The Trump 2024 election brain trust apparently thinks Youngstown Ohio is really Trump country, but only if it continues to resemble a pro wrestling match in an arena that’s barely two-thirds full.
Donald Trump boasted about his 'sold out' Ohio rally on Saturday hours before taking the stage, and said most Republicans 'would lose' their races if not for his endorsement.
Trump is speaking at the 7,000-seat Covelli Centre in Youngstown, Ohio at 7pm - but the 'massive crowd' he bragged about on his Truth Social app only fills about two-thirds of the stadium.
www.msn.com/…
At least until recently, classical liberalism—not to be confused with the modern American designation of anyone left of center as “liberal”—was the dominant American tradition. At the most basic level, liberalism is the project of carving out rights, which derive from a recognition of the dignity inherent to every human life. Post-liberal movements, including the national conservatives, aren’t, in principle, opposed to individual rights. The issue is that they believe this conception of liberalism exists only in theory.
In practice, liberalism, animated by a belief in human progress, can’t help but shake free of its past limits, demanding more and more for itself over time. And so the project of carving out rights is ongoing and perpetually in motion, extending itself into new areas—including the right to discard traditional conceptions of gender and sexuality and turning aside the views of anyone who objects. This new liberalism, at once a deformation of liberalism and seemingly its inevitable conclusion, is what Senator Josh Hawley in his conference address called “repressive tolerance” and what the Israeli theorist and conference organizer Yoram Hazony terms “woke neo-Marxism.” For Hazony, the effort to recover “the old liberalism” is futile, an exercise in fighting a battle that has already ended. As someone who studies various iterations of post-liberalism and outright illiberalism, I am intrigued but also worried to see a movement like this gaining ground in my own country. Though the new right may be correct about liberal excesses, its solutions are another matter.
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Like most things in American politics today, the deeper—and perhaps irresolvable—divides are about culture, meaning, and the nature of the human person. The national conservatives view today’s liberals as woke cultural warriors who pose an existential threat to the nation and its traditions. In this sense, the new right is more concerned with who we are—and who we aren’t—than with what Congress does or doesn’t do. This is not an army of would-be policy wonks.
Coherence or specificity is probably too much to ask for, especially at such an early stage in the development of a conservative countercultural movement. And, for now, it’s just that: a movement. And movements can survive and even flourish as long as they have an enemy against which to define themselves. The national conservatives at least have that, and it’s probably enough to sustain them—for now. Opposition is the first step, but it certainly isn’t the last.
www.theatlantic.com/...
