American Conservatism: How the Hell Did We Get Here?
I’ve spent years wondering how American conservatism — once the voice of restraint and principle — turned into a traveling circus of grievance and nostalgia. I don’t say that with cruelty. I say it with the disbelief of someone watching an old friend slowly lose the plot.
That question drives my new series, Conservatism: How the Hell Did We Get Here — a ten-part autopsy on the Right’s long, strange transformation from moral republic to mood disorder. It’s not a hit piece. It’s a guided tour through the ruins, led by someone who still remembers when the house had dignity.
Here’s what you’ll find inside:
The Moral Republic: How Puritanism outlived God and kept the guilt.
The Frontier Mind: The myth of self-reliance in a heavily subsidized nation.
The Aristocrat’s Shadow: From Burke to Buckley, where intellect once mattered.
The Gospel of the Market: When capitalism became a theology.
The War for the American Soul: How faith and fear married politics.
The Patriot and the Empire: When the flag replaced the cross.
The Great Grievance Machine: Conservatism as a national mood swing.
The Opportunists’ Parade: When power wore a red tie.
The Corpse That Wouldn’t Die: Conservatism in the age of post-truth.
A Eulogy for What Might Have Been: If the movement had ever grown up.
Over the next five weeks (2 articles a week) we’ll explore the how and why of American conservatism. It’s about understanding how a tradition that once valued virtue and humility became obsessed with dominance and nostalgia. It’s a cultural psychoanalysis told with humor, honesty, and a bit of exasperation.
If you’ve ever looked at modern politics and muttered, What happened to us?, this is for you.
Come along — we’re going ghost-hunting through America’s moral attic.