62 min listen
After the Theocons (w/ Damon Linker)
FromKnow Your Enemy
ratings:
Length:
88 minutes
Released:
Sep 20, 2022
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Damon Linker is an idiosyncratic figure among political writers—trained by Straussians as a political philosopher, he's a former editor of First Things, the flagship publication for intellectual religious conservatives, who broke with that publication over the Iraq War (among other things) and is now a self-described centrist. He's also a longtime friend of the podcast, who recently started his own attempt to grapple with what's happening in the GOP and among conservatives, a Substack newsletter he titled Eyes on the Right. In this conversation, Matt and Sam talk with Linker about what his own trajectory can teach us about the Right: his experiences working at First Things while the Bush administration was gearing up to invade Iraq; why thinks Sarah Palin marked a turning point on the Right; and his case for understanding Donald Trump as a political, rather than legal, problem. Sources:"The End of Democracy? The Judicial Usurpation of Politics," First Things, November 1996Damon Linker, "There is No Happy Ending to America's Trump Problem," New York Times, Aug 21, 2022 "A Giving of Intellectual Accounts," Eyes on the Right, Sept 9, 2022 "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Donald Trump?" Eyes on the Right, July 18, 2022 The Theocons: Secular America Under Seige (Doubleday, 2006)Matthew Sitman, "Reading Left to Right" (review of Richard John Neuhaus: A Life in the Public Square), Commonweal, Aug 24, 2015...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!
Released:
Sep 20, 2022
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
The Death of Conservatism? (Part 1): How did a once-marginal movement of right-wing ideologues manage to take power in America, ascending to the highest levels of government? In the first of two episodes on Sam Tanenhaus's "The Death of Conservatism," we look at the early history of post-war American conservatism. (Buckley, Bozell, and Burnham, oh my!) by Know Your Enemy