Has the Right embraced smoking? It was always thus. More than a personal choice, smoking was a rejection of liberal puritanism, rationalism, and the very concept of a “healthy” state. joshuatait.substack.com/p/a-history-...

Has the Right embraced smoking? It was always thus. More than a personal choice, smoking was a rejection of liberal puritanism, rationalism, and the very concept of a “healthy” state. joshuatait.substack.com/p/a-history-...

Caveat emptor: reads like a high school book report.

The first ever CPAC was totally different from the present.

In terms of relevance: (1) Patrick Deneen (2) Alasdair MacIntyre (3) Adrian Vermeule (3) R. R. Reno/Gladden Pappin (4) John Milbank (5) Adrian Pabst

The first ever CPAC was totally different from the present.

I’m such a dweeb.

You can always tell the people who learned their Catholicism from Warhammer 40k.

I’ve tended to think the relative lack of ideologically motivated street violence militates against the American Weimar thesis, but, mutatis mutandis, perhaps shootings perform the same function.

Opposition to Obergefell on the Right. A sleeping giant of an issue or a sleeping dog they'll let lie?

I’ve highlighted more lines in Walker Percy’s Love In The Ruins than just about anything else I’ve read lately.

I'm writing an occasional newsletter called LK Field Notes. Here's the first post, below. It includes updates about the book, links to other recent writing, and notes about other stuff I've been up to. It has been a busy few months! open.substack.com/pub/lkfieldn...

Maria von Trapp (of Sound of Music fame): not excited about Brent Bozell's magazine, Triumph.

Patricia Buckley Bozell trying to slap Ti-Grace Atkinson, Catholic University of America, 1971, over Atkinson calling the Virgin Mary "knocked up" and "knocked down with no clues."

I love the Abundance taxonomy and graphic, but a misplaced tap of the Enter key has made it unintentionally scathing toward libs.

I hadn't seen the full-page ad from Brent Bozell and Fred Wilhelmsen's summer school before. What a curriculum, in some ways very forward-looking. And, boy, check out the "European Historical Experience" section.

If people are campaigning for Pat Buchanan to get a Medal of Freedom, we need to start a campaign for Garry Wills.

The vibe shift was so powerful it defeated Taylor.

Allen Tate on weekend traditionalists.

Daniel J. Flynn performed an archival miracle and found 15 unprocessed boxes of Frank Meyer’s correspondence in a warehouse, which became the basis of his thorough but too-gentle biography. @joshuatait.bsky.social reviews "The Man Who Invented Conservatism": www.thebulwark.com/p/frank-meye...

How is communitarianism meant to function when the internet creates regional homogenization on one hand and individual atomization on the other?

Can conservatives write good biographies of conservative icons? Check out my review of the new Frank Meyer biography. www.thebulwark.com/p/frank-meye...

Seward Collins, the pro-fascist editor of the American Review, on his anti-Semitic turn. One feels it is instructive on the present moment.

I finally tracked this academics for Nixon ad down. An interesting bunch willing to publicly go to bat for Nixon. You can see the Kristol influence - although Nathan Glazer and James Q. Wilson refused. Funny seeing Leo Strauss on there.

Shout out to conspiracy theorists who make falsifiable claims (X event will happen on Y date). Negative shout out to the systems of cognitive dissonance that let them carry on afterwards.

Thanks, Amazon. I get it.

With all due respect to the New York Times, the only reason anyone outside the movement knows Kevin DeAnna writes under the pseudonym is me. I outed him in 2020. You can read on his central role in the alt-right here: www.splcenter.org/resources/ha... www.splcenter.org/resources/gu...

I remember very clearly that Mark Steyn had - maybe still has - a talking point about how conservatives are more healthy than liberals because they have hobbies and a whole life outside politics.

"First they came for Cracker Barrel, and I did not speak out, because I was not a cracker..."

Good obit of the life and times of James Dobson. open.substack.com/pub/danielkw...

Gonna try out this buzzy novel I keep reading about.

Here I profile Daniel Boorstin, in some respects a forerunner to the neoconservative movement. Maybe fellow traveler? His expertise made him attractive to a Republican Party reeling from populist, radical, and New Left challenges. open.substack.com/pub/joshuata...

“It stands for My Source News Opinion World, Lemon. It takes the jibber jabber of algorithmic news and puts it on linear television.”

Harry Jaffa is dead and the Claremont Institute killed him.

Curiously enough, Mark Krikorian comes from an immigrant household and grew up not speaking English.

I want to congratulate leading Democrats’ for their insistence on saying the takeover of DC is a “stunt” or a “distraction.” It’s a rare trifecta of intellectual failure, political stupidity, and moral obtuseness.

Irving Kristol on NOT being interviewed for Playboy.

You can't "read out" the base.

The answer both now and in 1959 is West Coast Straussians.

Peter Viereck, briefly, on his type of conservatism and why Russell Kirk and Henry Regnery don't fit.

"Russell Vought and Tom Homan are both Heritage creatures. Ed Feulner, meanwhile, endorsed not Trump but Mike Pence for president in 2024." But Feulner could have known - he built the place. ICYMI @joshuatait.bsky.social‬:

Defund the PAW Patrol.

NEW: My weekly round-up of reading and listening recommendations, taking in Labour Party politics past and present, American ideological realignments, cinematic remakes, among other topics. 🧵 All reposts (and subscriptions) much appreciated. x #polisky #skystorians🗃️ #filmsky

Takeaways: 1) Chatbots are hallucinatory, sycophantic nightmares. 2) they are absolute LinkedIn cringe merchants. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/t...

Good reviews for Modern Age.

Anyone who has spent any time speaking or writing about Sydney Sweeney and politics this week is probably not that serious.

Shout out to Eliseo Vivas for his 1964 plea in Modern Age for conservatives to read the figures in their anti-pantheon seriously and not just stop at dismissing them.

It would be fun to taxonomize this, from Hillsdale's Center for Constructive Alternatives, c. 1983.