What can be said of George H. W. Bush beyond the personal accolades is that, as president, he was a man who did nothing by half measures. He was hands-on, engaged, and thought deeply and seriously about the purpose of the nation.
Our leaders do us no service when they fail to recognize that the threat the so-called Islamic State and its allied terrorists represent is a civilizational, not a geopolitical, conflict and can only be understood through that lens.
One of the frequent blind spots for economic libertarians, speaking as one who has personally dealt with this log in the eye, is a tendency to allow principles of how economies work and the beauty of trade to make us ignore perceived threats animating people who value more than just the power to buy and sell.
The human heart tends toward tribalism before tolerance. We can go back to that world. It still lives in all of us. Fighting it is the challenge, particularly at a time when the most audacious thing you can do is show some grace.
When I was much younger, my siblings and I would routinely tune in to watch 'Bill Nye the Science Guy' on PBS. He was a fascinating instructor bent on helping kids achieve a basic understanding of science. When he engaged in politics, it was only very briefly if at all.
Evangelicals have, for decades, believed that the country was more conservative than not, more Christian than not. The bipartisanship on religious liberty and the civic faith of the country was conducive to that. Now they've woken up to a reality in the Obama years that this was a polite fiction.
Being a bureaucrat means never having to say you're sorry.
When the holidays approach and the weather turns cold, you spend your nights watching and rewatching saccharine movies until you fall asleep, hoping for some gleam of happiness or catharsis that never comes, a version of life that looks like a Hallmark movie or where your idealized prince finally shows up.
'The Federalist' is a small staff, and our close-knit family of senior contributors outwork our competition because of that closeness.
Conservatives recognize that college campuses and their frames of reality have an outsized impact on the culture, training the next generation of leaders.
One of the differences between what happens when an author and a gossip columnist sit down to write a book is that the former tends to make every effort at disguising and protecting their sources, while the latter doesn't particularly care.
Engaging in a sycophantic way with any politician in the short term is tempting. It offers the lure of access and the promise of influence. But ultimately, it can lead to misreading the environment, giving too much of an ear to the politician's circle, and confining your audience to partisans.
A smart, intellectual magazine is a difficult thing to run because of the need to manage conflicting personalities and opinionated writers who clash constantly, whose clashes make the publication better. It is exhausting and draining, and honestly, the only thing that's harder is probably running a university.
When contrarian voices are elevated to publications once viewed as places where contending ideas shared space, organized online backlash is now inevitable.
Trump's rise was contingent on wide swaths of the country completely tuning out so-called mainstream media sources, while all too many outlets did a poor job covering 2016.
In 2008, many Democrats and Republicans believed Hillary Clinton to be a responsible public leader - a firm hand on the wheel, experienced in matters of diplomacy, conflict, and national interest. The 3 A.M. phone call was a question mark with Barack Obama, but not for Hillary Clinton.
Gawker thrived on embarrassment and shame, seeking to demolish not just celebrities or politicians but average random people whose sins it would expose for traffic and commenters who gloried in its actions.
What we try to do at 'The Federalist' is to provide opinion and analysis that brings in a lot of different perspectives from across the Right. You'll see, a lot of times, us running an article that argues one side of something and then an article that argues the opposite.
'Rogue One' does not feel like a 'Star Wars' movie. There are no scrolling yellow letters. There is no classic John Williams score. It feels like a movie of a different type set in the 'Star Wars' universe, a movie where there is no magic to save you. It is not a movie for children.
Trump knows where his strengths exist, and he is emphatically in favor of doubling down on them. This goes far beyond appointing Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.
