In Defense of Citizenship

It is hard to dispute the claim that the United States is a political and social order in the midst of an immense crisis. The old political consensus in defense of free speech, especially political speech, has been shattered. The woke aim to “cancel” their opponents and to erase them from the community of shared memory, a technique seemingly borrowed from the pages of Orwell’s 1984. A large part of the political class and the key institutions of civil society — the academy, the corporate world, the mainstream media, Big Tech, many of the churches, and even parts of the military — has been colonized by those who want to make self-loathing our reigning societal principle. In addition, all around us we see reckless displays of oikophobia (hatred and derision of one’s home or country) and what Roger Scruton called a “culture of repudiation” that denies the moral legitimacy of our civilizational and civic inheritance. Read Full Article »