Why Deneenism Fails
Why Deneenism Fails
Plus: Is the Law Coming for Erik Prince at Last?
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CHARLIE SYKES: A Nation On The Brink
JVL: Why Do Republicans Have a Selective Ability to Understand the Law? 🔐
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GABRIEL SCHOENFELD: Why Deneenism Fails.
IN 2007, WHEN I FIRST ENCOUNTERED the work of Patrick Deneen, a political theorist then at Georgetown and now at Notre Dame, he was propounding the thesis that the world was running out of oil and the entire liberal-democratic edifice, constructed on a foundation of continuous economic growth, was heading for catastrophic collapse.
But later, in his widely discussed 2018 book, Why Liberalism Failed, Deneen silently dropped the “peak oil” thesis. World oil production that year reached an all-time high, perhaps leading to a change of mind. Whatever the case, he was now concerning himself with an entirely different kind of calamity, namely that the United States had become a form of tyranny that he called “liberalocratic despotism,” a tyranny that was rapidly approaching its terminus. He concluded this book with a call for “epic” theorizing that would call forth “a new departure in political thinking,” a search for some sort of intellectual structure that could occupy the place of the dying liberalism.
Now Deneen is back with just such a stab at a new departure, a book with the arresting title of Regime Change.
🎥 PODCASTS AND VIDEOS 🎧
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ANN MARLOWE: Is the Law Coming for Erik Prince at Last?
ERIK PRINCE—THE COFOUNDER of the controversial private military contractor Blackwater—is one of several right-wing figures recently subpoenaed by federal prosecutors investigating a scheme to spy on progressive groups in Wyoming before the 2020 election. Meanwhile, in an unrelated development largely unnoted in the American press, Prince was indicted with four other individuals in Austria on April 20 for exporting war materials without a license back in 2014 and 2015.
Let’s turn to the Austrian news first. The indictment accuses Prince of using an aircraft-customizing company in which he then held a controlling interest, the Wiener Neustadt-based Airborne Technologies, to retrofit two American cropdusters that were then to be shipped illegally overseas.
🚨OVERTIME🚨
Happy Monday! Hope you had a good weekend, unless you planned to travel on I-95 in Philly. This is going to impact a lot of summer trips!
Will Donald Trump be the 2024 GOP nominee? JVL shares his thoughts with the NY Times.
Good Times… at Sinatrapalooza. Matt Labash communes with "fat bastards," french-fry murderers, and guys who wear enough jewelry to open a Zales.
Why Trump was charged… But others were not. A helpful Post explainer in case anyone in your life has a selective ability to understand the law.
Bathrooms have locks! Speaker McCarthy defends Trump’s fake SCIF / shitter.
"I wish I was smarter…” The guy who tased Michael Fanone says in court. The feds are seeking 14 years. I hope he gets every second.
Their civil war is imaginary… but there really are men with guns.
“It’s possible that Dyer’s style says less about him than it does about where the conservative movement is headed….” Indeed, that was also the conclusion I came to after reading this New Yorker profile of Nick Dyer, an insufferable flack who works for Marjorie Taylor Greene. And looking at the crop of young “conservatives” being raised by TPUSA, I’m not optimistic about the future.
Speaking of my pessimism… Here’s a dispatch from Charlie Kirk’s female-oriented TPUSA conference.
Silo is creating something new… Ben Dreyfuss on the hit Apple+ show (that I like very much and highly recommend.)
Italian pasta… Originally from Yuma, Arizona? (Similarly, Tabasco ships its seeds to South America to meet demand.)
Why Was Trump So Intent on Keeping ‘My Boxes’? “Conservatives assume he would never do anything dangerous or bad with military secrets” writes Jonathan Chait.
Our embarrassing senators… Joe Perticone is asking Republican Senators if they’ve read Trump’s indictment. Their answers will not surprise you. (More tomorrow in Press Pass!)
Silvio Berlusconi, dead at 86… This line sticks out: "He had a genius for victimization, which he would fall back on in response to criticism of his policies or of his personal behavior or to investigations into accusations that swirled around him.”
“The Ron DeSantis I know…” Former Michigan Rep. Justin Amash pens out his thoughts after reviewing his notes about his former colleague.
Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom… Boris Johnson appointed a 29 year old to the House of Lords on his way out.
Meanwhile, in Georgia… Meet the Georgia GOP’s new first vice chair Bryan Pritchard: “He claims the 2020 election was ‘stolen’ from Trump— while he is currently under criminal investigation for voting illegally 9 times while serving a felony sentence.”
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