This is what the new Confederacy looks like

It’s become commonplace to compare our current politics to 1860 America.
 
No doubt you’ve seen the “brink of Civil War?” headlines. They’re hard to miss, albeit easy to dismiss.
 
But maybe, Victor Davis Hanson suggests, these comparisons are on to something.
 
Just not in the way people suspect.
 
Writing in The New Criterion, Hanson finds the spirit of the Confederacy alive and well . . .
 
. . . in Silicon Valley!
 
Hanson’s The Dying Citizen was the ISI Conservative Book of the Year in 2021. He applies his expertise to draw out the uncanny affinities between 1860 Big Cotton and 2022 Big Tech.
 
Read his devastating takedown of “the feudal politics of the new plantationists” right here.

There is nothing conservative about free trade

“I want to change the way many of you think about trade,” Robert Lighthizer declared at ISI’s “American Economic Forum” in July.
 
Lighthizer served as U.S. Trade Representative under President Trump, and he believes American workers have been sold a bill of goods.
 
Free trade, he argues, is “the exact opposite of conservatism”—a “philosophy of consumption” and materialism that undermines values, production, and national integrity.
 
And he thinks great Americans, from Alexander Hamilton to Ronald Reagan, would agree with him.
 
Who wins big from global free trade?
 
Not the American people.
 
Lighthizer builds a compelling case for economic protectionism as the bedrock of our nation’s survival. Are you persuaded?
 
Come for the sweeping history . . . stay for the Teddy Roosevelt quotes about the “fatty degeneration of the moral fiber” . . . and see what the Trump administration did for American manufacturing.

Gala for Western Civilization 

October 13 will be a night to remember.

At ISI’s sixteenth annual Gala for Western Civilization in Washington, D.C., you and hundreds of other ISI friends and supporters will partake in an evening that will be unforgettable.

This year ISI will be showcasing top academic talent across three disciplines: political theory, economics, and history. We want to provide our alumni and supporters with an opportunity to experience some of the greatest conservative minds of our generation. The evening’s speakers include:

• Chair of the Department of History at the University of Dallas, Susan Hanssen, who will give the keynote address
• The William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Government, Harvey C. Mansfield, who will receive ISI’s Charles H. Hoeflich Lifetime Achievement Award
• Merton P. Stoltz Professor of Economics at Brown University, Glenn Loury, who will receive ISI’s Faculty Award

It should be a wonderful evening full of great conversation.

You’re going to pay for that

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