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0.5.1

Populism

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Reagan exploited the white working-class animus toward socially liberal elites and the welfare-dependent poor,

In highly unequal societies--like many Latin American countries, or cities like New York and San Francisco--the middle of the metaphorical hourglass is squeezed between the rich and the poor

Conservative First Principles

David Brooks

Conservatism, as Roger Scruton reminds us, was founded during the 18th-century Enlightenment. In France, Britain and the American colonies, Enlightenment thinkers were throwing off monarchic power and seeking to build an order based on reason and consent of the governed. Society is best seen as a social contract, these Enlightenment thinkers said. Free individuals get together and contract with one another to create order.

Conservatives said we agree with the general effort but think you’ve got human nature wrong. There never was such a thing as an autonomous, free individual who could gather with others to create order. Rather, individuals emerge out of families, communities, faiths, neighborhoods and nations. The order comes first. Individual freedom is an artifact of that order.

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