This chapter tracks the changes to the American conservative movement that have unfolded since the heyday of William F. Buckley, who founded the conservative magazine National Review in 1955. Centered on Buckley’s defiance of all things left wing and on his provocative writings on welfare, critiques of the New Deal, and Cold War anxieties, this chapter shows the conflicted relationship many contemporary American conservatives have with his legacy. "Serious conservatives" who place themselves in Buckley’s lineage find themselves alienated in the contemporary media landscape, which, although displaying the same incendiary spirit as Buckley’s essays and his television show Firing Line, lacks the intellectual seriousness that many found in his writings. More generally, this chapter identifies the recurrent themes in conservative writing and dwells on the agitational poetics of conservative essayism.

Mass democracy went into abeyance with the demise of the Roman Republic. With the revolutions in America and France in the late eighteenth century, the masses asserted their political presence with a vengeance. Although both revolutions began moderately enough, they quickly diverged. In America, patronage became the predominant means of winning and keeping power. In France, in contrast, politics was soon dominated by a series of demagogues, from Danton to Robespierre. Rather than looking to ideology, this chapter proposes that the difference was due to the lower cost of patronage as a means of political incorporation in America compared to France. American elites had more than a century of working in the limited franchise democracy of British America prior to its "democratization." In France, in contrast, French elites had no such legacy on which to build. French institutions instead precluded the building of political parties, rendering direct appeals to the masses, especially those in the capital, cost-effective. The recurrent cycle of populism in France was interrupted only with Napoleon’s combination of popular appeal with the reimposition of centralized, executive power: a popular dictatorship.

Emancipation Proclamation also provides for black military enlistment, and a significant percentage of black Union troops eventually come from the lower Mississippi valley. Proclamation also raises issue of how emancipation will factor into restoring rebellious states, and debate begins in Congress and northern society over securing free-state restoration. Unionist movements in Louisiana and Tennessee begin to divide into “free-state” and “conservative” factions. Free-state Unionists are committed to restoring rebellious states without slavery, though opposing black political and legal equality. Conservative Unionists develop argument for restoring states to the Union while maintaining slavery. Republicans formulate Reconstruction policy around the Constitution’s “republican form of government” in requiring the rebellious states to abolish slavery.

Focusing much attention on Unionist governments in Arkansas and Louisiana, congressional Republicans emphasize – in debating the Wade–Davis bill during spring 1864 – that Lincoln’s Reconstruction policy might allow the rebellious states to return to the Union without abolishing slavery. The US Senate also refuses to seat claimants from Arkansas’s Unionist government. The Republican national convention nominates Lincoln for reelection and endorses the Thirteenth Amendment, but the amendment fails to secure approval in the House of Representatives. Lincoln pocket vetoes the Wade–Davis bill, fearing it will invalidate Louisiana and Arkansas governments. The vitriolic language of the Wade–Davis manifesto disguises the substantive point – which historians almost always overlook – that the ten-percent plan might allow for the preservation of slavery. With the war stalled, it appears by August 1864 that Lincoln will lose the presidential election.

During fall 1865, Mississippi elects new government under Andrew Johnson’s policy, and governments in Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana conduct elections and continue the process of Reconstruction. Louisiana Unionists organize into Republican party and advocate black suffrage. Mississippi is first former rebellious state to enact “black code” and to define freedom for the former slaves, prompting protests from black Mississippians, and it refuses to ratify Thirteenth Amendment. African American leaders in Arkansas hold convention in Little Rock calling for political and legal equality. Thirteenth Amendment becomes operative in early December 1865, as Thirty-Ninth Congress convenes. Fears of “Christmas Insurrection Scare” become manifest, though for different reasons, among both black and white Southerners.

Two dominant constitutional issues in the 1790s illustrate the fluid nature of constitutional meaning in the early republic. One issue was whether the Constitution permitted individuals to sue states in federal court. The Supreme Court’s decision in Chisholm v. Georgia (1793) generated widespread state interposition to resist the Court’s broad interpretation of a constitutional clause and resulted in the Eleventh Amendment. A second constitutional issue generating interposition in 1796 was whether President Washington had exceeded his authority in negotiating the Jay Treaty with Great Britain. Federalists argued that the Constitution’s text clearly provided presidential authority while Republicans wanted Congress to speak for the sovereign people and have a vital role in assessing a treaty’s constitutionality. Both sides considered it important to understand the intent of those who drafted and ratified the Constitution and to employ that history in interpreting the document. Yet, this process of constitutional interpretation allowed inferences fromthe Constitution’s text, reliance on memory, and even thoughts about the framers’ intentions.

During the initial phase of the first session of the Thirty-Eighth Congress in early 1864, Congress deals with Reconstruction legislation. Congress also drafts the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. Congressional Republicans initially expect to work in conjunction with Lincoln’s plan for Reconstruction, but Republicans also express misgivings over Lincoln’s policy. Some Republicans also express reservations over inadequacy of the Thirteenth Amendment to address the issues of Reconstruction, and over the amendment securing ratification by the necessary number of states. By April 1864, the US Senate passes the amendment.

Chapter 4 introduces the readers to the specific political parties within each case study and considers the extent to which the fourteen items of “good citizenship” are already partisan, that is, before introducing democratic threats. We observe consistent patterns of partisan citizenship, even when controlling for demographic factors that might explain citizenship preferences. That is, supporters of left parties value protesting and solidarity-oriented beliefs like helping others; supporters of right parties strongly support allegiant items of belonging, from obeying laws to items of national belonging. In majoritarian systems (the US and UK), these patterns are strong and systematic. However, a crucial observation underlies these differences: there are sufficient overlaps between the left and right when it comes to liberal democratic beliefs and behavioral items of good citizenship. This “holding of the center” is critical. It suggests a strong base of agreement for preserving national unity and sufficient overlaps for establishing common goals despite polarization in everyday politics.

This chapter tracks what happened when America’s virus crisis became heavily politicized, even weaponized. Moreover, the pandemic was politicized not only at home but abroad, specifically regarding Sino-American relations, which deteriorated significantly from what they had been for four decades previous. At home were two obvious casualties. The first was the truth. The president’s proclivity outrageously to lie, now also about Covid-19, and his enablers’ proclivity no matter what to protect him, became increasingly costly. Now the cost was not only public trust but people’s lives. The second casualty to be chronicled was the comity of the American body politic. The growing divisiveness was symbolized by the wearing, or the not wearing, of masks which came to be emblematic of what here is called the politics of the pandemic.

Chapter 2 provides a brief history of the Republican Party – which explains in part how it became the Party of Trump. It describes the Republican demographic, how it differs from the Democratic demographic, and how it was possible for Trump essentially to take over what only recently was an establishment conglomerate. One better known for its institutionalist orientation than its outrageous attacks on political norms – norms that in most cases go back to the beginning of the Republic. The chapter further explores the links between the Republican Party and the house that Roger Ailes built, that is, Fox News. As the book makes clear, the importance of Party media, and for that matter Party Money, to the Trump phenomenon is impossible to overestimate. Above all the chapter begins to explore the party’s remarkable fealty to a man who demanded it with every fiber of his being, but who at an earlier moment in Republican Party history would have been dismissed with the flick of a wrist.

Chapter 1 tells how even early on, as a presidential candidate but still a political novice, Trump had a special connection to some considerable number of the American people. It describes the demographic to whom he particularly appealed, the nature of his appeal, and the reasons for his appeal. It references how Trump’s candidacy could easily have stumbled, referencing an incident that shows how it nearly did. But then the chapter goes on to describe how and why he was able to survive near political disaster with relative ease. The visceral connection between Trump and his diehard followers explains why, despite so much gone wrong in 2020, a public health crisis and an economic crisis, Trump’s base held firm. The chapter finally makes clear how it is Trump’s base that explains everything – that explains how he was able to be so bad a president and get away with it, until Joe Biden finally pushed him out of the Oval Office.

The chapter is a careful chronicle - specifically of what happened between January and June 2020, after the new coronavirus was introduced into the United States. The narrative proceeds on roughly a month by month basis – it is intended to provide readers with precise reminders of what happened when, and of who did what when. The progression of the disease – Covid-19 – is in stark evidence. This against the backdrop of an administration that prefers to deny what actually is happening, that opts to address the economic crisis without first addressing the health crisis, and that gradually ensnares a large cast of characters in a wide web of deception and destruction.

The sluggish growth of vouchers into the first decade of the twenty-first century prompted voucher supporters to reevaluate their strategy. Ballot initiatives proved fruitless, so supporters switched to state legislatures and sought to distance the state from private schools by funding vouchers through tax credits rather than direct appropriation. The full fruits of attenuated governance matured with Republican victories during Barack Obama’s presidency. This chapter shows that the doubly distanced tax credit form enabled individualist and accommodationist forces to divert public funds to private religious institutions without appearing to do so. Due to the lingering importance of communitarian public schooling and secularist approaches to church–state relations among the nation’s many judges, doubly distanced policies were safest. Statistical analysis demonstrates that they were, and are, least likely to be challenged in court or struck down as unconstitutional. Attenuation is a powerful strategy for rival forces in America’s foundational struggles because it enables policymakers to achieve their goals obliquely. The link between state and legally controversial policy outputs is plausibly deniable in crucial venues of policy contestation, provided that elites follow the attenuation strategy consistently.

When I was writing The Moral Arc, I found my life-long libertarianism challenged on so many fronts that I began to reconsider my politics and to look for a new label, one that better described what I came to believe was the right balance between Left and Right, between liberalism and conservatism. I believe I may have found it in classical liberalism, a defense of which follows in this essay, originally published in the online magazine Quillette.

How politically powerful is business in American politics? Does the political power of business distort the quality of democratic representation? This chapter reviews the literature on these vital questions, discussing selected studies in political science, sociology, history, and other fields. It finds that assessments of business influence in American politics have varied considerably over time, but it also observes there has been a broad turn in recent scholarship toward the notion that business is “more equal” than other groups in the American political system. A small but growing number of studies—especially studies focusing on politics in our time—has begun to provide credible evidence of business influence. We have also seen the introduction of some exciting new ideas about the ways that business influence, economic inequality, and political representation may be theoretically connected. But definitive conclusions remain elusive. We do not really know whether business is disproportionately powerful and how business influence affects the performance of American democracy. The chapter concludes with some suggestions about the kind of studies that are needed going forward.

Today’s parties are hollow parties, neither organizationally robust beyond their roles raising money nor meaningfully felt as a real, tangible presence in the lives of voters or in the work of engaged activists. The parties have become tarred with elements of polarization that the public most dislikes—from the screaming antagonism to the grubby money chase. More than any positive affinity or party spirit, fear and loathing of the other side fuels parties and structures politics for most voters. Party identification drives American politics—but party loyalty, in the older sense of the term, has atrophied. Even the activists who do so much to shape modern politics typically labor outside of the parties, drawn to ideologically tinged “para-party” groups such as MoveOn.org on the left or the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity on the right. The parties offer clear choices but get no credit. Our new Party Period features a nationalized clash of ideology and interests but parties that are weakly legitimized and hollowed out.