The best of intellectual conservative thought.
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CATEGORY: INTERNATIONAL (16 MIN)
A new road
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Recent changes in trade policy have upended the existing state of affairs, as economists try to determine the long-term and short-term effects of President Donald Trump’s new tariffs. Traditional American trading partners like Mexico and Canada have had a slightly colder reception in Washington, since many in power believe they enjoyed advantages over the U.S. in past dealings. With these shifts in mind, some argue that America should look elsewhere for profit.
For The American Conservative, Carlos Roa supports a connection to an ancient trade route called the Golden Road. Roa discusses Trump’s efforts to support the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, which would boost trade from America all the way to the most populous nation in the world: India.
Roa cites the past of this path, when the Romans traveled across the Middle East to trade precious metals for luxury items from India. He traces the continuation of that route through the Middle Ages and the Age of Exploration to modern times, when the Suez Canal provided a “watershed” moment in the history of the Golden Road.
Today, Roa sees India as a vitally important partner for American economic interests, especially given tension with China. He notes the substantial advantages of renewing the Golden Road for each involved nation—for the U.S., it could reduce reliance on China and encourage non-interventionist rebuilding in the Middle East.
Read more in Roa’s piece here.
Read Now
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Weekly Poll
Should the US focus more on trade with India?
[A] Yes
[B] No
[C] Unsure
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RESULTS: 3/20/2025
Do you think universities receive too much federal funding?
[A] Yes - 84.2%
[B] No - 11.8%
[C] Unsure - 3.9%
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CATEGORY: CULTURE (17 MIN)
World-changing
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Religious Americans have struggled in recent years to find a right relationship with politics. In early U.S. history, shared Judeo-Christian values meant that many political actors had at least a baseline to work from without necessarily seeing religion as intrusive. Today, the loss of religious participation in America and the rise of secularism have thrown a wrench into the works, and hot-button issues now regularly split voters along religious lines.
John Ehrett, writing in First Things, discusses the role of Christians in the public square through the lens of Chuck Colson, the Washington insider and religious leader who founded Prison Fellowship. Ehrett notes Colson’s disagreement with James Davison Hunter, an intellectual who urged Christians to slow down their involvement in “law, policy, and political mobilization” while trying to instead be “silent for a season.”
Ehrett, using Colson’s handwritten notes in Hunter’s book, then turns to Colson’s response. Ehrett says Colson did not want Christians to become apathetic and lose their voice in the public square. Rather, Colson urged a focus on worldview, which Ehrett believes would naturally play out as having an effect on public policy. Without such involvement, as Colson believed had already happened, “fundamental worldview issues” became “contestable.”
Ehrett compares the policy world to the world of contemporary art, where some teachers have even put religious themes off-limits—as Ehrett puts it, “appeals to transcendence are verboten.” If such a development were to overcome other worlds, would Christians be able to stand by quietly?
What do you think? Read more in Ehrett’s article here.
Read Now
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CATEGORY: VIDEO
The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism | Sean McMeekin in Studio 53 with Dan McCarthy
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In this exclusive Intercollegiate Studies Institute interview, Dan McCarthy sits down with historian Sean McMeekin to discuss his groundbreaking book, To Overthrow The World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism — winner of ISI's 2025 Conservative Book of the Year Award.
This is a must-watch conversation for anyone interested in history, geopolitics, and the battle of ideas shaping our world.
Watch Now
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CATEGORY: CULTURE (5 MIN)
Finding foundations
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The upending of norms does not just apply to the worlds of economic policy or law. In the realm of education, many changes are also happening quickly, as President Trump’s administration seeks to stop the Department of Education from controlling American schooling. Perhaps, though, the more drastic (and dangerous) change is not one from 2025, but rather one that has been ongoing since the nineteenth century.
For this week’s article from the Modern Age website, Daniel McCarthy, editor in chief of Modern Age and ISI’s Vice President for the Collegiate Network, highlights the importance of the canon. He remembers the role of past cultures’ canons in Rome and in the European Renaissance, pointing to books like the Aeneid and the most foundational religious and literary works in Western history.
McCarthy notes that this Western canon remained stable for quite a long time, but he sees it as facing attack ever since the 1800s. He blames people who threw out the classics in favor of mere business, mere science, or egalitarian educational ends. And even those who studied the classics, McCarthy says, valued them only for their age and not their true value. He argues such a decline has perilous effects.
“The degradation of the canon, however, deprives our civilization of a means of renewal,” McCarthy writes. “In recent decades, as economic globalization and mass migration loosened geographic and genealogical ties of nationhood, the common cultural bond provided by the canon was needed all the more urgently—yet that bond, too, was broken.”
Read more of McCarthy’s article here on the Modern Age website.
Read Now
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Thought of the Day:
“All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honour, duty, mercy, hope.”
- Winston Churchill
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