Jacobin, May 2016.  a sad tale about the oppression of women, etc. in the name of family

Nancy Isenberg, White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America. Viking | Amazon page, Jun 21, 2016.

Robert G. Parkinson, Did a Fear of Slave Revolts Drive American Independence? New York Times, Jul 4, 2016.

David H. Freedman, The War on Stupid People: American Society Increasingly Mistakes Intelligence for Human Worth. The Atlantic, Jul/Aug 2016.

Ross Douthat, A Playboy for President. Dallas Morning News, Aug 15, 2016.  if you didn't like the religious right, how about the non-religious right?

Samuel Goldman, After Conservatism. The American Conservative, Aug 30, 2016.

Peter Wehner, The Political Magic of C.S. Lewis. New York Times, Sep 24, 2016.

Tom Jacobs, Ingrained Sexism Helps Explain Why Evangelicals Support Trump. Pacific Standard, Sep 28, 2016.

Paul Verkuil, The Case for Bureaucracy. New York Times, Oct 3, 2016.

David Brooks, Trump, Taxes and Citizenship. New York Times, Oct 4, 2016.  Note Brooks’ longing for a relational ethic.

Jonathan Chait, The GOP's Age of Authoritarianism Has Only Just Begun. New York Magazine, Oct 30, 2016.  Chait gives a helpful history of the conservative movement as distinct from the Republican Party, and how it took over the GOP by relying on white nationalists and "localism."

Nathanael Rich, The Prophecies of Jane Jacobs. The Atlantic, Nov 2016.  re: the fragility of democracy

Rod Dreher, The Most Conservative Case Against Trump. The American Conservative, Nov 3, 2016.  About order and institutions

Jason Brennan, Trump Won Because Voters Are Ignorant, Literally. Foreign Policy, Nov 10, 2016.  About basic things like Congress; people don't learn because they don't think their vote matters.

Roger Boyd, Trump: A New Face on the Same Old System. Counterpunch, Nov 11, 2016.  excellent from a democratic socialist standpoint.

Quaid, This is Directly From Steve Bannon's Breitbart, This is Really Happening, We Can't Kid Ourselves. Daily Kos, Nov 20, 2016.

Seth Ackerman, The Blueprint for a New Party. Jacobin Magazine, Nov 21, 2016.

George Michael, History of the Alt-Right: The Movement Isn't Just Breitbart and White Nationalists - It's Worse. Salon, Nov 24, 2016.

Noam Chomsky, The New Trump Era - UpFront Special. Al Jazeera English, Nov 25, 2016.  Chomsky makes the case that racial resentment is the larger factor than economics.

Andrew Reynolds, North Carolina Is No Longer Classified As a Democracy. Charlotte Observer, Dec 22, 2016.  Reynolds shows that the most powerful Republicans believe that democracy is a transitional state to theocratic and/or racial supremacist positions, much like conservative to radical Muslims aiming for shari'a.

Yonatan Zunger, Tolerance Is Not a Moral Precept. Extra Newsfeed, Jan 2, 2017.  tolerance is a peace treaty, not a suicide pact where you tolerate the intolerant; nice historical narrative rooted in Catholic vs Protestant wars; a good rebuttal to the right's accusation that the left should tolerate intolerance.

Jason Wilson, Burst Your Bubble: Five Conservative Articles to Read During Trump's First Week. The Guardian UK, Jan 26, 2017.  A helpful collection

Rob Urie, Liberalism as Class Warfare. Counterpunch, Jan 27, 2017.

David Brooks, The Republican Fausts. New York Times, Jan 31, 2017.

Frances Stead Sellers and David A. Fahrenthold, ‘Why Even Let ’Em In?’ Understanding Bannon’s Worldview and the Policies That Follow. Washington Post, Jan 31, 2017.

Peter Gray, Childrearing Beliefs Were Best Predictor of Trump Support. Psychology Today, Feb 1, 2017.

Ross Douthat, How Populism Stumbles. New York Times, Feb 1, 2017.

Zack Beauchamp, No Easy Answers: Why Left-Wing Economics Is Not the Answer to Right-Wing Populism. Vox, Mar 13, 2017.

Peter Beinart, Breaking Faith. The Atlantic, Apr 2017.  "When conservatives disengage from organized religion, however, they don’t become more tolerant. They become intolerant in different ways."

Chris Weller, Japanese Family Life is Falling Apart - and the Reasons Go Back to World War II. Yahoo News, May 28, 2017.  significant for "economic nationalism" platform and corporatist policies

Adam Serwer, The Nationalist's Delusion. The Atlantic, Nov 20, 2017.  Ahelpful, historically broad analysis of how racism manifests in politics

John Bargh, At Yale, We Conducted an Experiment to Turn Conservatives Into Liberals. The Results Say a Lot About Our Political Divisions. Washington Post, Nov 22, 2017.

Nathan J. Robinson, Socialists Are Winning the Battle of Ideas. Current Affairs, Nov 22, 2017.

Charles W. Mills, Black Rights / White Wrongs:  The Critique of Racial Liberalism. Oxford University Press | Amazon page, 2017.  Re: the Enlightenment dethroning Christian tradition and building a racial ideology in its place.  See review by Christopher Lebron, Up from Rawls. The Nation, Jul 18, 2018.

Jeet Heer, The Triumph of Porn Over Social Conservatism. New Republic, Jan 17, 2018.

David Frum, An Exit From Trumpocracy. The Atlantic, Jan 18, 2018.

Max Fisher, Josh Keller, Mae Ryan, and Shane O'Neill, National Identity is Made Up. New York Times, Feb 28, 2018.  

Jordan Kyle and Yascha Mounk, Why It's So Difficult to Kill a Populist Movement. Washington Post, Mar 9, 2018.

Yoram Hazony, The Dark Side of the Enlightenment. Wall Street Journal, Apr 6, 2018.  Today’s advocates oversell the benefits of unfettered reason. They dismiss the contributions of tradition, religion and nationalism to human progress.

Michael Warren Davis, The Max Bootification of the American Right. The American Conservative, Apr 13, 2018.  "those who count freedom unstructured by order as their sole virtue will always yield calamity"

David Brooks, Republican or Conservative, You Have to Choose. New York Times, Jun 25, 2018.

David Roberts, Trump’s Plan to Revoke California’s Car Pollution Waiver Makes a Mockery of Conservative Principles. Vox, Jul 24, 2018.   

Ian Bremmer, Trump’s Not the Problem. He’s a Symbol of 4 Bigger Issues. Big Think, Aug 1, 2018.  Neoliberal globalization drains work and wealth from people, making them resent immigrants for the opportunities and benefits they receive in the country; veterans return from wars feeling dejected and despondent; technology automates jobs away and drives people apart through social media. Compares populist movements to Japan, which largely rejected neoliberalism, immigration, war, and social media.

Eliot A. Cohen, The Republican Party Abandons Conservatism. The Atlantic, Sep 2018.  subtitled, "The conservative virtues remain real virtues, the conservative insights real insights, and the conservative temperament an indispensable internal gyro keeping a country stable and sane" 

Jake Meador, A Unified Nation Must Rest on Something Real. National Review, Oct 12, 2018.  argues that, while the political left has rallied around objects of common love. the individual. , the political right, with a few exceptions, has given up on cultural storytelling

Rachael Denhollander, I'm a Sexual Assault Survivor. And a Conservative. The Kavanaugh Hearings Were Excruciating. Vox, Oct 16, 2018.  "I’m appalled at the response from my own community on Kavanaugh"

The Economist, Identity Politics Are Stronger on the Right. The Economist, Nov 1, 2018.  subtitled, "The Republican Party is increasingly unified around whiteness"

The Young Turks, Fox News Turns on Trump. The Young Turks, Nov 14, 2018.  over the White House's suspension of Jim Acosta; note the tweets from Trump supporters who apparently prefer Trump to the First Amendment

David Roberts, The Radical Moral Implications of Luck in Human Life. Vox, Jan 24, 2019.  "Acknowledging the role of luck is the secular equivalent of religious awakening" challenges the myth of meritocracy. This view comes from the Greek tragedians.

Second Thought, Liberty And Freedom Are Left-Wing Ideals. Second Thought, Oct 29, 2021.  is a helpful 19 minute video surveying how, beginning in classical Greco-Roman times, “freedom” as a civic and philosophical ideal stood in contrast with “slavery.” From that point, the Renaissance appropriation of “freedom” eventually influenced the French Revolution, American Revolution, and Haitian Revolution. The video argues that both political and economic “freedom” for all were envisioned by classical pagan sources, a claim about which I remain skeptical. Regardless, “freedom” was reduced to surround property rights, which resulted in maximum “freedom” for the wealthy.

Legendary Lore, What Aristotle Knew About Oligarchy That We Forgot. Legendary Lore, Sep 11, 2024. A short, 15 minute video.