On October 23, 1956, students gathered at the foot of Sandor Petofi’s statue in Budapest and read his poem “Rise, Magyar!” made famous in the democratic revolution of 1848. Workers, and even soldiers, soon joined the students. The demonstrators took over the state-run radio station and the Communist Party offices and toppled a huge statue of Stalin, dragging it through the streets. Rebellion spread throughout the country. The demonstrators—now Freedom Fighters—held Soviet occupation forces at bay for several days.

On November 1, the Hungarian Prime Minister announced that Hungary would withdraw from the Warsaw Pact. At dawn, November 4, the Soviets launched a major invasion of Hungary, in an offensive involving tens of thousands of additional troops, air and artillery assaults, and 6,000 tanks. A heroic resistance was crushed in less than a week.

The last free Hungarian radio broadcast spent its final hours repeating the Gettysburg Address in seven languages, followed by an S.O.S. Over 20,000 Hungarians were tried and sentenced for participation in the uprising, hundreds receiving the death sentence. An estimated 200,000 Hungarians—of a population of nine million—became refugees. Forty-seven thousand came to the United States. Hungary became a member of NATO on March 12, 1999.

In October 1956, my parents, my four-year-old sister, and I shared a small apartment with my father’s parents and his brother on the plaza near the eastern railroad station in Budapest. I was two months shy of my tenth birthday when the Hungarian Revolution began.

Because the revolutionaries had taken over the railroad station, the Soviets positioned several tanks in our neighborhood, and we could not leave our apartment. There was heavy fighting, and bodies were strewn everywhere; one lay just outside our window for several days. After a week and a half, the action moved elsewhere and we could once again venture outdoors—carefully. Walking around one day, I came upon a Russian personnel carrier that was stacked with skeletons. It seemed that each was covered with about two inches of black velvet. I later learned that these poor souls had been burned alive by a Molotov cocktail.

It soon became clear that though the Soviets had pulled out of our immediate area, they were winning. The Revolution was going to be defeated, and they would be back. Things were going to get more unpleasant than ever, and Hungary had not been a pleasant place for the Schramms for quite a long time.

My father, William, was born in 1922, into a politically tumultuous Hungary produced by the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of World War I. His father, an active participant in the 1919 Communist revolution, was hounded by the Fascists then ruling Hungary. By the time my father reached his teens, the Depression hit, followed by another world war. My father was placed in the air artillery. He liked it there, he said, because they could pretend to shoot down American planes, knowing that the B-17s were flying well out of range. They couldn’t hurt the good guys, yet they did their duty. That was as good as life got in those days.

The war’s end brought little relief. When the Communists took control of the country in 1949, they “expropriated” my parents’ little textile shop (about half the size of my current living room) and everything in it. Under this new tyranny, my parents were considered part of the dangerous “bourgeoisie.” In that same year, the Communists sentenced my father’s father to ten years hard labor for having a small American flag in his possession (by that time he had been a leader of the social democrats for some years). At his “trial” he was asked why he had the flag. Was he a spy? He replied that it represented freedom better than any other symbol he knew, and that he had a right to have it. My father tried then, for the first time, to persuade my mother, Rose, to leave the country. But ties to family and friends were too strong, and she could not bear to do it. Soon, my father himself was sentenced to a year of prison for “rumor mongering” (someone claimed he had called a Communist a tyrant, which he had). When he got out, he washed windows for a while and made illegal whiskey to make ends meet as best he could.

My grandfather got an early release from the labor camp in 1956 and came back to us looking like a victim of the Holocaust. Still, the first thing he wanted to know was whether we still had the flag. Of course, we did not. It had long ago been confiscated. But my father didn’t want to break his father’s heart and had somehow managed to secure another one. We took it out of its hiding place and, at that tender age, I learned the very adult lesson of the complexity of telling the truth. Seeing that flag somehow erased much of the pain and torment of my grandfather’s years of imprisonment; it seemed to give him hope.

Now, with the revolution failing, everyone expected that the Communist boot was going to come down harder than ever. But before we had more opportunities to experience it, an odd accident set us on the path to a very different future. On one of his trips out to secure some bread, a hand grenade landed next to my father but, miraculously, did not go off. That was the last straw. He came home and announced to my mother that he was going to leave the country whether she would come or not. Mom said, “O.K., William. We will come if Peter agrees. Ask Peter.”

“But where are we going?” I asked.

“We are going to America,” he said.

“Why America?” I prodded.

“Because, son. We were born Americans, but in the wrong place.”

Read the rest here.

The post Born American, But in the Wrong Place appeared first on The American Mind.

Widespread use of the word “meritocracy” may only be possible in the world it describes. British sociologist and former Labour Party official Michael Young coined the term in a 1958 satire as a sly alternative to aristocracy, clumsily mixing Latin (mereo: to deserve) with Greek (kratos: power, rule). Young’s friend, a classicist, warned he would be “laughed to scorn” for employing such a barbarism. Her caution was, sadly, optimistic.

Nonetheless, meritocracy’s advocates have attempted to supply it with a noble lineage. Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for governor of Ohio and former presidential candidate, is convinced the 20th-century term is central to the American experiment going back to 1776. Palantir’s Jordan Chandler Hirsch likewise argues that America was “born meritorious,” defining meritocracy as when government and society operate through objective measures of “quality and talent, open competition based on fair play, and ruthless disinterest in any other factor.”

Yet by Hirsch’s own definition, today’s “objective” meritocracy has little to do with the founding generation’s ideas. As his own source, historian Joseph Kett, describes, “The Founders viewed a man’s public character, his reputation among his peers, as the outward measure of his essential merit…. Nothing would have astonished the Men of Merit more than to be told to take an examination to measure their character.” Indeed, in the founding era there were no standardized examinations, grades, or entrance exams for public service. When Thomas Jefferson spoke of a “natural aristocracy,” he meant one distinguished by “virtue and talents,” not paper credentials and background checks.

The advocates of meritocracy also often appeal to free-market economics, which would shock most of their favorite economists. Adam Smith recognized that “honourable professions…are generally under-recompensed,” while Friedrich Hayek argued that material rewards do not generally “correspond to what men recognize as merit.”

The economic flaw with meritocracy is that it implies a labor theory of value. Markets reward scarcity and demand, not deservingness. As George Mason University economist Alex Tabarrok explains, “A wage is a price”—it does not signify moral worth but guides action. Forcing markets to become genuinely meritocratic therefore would require a powerful administrative state to direct the economy, much like China’s own allegedly meritocratic system.

To ignore these objections and tell young people that America is a meritocracy does little to stem the tide of socialism. Instead, it only sets them up for disappointment. As Iain Murray put it, “Meritocracy leads people to expect certain results in exchange for qualifications. The fact that the world doesn’t work like that leads to resentment at how the world actually works.” It is no accident that the Democratic Party’s most radical constituency consists of post-grads with relatively modest incomes.

If meritocracy is not a core tenet of the American creed and has little to do with America’s economic system, what explains its recent rise? The most plausible reason is that the Right needed an alternative to affirmative action and DEI. And meritocracy, despite its historical and philosophical weaknesses, seemed to fit the bill.

Liberal Priors

The Right’s embrace of meritocracy is built on a fundamental misunderstanding. Workplace meritocracy is not the opposite of the modern civil rights regime but rather its sibling. Both emerged directly following the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, as sociologist Frank Dobbin has shown.

Opening employment to broader populations carried definite economic, political, and moral benefits. The intent was noble, the problems real. And yet, the new civil rights regime also came with significant downsides. In Dobbin’s words, “Most employers responded to the [civil rights] law by making the hiring and promotion processes more bureaucratic, in order to make them more meritocratic.” Civil rights legislation was poorly written and vague, opening up space for activist judges, human resources managers, and the administrative state to effectively write their own laws.

Courts soon began to challenge unintentional “discrimination,” not just clear-cut cases of deliberate discrimination. To comply, corporations had to go out of their way to prove the negative—that they were not discriminating, nor even using racially neutral selection processes when other, more egalitarian alternatives were available. Corporations had to justify their selection processes according to “business necessity.” It all required a bureaucracy to manage the personnel, processes, and data.

This meant not only racial preferences in hiring, as commonly recognized, but also a narrowing of the permitted scope for prudence. Subjective human judgment had become suddenly perilous. The new system of meritocracy thus increasingly discouraged the very methods of assessing merit that America’s founding generation practiced.

The human resources industry expanded rapidly in the second half of the 20th century. Dobbin notes that it “more than doubled in size” in the 1970s alone and grew tenfold by the close of the century. Much of that growth followed the Civil Rights Act, as the Supreme Court in Griggs v. Duke Power and Watson v. Fort Worth Bank & Trust increased employers’ compliance obligations. Over the following decades, Dobbin writes, corporations witnessed large increases in “formal job descriptions and job requirements,” “open bidding systems for jobs,” “salary classification systems,” “performance evaluations,” and “centralized hiring and firing.” The HR industry’s success has obscured the fact that the spread of these practices ultimately traces back to civil rights law.

Human resources managers promised that this era of “equal opportunity” would lead to better productivity and efficiency. Unfortunately, that did not happen. As summarized by economist Robert J. Gordon, “[L]abor productivity experienced a half-century of rapid growth between 1920 and 1970, then slowed markedly after 1970.” Some fields such as construction and manufacturing even experienced lengthy periods of decline. One of the only bright spots in America has been in oil and gas extraction, not a field known for scrupulous compliance with the whims of the progressive vanguard.

If meritocracy is supposed to end the tyranny of over-aggressive civil rights law and human resources managers, it will surely backfire.

In 2022, Vivek Ramaswamy co-authored a Wall Street Journal op-ed proposing to expand civil rights laws “to protect employees from discrimination on the basis of political beliefs.” This would, of course, create another protected class, requiring more human resources managers and leading to more civil rights litigation. It would even empower, say, DSA members to force banks to employ them.

Once you accept the Left’s premises, the logic points in only one direction.

Meritocracy U

The Right has also used meritocracy as its alternative to progressivism in higher education. But here again, it risks merely conserving progressivism.

Clark Kerr and James Bryant Conant, presidents of the University of California and Harvard, were the architects of American meritocracy, as chronicled in Nicholas Lemann’s The Big Test. Their efforts capped a century-long, radical transformation of the American university.

At the time of the American founding, colleges were overwhelmingly denominational and religious, and required prospective students to accumulate a tremendous body of knowledge and culture before they could be admitted. Historian Forrest McDonald has noted that entrance exams to King’s College (now Columbia) required applicants to translate selections from Tully’s Select Orations and Virgil’s Aeneid from Latin into English and the first ten chapters of John’s Gospel from Greek into Latin. Once accepted, students followed a set curriculum and often were required to attend chapel daily.

American colleges and universities in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th gradually abandoned this model. They removed Latin and Greek entrance requirements, began hiring secular faculty and presidents, dropped their sectarian affiliations, and stopped requiring chapel attendance. Increasingly, they modeled themselves after German research universities: directing attention away from teaching undergraduates and toward producing new research, adopting Ph.D. programs, professionalizing the professorship, minimizing the classics, and much more.

By the mid-20th century, everything at Harvard had changed except for the student body. President Conant, concerned about the rise of socialism and the challenge of assimilating millions of new immigrants, sought to replace the existing, largely WASP student body with new “American Radicals.” His instrument of choice was the SAT—designed not to test achievement but natural aptitude—which would open admissions beyond the elite prep schools that had prepared students for the old entrance requirements. Conant hoped to engineer a new elite, and he did so by lowering the bar of specific knowledge required to enter college.

With the support of Harvard and the Carnegie Foundation, the SAT eventually became a standard entrance requirement, replacing the College Board’s achievement-based written tests on specific subject matter. This too was a choice—it was not an outcome determined by the need to modernize American universities.

Meanwhile, Clark Kerr unveiled his master plan for California’s university system, ensuring universal access while developing an elite upper tier of UC campuses that selected only the top applicants. They had the primary responsibility for academic research and nearly the sole authority within California’s public system to award Ph.D.s.

As with workforce meritocracy, the sharp distinction between racial preferences and meritocracy breaks down in higher education as well. The same institutions that promoted meritocracy—most prominently Carnegie and Harvard—also promoted racial preferences for many of the same reasons. They recognized no contradiction between those two methods of elite selection, because, as Lemann recently explained, “they had in common a large institutional ambition and an insistence on autonomy.”

But contrary to the meritocrats, academic excellence and intelligence can both be assessed through achievement tests. France, for example, has long relied on such testing, which encourages a bare minimum of shared cultural awareness.

The WASPs of yesteryear were replaced by elites whose most salient characteristics seem to be grievance, natural aptitude, and trauma. Call them GNATs. Once natural potential became the object of selection, the same score could be made more or less impressive by listing the obstacles under which it was achieved. And it helped, of course, if the applicant’s trauma connected to a politically correct grievance narrative. In this context, adult authority figures are viewed mainly as obstacles to the expression of natural aptitude rather than as shapers of character or transmitters of knowledge and wisdom. Merit, meanwhile, comes to imply entitlement instead of duty or obligation.

Admissions officers invited applicants to engage in a process of “competitive victimhood.” Even the majority in SFFA v. Harvard reinforced this trend. While ruling against affirmative action, the Supreme Court decision explicitly allowed applicants to highlight in their admissions essays “how race affected his or her life.” With explicit racial preferences now off the table, this option will surely gain favor.

Conant and Kerr’s meritocratic vision required blurring the lines between public and private institutions in higher education. They justified this change by the supposed moral imperative to ensure that each American with natural aptitude had equal access, while minimizing the advantages of place and family. Federal support for student loans soared as the students selected by aptitude testing had to be able to afford tuition. Federal research funding was funneled through universities as opposed to individual researchers (at least until recently). And Title IX gave Washington further leverage over nearly every campus.

All of this followed the logic of meritocracy.

Conant’s hope that meritocracy would help beat back socialism came at a steep price. His “American Radicals” saw family-transmitted advantages, except for natural intelligence, as illegitimate. Meritocratic logic would lead, as Conant recognized, the radicals to demand the confiscation of “all property once a generation” through inheritance taxes and other constitutional means.

This same logic appears in Vivek Ramaswamy’s book, Nation of Victims, which perhaps unwittingly evokes Conant—and positively cites the “participatory socialist” Thomas Piketty—in supporting a minimum 59% inheritance tax: “We shouldn’t allow people to become billionaires just by having rich parents.” Such confiscatory taxation is necessary, Ramaswamy writes, “to preserve the meritocratic system.” After all, “the goal of creating a hereditary dynasty is an illegitimate one in a meritocracy.”

But this is the wrong impulse for conservatives, who should be starting dynasties and building institutions for both economic (families, after all, are the source of all human capital) and cultural reasons. T.S. Eliot recognized that the family is the “primary vehicle for the transmission of culture.” The preservation of culture, and thereby civilization itself, is incompatible with the logic of meritocracy, which poses a grave threat to the American way of life.

If natural aptitude confers a right to rule, this justifies an expansive class of unelected experts who help manage our lives. And it supplies no justification in principle for limiting this group to American meritocrats. Citizenship, after all, tells us little about an individual’s natural aptitude or work ethic. National sovereignty would seem to be just another prejudice to be cast aside in pursuit of meritocracy.

These are not merely academic questions. American elites increasingly propose new global governance regimes and whole-of-society policymaking to respond to “existential” risks such as artificial intelligence and climate change. Elites in China are apparently considering Confucianist “meritocracy” as an ideological replacement for Marxism. Advocates also present Chinese meritocracy as “a viable alternative to Western democracy.” Clinging to meritocracy makes Americans more vulnerable to such ideological campaigns.

Moreover, under the logic of meritocracy, what possible objection could one raise against recognizing the political rights of artificial intelligence? If intelligence and work are what constitute merit and merit is the title to rule, then perhaps machines should begin to rule in the place of humans. This points to a deeper problem with aristocracy that John Adams identified in his response to Thomas Jefferson’s notion of “natural aristocracy”: “Your distinction between the aristoi and pseudo aristoi, will not help the matter. I would trust one as soon as the other with unlimited Power.” Supposedly “natural” aristocrats could become just as tyrannical as conventional ones, Adams recognized.

What is the alternative to meritocracy? There does not need to be a single word that explains how every college admissions or personnel office ought to make decisions. Nor can there be a simple formula for making money in America or gaining political power. The alternative to meritocracy is not any one ideological term, but rather a restoration of human judgment, prudence, distributed authority, and a deeper notion of American citizenship that places duty over desert.

The post The Meritocracy Machine appeared first on The American Mind.

The American Mind’s podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Spencer Klavan, and Mike Sabo devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host.

Groypers, Grifters, and the GOP: Florida’s Primary Election | The American Mind Podcast

Florida is conducting a primary election to pick Governor Ron DeSantis’s conservative successor. President Trump’s choice, Representative Byron Donalds, leads in the polls. Opposing him, political newcomer James Fishback leads a young, online centric and anti-Israel platform. Meanwhile, the Left coalition continues its reckoning with Woke, reordering to capture populist, pro-Gaza, and anticapitalist energy. Plus, backlash against Big Tech: data centers, Flock cameras, and more!

The post Groypers, Grifters, and the GOP: Florida’s Primary Election | The American Mind Podcast appeared first on The American Mind.

Thirty-two Cubans died when American forces entered Caracas on January 3, 2026, to capture Nicolás Maduro. Cuba and Venezuela are more than a thousand miles apart. Why were Cubans dying in defense of Maduro? How did a small Caribbean island become so deeply invested in the survival of another country’s dictatorship?

To answer those questions, we have to go back nearly seven decades to a revolution that promised liberation but spent a lifetime exporting authoritarianism and reshaping the politics of an entire hemisphere.

From the moment he seized power in 1959, Fidel Castro knew that the survival of his revolution depended on its spreading throughout South America. In the years that followed, Havana trained Marxist guerrillas across Latin America, dispatched troops to fight Soviet proxy wars in Africa, supported Syria in its war against Israel, and embedded intelligence officers inside allied dictatorships. Today, it’s widely reported that Cuban nationals are fighting alongside Russian forces in Ukraine.

If there is one lesson the Cuban regime has taught us, it is that dictatorships do not always have to become stronger to survive. Sometimes they survive by becoming indispensable to stronger powers. For Cuba, the Soviet Union came first. Then Chávez’s Venezuela. Today, Russia, China, and Iran have each found value in keeping the regime afloat. Cuba has vexed every American president since Eisenhower not because it is economically or militarily powerful, but because it has repeatedly positioned itself as the hemisphere’s most persistent hub of anti-American influence.

That history helps explain why Secretary of State Marco Rubio has made Cuba a central priority of the Trump Administration’s Western Hemisphere strategy. Some dismiss this focus as ideological or personal. They are mistaken. The administration’s Cuba policy is strategically sound because the Cuban Revolution was never content to remain on one island.

Communist Subterfuge

Wherever there has been an opportunity to challenge the United States and its allies, Havana has taken it.

The Cuban regime’s interventions around the world reveal a consistent foreign policy: weaken the United States, strengthen its adversaries, and export the revolution wherever the opportunity presents itself. If there has been a Marxist insurgency to support, an anti-American regime to sustain, or a hostile adversary looking for a willing partner, chances are Cuba has been there.

Cuba’s hostility toward the United States has not been limited to distant battlefields. It has promoted its agenda in cities across America and directly threatened the lives of U.S. citizens on American soil.

Beginning in the 1960s, Cuban intelligence recruited, trained, financed, and equipped Puerto Rican militants who later formed or led terrorist organizations such as the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN) and Los Macheteros. These groups carried out bombings, assassinations, robberies, and other terrorist attacks across Puerto Rico and the U.S. mainland, including the 1975 bombing of Fraunces Tavern in New York City.

In 1996, Cuban fighter jets shot down two unarmed civilian aircraft operated by a Miami-based humanitarian organization named Brothers to the Rescue, killing four people, three of them American citizens. Earlier this year, Cuban border guards opened fire on a Florida-registered speedboat off Cuba’s northern coast, killing five Cuban Americans and injuring several more.

The battlefield does not always involve bombs or bullets. Cuba’s intelligence services have repeatedly demonstrated an ability to penetrate the highest levels of the U.S. government.

Victor Manuel Rocha secretly served Havana for decades while rising through the ranks at the U.S. State Department, serving on the National Security Council, and eventually representing the United States as ambassador to Bolivia. Ana Belén Montes, the Defense Intelligence Agency’s leading Cuba analyst, passed classified military information to Havana, exposing undercover American intelligence officers and distorting Washington’s understanding of the regime. Walter Myers and his wife Gwendolyn spent almost three decades working for Cuban intelligence while Walter held sensitive positions at the State Department. Few hostile intelligence services have assembled a roster like that.

Espionage is only one part of Havana’s playbook. For decades, the regime also invested in a quieter campaign to shape opinion and spread its revolutionary ideas inside the United States.

Through academic exchanges and solidarity organizations, conferences, and cultural programs, the regime cultivated activists, intellectuals, and future political leaders who were sympathetic to the revolution. The Venceremos Brigade was created to bring thousands of Americans to Cuba under the banner of solidarity with Castro’s government. Many of those who participated returned to the U.S. convinced they had witnessed a revolutionary success rather than an authoritarian dictatorship. Some eventually entered positions of influence themselves, including Antonio Villaraigosa and Karen Bass—both of whom went on to serve as mayors of Los Angeles.

The State Department’s recent report, Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism, also reveals that Cuba has cultivated relationships with revolutionary organizations, including the Black Panthers and the Weather Underground, offering training, political support, refuge, and direct access to senior Cuban officials. It concludes that these influence efforts have recently been linked to Antifa-affiliated activists, participants in demonstrations following George Floyd’s death, and the recent anti-ICE protests.

American intelligence has also long warned that elements of the Cuban regime facilitated international narcotics trafficking. A 1985 CIA assessment concluded that Havana was not merely turning a blind eye to the drug trade but providing traffickers access to Cuban waters, ports, and airspace, making it easier to move narcotics into the United States while complicating American interdiction efforts.

Viewed together, these activities over the past 67 years reveal a clear pattern: whether through espionage, ideological influence, or criminal networks, Cuba has repeatedly acted as a force multiplier for America’s adversaries.

Cuba’s Real Business

There’s an old saying in Latin America: Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres—“Tell me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are.”

Today, Cuba stands shoulder to shoulder with many of America’s main adversaries: Russia, China, Iran, Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua, and, until Maduro’s downfall, Venezuela.

The Cuban regime has survived as long as it has by adapting and changing sponsors. Someone will always be willing to pay for its strategic location. When one patron disappeared, another stepped forward.

Many anti-American regimes have invested handsomely in keeping the Cuban regime afloat. Russia has forgiven billions of dollars in Cuban debt and, together with Iran, supplied Havana with more than 300 attack drones. China has also extended favorable loans and donations to Cuba, financed infrastructure, and poured money into the country’s telecommunications network through companies like Huawei and ZTE. Venezuela and Mexico have kept the lights on in Havana by sending subsidized oil, despite having little room for such generosity, as both struggled with serious economic challenges of their own.

Why?

Certainly not because Cuba is an economic powerhouse. These governments are investing because Cuba gives them something far more valuable than monetary returns: strategic access to the United States.

Britain fought wars over territories that today seem insignificant—Malta, Gibraltar, the Falklands—not because of the land itself, but because of the geographic position those islands occupy.

Cuba is no different. It is the equivalent of an unsinkable aircraft carrier at the crossroads of the Caribbean. If you are Russia, China, Iran, or any other hostile power seeking to collect intelligence on the United States, project influence into the Western Hemisphere, or maintain a foothold only 90 miles from Florida, few places on Earth are more attractive.

That is why the Trump Administration’s Cuba policy is fundamentally about ensuring that America’s principal competitors cannot continue using the island as a platform to project power into the Western Hemisphere.

The Wrong Question

Predictions of Cuba’s collapse have been circulating for decades. Look no further than Andrés Oppenheimer’s 1992 bestseller Castro’s Final Hour. More than 30 years later, the title serves as a reminder of how often outside observers have underestimated the regime’s ability to survive.

The more important question is not what happens if Cuba collapses, but what happens if Cuba succeeds.

What if Russia further expands its intelligence presence? What if China deepens its surveillance infrastructure on the island? What if another million Cubans flee and attempt to come to the United States? What if Havana continues exporting the intelligence, security expertise, and political repression that have helped sustain evil dictatorships across Latin America? These are not hypothetical concerns. They are already happening.

For too long, Washington played damage control with Cuba. Meanwhile, the regime continued doing what it has done for nearly seven decades: exporting instability and inviting America’s adversaries into the Western Hemisphere. Migration is one of Cuba’s most effective tools for doing this. From the Freedom Flights to the Mariel Boatlift to the Balsero exodus, every major upheaval on the island has sent hundreds of thousands of Cubans toward American shores.

The current exodus, however, makes those crises look modest. Since 2021, more than one million Cubans have fled the island, with Customs and Border Protection reporting record-breaking numbers arriving at the southern border. Havana has long understood that migration can be used as a weapon against Washington, and it is willing to turn humanitarian suffering into political pressure. What happens in Havana does not stay in Havana, and our neighbors’ problems have a way of becoming our problems.

That is why Cuba cannot be dismissed as simply another poor island with a struggling economy. It is so much more than that. It is the strategic hub of an authoritarian network stretching across the hemisphere.

Imagine, for a moment, a different Cuba.

A Cuba no longer supplying intelligence officers to Caracas or security advisers to Managua. A Cuba that no longer hosts Russian intelligence platforms or Chinese surveillance infrastructure, or serves as the hemisphere’s main exporter of revolution. A new government in Havana would not solve every problem in the hemisphere overnight. But it would remove the regime that has spent decades working overtime to perpetuate those problems. That is why turning Cuba matters.

Falling Dominoes

Everyone remembers the Monroe Doctrine, but far fewer remember Theodore Roosevelt’s corollary. James Monroe argued that hostile powers should stay out of the Western Hemisphere. Roosevelt recognized something just as important: instability invites those outside powers back in. When disorder takes root close to home, America cannot pretend it is someone else’s problem.

For much of the past three decades, Washington forgot that lesson. As American attention shifted to the Middle East, Europe, and the Indo-Pacific, China financed ports, Russia rebuilt intelligence networks, Iran expanded partnerships, and authoritarian regimes consolidated their grip across Latin America.

America’s adversaries rediscovered the Western Hemisphere long before Washington did.

What many have begun calling the “Donroe Doctrine” is less a new doctrine than a return to an old strategic instinct. The objective is not to dominate Latin America or intervene for intervention’s sake. It is to prevent hostile powers from turning the Western Hemisphere into another arena for great-power competition.

That is where Cuba enters the picture.

Secretary Rubio understands that changing Cuba is about changing the strategic balance of the entire hemisphere.

The Trump Administration’s own assessment reflects that view. In its 2026 report on Cuba, the State Department concluded that the regime remains a significant national security threat through its espionage, ideological influence operations, partnerships with hostile powers, and long history of supporting anti-American actors. The report reflects the Trump Administration’s view that Cuba should be treated not simply as an authoritarian state but as an active strategic challenge in the Western Hemisphere.

That is why Cuba has become such a priority. Turn Cuba, and the strategic map of the hemisphere changes.

Russia loses one of its most valuable intelligence platforms in the Western Hemisphere. China loses one of its closest technological and intelligence partners. Nicaragua loses its most experienced revolutionary mentor. The authoritarian network that stretches throughout Latin America becomes weaker, more isolated, and more vulnerable.

The administration does not simply see another authoritarian government 90 miles from Florida. It sees the operating system that has helped sustain much of the hemisphere’s anti-American architecture since 1959.

Cuba is just the first domino.

The Cuban Endgame

The fact that 32 Cubans died defending Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela tells us that Cuba was never just another small, poor Caribbean dictatorship. It spent nearly seven decades punching far above its weight—exporting revolution around the globe, supporting authoritarian regimes, penetrating American institutions, welcoming hostile powers into the hemisphere, and projecting influence far beyond its shores. It became the connective tissue linking much of the hemisphere’s anti-American architecture.

While American attention drifted halfway across the world to the Middle East, Europe, and the Indo-Pacific, Cuba continued projecting influence throughout the Americas while welcoming America’s adversaries into its own backyard.

Geography, however, never changed.

Nearly two centuries ago, John Quincy Adams recognized that Cuba was too strategically important for any great power to ignore. America’s adversaries understand that today. The Trump Administration has rediscovered that same reality.

America cannot choose its geography. But it can choose whether hostile powers are allowed to exploit that geography.

For 67 years, the Cuban Revolution refused to remain on the island, wreaking havoc throughout the South American continent and presenting serious threats to U.S. national security.

America’s Cuba policy should ensure that the Communist regime meets its end.

The post Havana’s Long Shadow appeared first on The American Mind.

An old, not to say ancient, debate among certain scholars is whether and to what extent the American Founding was ancient versus modern. That is to ask: to what extent, if any, was ancient political philosophy not only an inspiration to the American founders but actually incorporated into the regime they built? This issue rises well above a mere scholarly controversy over “sources” and goes to the heart of what kind of regime the American founders were trying to build, to what America is.

To sum up as briefly as possible, one view holds that the American regime is purely modern—that is, derived wholly and self-consciously from modern political philosophy. For instance, the influential political scientist Joseph Cropsey declared America “an arena in which modernity is working itself out” and “the microcosm of modernity, repeating in its regime, on the level of popular consciousness, the major noetic events of the modern world.” Those who hold this view tend to conclude that this origin makes America, and a fortiori Americans, “low but solid,” concerned more with comfortable self-preservation than with the soul.

Against this view, others argue that the American founders relied just as much on ancient wisdom as on modern theory. They cite (for instance) Thomas Jefferson’s 1825 letter to Henry Lee, which explains that the authority of the Declaration of Independence rests primarily on the “the harmonizing sentiments of the day” and only secondarily on “the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, &c.”—two ancients and two moderns, and all republicans. They further argue that, while modern political philosophy may inevitably degenerate into pointless production and consumption (what Leo Strauss famously called “the joyless quest for joy”) and culminate in antirational nihilism, political practice follows its own logic and course—influenced, to be sure, by philosophy, but in the last analysis decided by citizens and statesmen. As Charles Kesler has put it,

The purpose of American constitutionalism is to produce a certain kind of human being and citizen—an American, whose character reflects the ends of our republicanism. In this respect, the political theory of the Constitution cannot be understood apart from the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and the political theory of the American regime cannot be understood apart from the political science of the classics.

To explore, if not settle, this question, it is perhaps worthwhile to examine the treatment of the ancients in The Federalist, the American founders’ single most important contribution to the literature of political philosophy.

What Not to Do

The ancients loom large in The Federalist. First and foremost, the work presents itself as the product of one “Publius,” borrowing the name from Publius Valerius Publicola, one of the founders of the Roman Republic. In other words, The Federalist’s authors wish to claim for themselves some degree of the authority and majesty of the ancients, and in particular of ancient Rome, history’s most successful republic.

In part, this choice was in keeping with common practice in the founding era, when pseudonyms proliferated and often took Roman (for instance Agrippa, Brutus, Cato, Cincinnatus, Helvidius Priscus, Marcus, Tullius) or Roman-sounding (Americanus, Philadelphiensis) forms. It also reflected the elite education of the time. As Kesler explains,

education in the colonies and in the new nation was anchored, from the primary school to college, in the study of classical languages and literature. By comparison with much instruction in the classics today, this study was serious: it did not regard Greece and Rome as two unusually interesting cultures, an acquaintance with which was mildly diverting and sometimes useful in decoding highbrow literature and middlebrow crossword puzzles. For the founders, instruction in the classics was, to a great extent, the study of living wisdom that happened to have been written centuries ago in different languages. (“The Founders and the Classics” 8)

From all this (and more), one might expect a respectful, even reverential, treatment of the ancients in The Federalist. Yet that expectation is at first glance not met.

Twenty-three of The Federalist’s 85 papers discuss the ancients. In nearly all cases, they are cited for the lessons taught by their examples, not for their theoretical insights. Plato and Socrates are mentioned once each, the former to dismiss the possibility of “a nation of philosophers” and a “philosophical race of kings” (No. 49), the latter with the pungent and memorable observation that “had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob” (No. 55). The only other ancient authorities cited are Plutarch (in Nos. 6, 18, and 38) and Polybius (No. 63), both in their capacities as historians rather than for their philosophical or moral teachings.

The Federalist’s very first mention of the ancients, in No. 4, cites the “history of the states of Greece and of other countries” to illustrate the dangers of disunity. Those “other countries” are not specified to be either ancient or modern, but it is likely that both are intended. In other words, the founders are not “historicists” (to cite a concept that would emerge a few decades later): they did not believe that ancient examples were inapt to their situation simply for being old, nor did they see a fundamental discontinuity between antiquity and modernity in all things. They rather believed that, because human nature remains more or less constant (more on this below), ancient examples have just as much to teach as modern ones.

Unfortunately, nearly all those lessons appear to be negative. A cursory look at the discussions of the ancients in The Federalist seems to reveal a long and almost unrelieved litany of failures. The reader is confronted early on with “the petty republics of Greece and Italy” (No. 9) and “the turbulent democracies of ancient Greece” (No. 14). The entirety of Federalist 18 is given over to a discussion (for whose length Publius apologizes) of the failures of the Amphictyonic Council and the Achaean League, two ancient defensive confederacies cited by opponents of the proposed Constitution as models for the loose defensive alliance that (these critics argue) would be sufficient to ensure American security. Of foreign corruption, we are reminded “how much this contributed to the ruin of the ancient commonwealths” (No. 22). “Greece was undone,” Publius quotes Montesquieu, “as soon as the king of Macedon obtained a seat among the Amphictyons” (No. 43)—that is, as soon as the latter confederacy unwisely admitted a state with a regime radically different from those of its existing members. But homogeneity alone was not enough to save the ancient confederacies: “We have seen, in all the examples of ancient and modern confederacies, the strongest tendency continually betraying itself in the members, to despoil the general government of its authorities, with a very ineffectual capacity in the latter to defend itself against the encroachments” (No. 45). Anti-Federalists who charge that the proposed Constitution’s less popular elements portend tyranny, and who therefore insist on a more radically democratic structure, should remember that “in the ancient republics, where the whole body of the people assembled in person, a single orator, or an artful statesman, was generally seen to rule with as complete a sway as if a sceptre had been placed in his single hand” (No. 58). Those who fret about vesting executive power in one man are reminded that “Roman history records many instances of mischiefs to the republic from the dissensions between the Consuls, and between the military Tribunes, who were at times substituted for the Consuls” (No. 70). Even the most spectacular ancient success carried a more spectacular downside: “the liberties of Rome proved the final victim to her military triumphs” (No. 41).

Damning with Faint Praise

Even when Publius appears to pay a compliment, it is more likely than not backhanded. The Romans are praised in Federalist 5—but for their skill in turning allies into conquests so imperceptibly that their victims didn’t notice until far too late. The Lycian and Achaean Leagues are damned with the faint praise that these confederacies “appear to have been most free from the fetters of that mistaken principle” (of loose confederation; No. 16). Number 45 delivers the punchline: both were ruined anyway.

Roman bicameralism is praised in Federalist 34, but not as an end in itself or for its good effects. Rather, Rome’s two independent assemblies—one patrician, the other plebeian—are cited to vindicate the coexistence in America of federal and state authority, to show that practice often trumps theory, that something which on paper may appear impracticable often works in real life.

Rome is subsequently cited for her martial valor, but as a reminder of the unfortunate necessity for states to remain armed in the face of potential predation (No. 41). For all of Publius’s Roman pretensions, America is not to become another Rome; she is not to seek empire. She will have enough on her hands defending her own territory and interests while maintaining a balance between a military strong enough to deter and (if necessary) meet aggression, but not so strong as to threaten domestic liberty.

The closest Publius ever comes to unqualified praise of the ancients is the statement that “history informs us of no long-lived republic which had not a senate” (No. 63). Sparta, Rome, and Carthage are said to be “the only states to whom that character can be applied.” Here, finally, appears to be an ancient innovation worth copying. But even here, Publius makes a momentous change.

Whereas no ancient senate (to say nothing of hereditary legislatures such as the British House of Lords) rested on a popular foundation, the Constitutional Convention’s proposed senate will. Indeed, in The Federalist’s 14th essay (which concludes the book’s first section), Publius declares that the American Constitution proposes a government that will be “unmixed” and “wholly popular.” Granted, the United States Senate will function something like the aristocratic ancient bodies from which it takes its name, and the presidency will have monarchical-like powers. But, in contrast to all known predecessors, ancient or modern, American senators and presidents alike will depend, ultimately, entirely on the people for their selection and legitimacy. When Publius uses the word “mixed” as praise for his new constitution, he means the mixture of federal and state sovereignty (cf. Nos. 39 and 40), not ancient political philosophy’s recommendation of a mixed regime with popular, aristocratic, and monarchical elements.

Size Matters

A wholly popular regime is not an innovation; there were numerous such governments in the ancient world. But in all of them, the people assembled “in person” (Nos. 10, 14, 48, 52, and 58) to administer the government’s functions. This Publius defines as “democracy” (or “pure democracy”; Nos. 10 and 63). He dismisses this form of government as impracticable for a country as large as the United States, and also as a bad regime simply, because prone to tyranny of the majority.

The proposed American Constitution by contrast is representative. This too is not an innovation: Publius acknowledges that “we owe” to modern Europe “the great principle of representation” (No. 14). What is an innovation is placing representation on a wholly popular foundation. America will be the world’s first-ever wholly popular (or unmixed) and wholly representative republic (cf. Diamond, “The Federalist,” 581). This is the first of two unique contributions to political theory and practice that Publius claims for America.

The other is that America will be the largest republic ever conceived as such; that is, not as the result of expansion but designed as such from the beginning. In the famous tenth Federalist, Publius seizes on an alleged objection or downside to the adoption of the proposed Constitution and boldly proclaims it an advantage. Not only, he asserts, is the great size of the United States no bar to the country’s remaining republican; size will instead be instrumental in keeping the country republican. Indeed, he argues that the “extensive republic” is the only way to avoid the chief danger from a wholly popular government: majority tyranny. Returning to Federalist 14, Publius boasts that “America can claim the merit of making the discovery [of the principle of representation] the basis of unmixed and extensive republics. It is only to be lamented that any of her citizens should wish to deprive her of the additional merit of displaying its full efficacy in the establishment of the comprehensive system now under her consideration.”

The issue of the “extensive republic” is the key to The Federalist. The strongest headwind facing advocates of the proposed Constitution was the popular belief (or prejudice) that only small countries can sustain republicanism and that, conversely, large countries inevitably descend into tyranny. Perhaps one reason Publius never cites ancient political science is because nearly all the ancients argue that republics must be small. Be that as it may, Publius does, we recall, admit that “the liberties of Rome proved the final victim to her military triumphs”—that size, at least if it is the product of military expansion, can indeed be deadly to liberty, domestically no less than externally.

But in support of the view that republics must be small, the Constitution’s opponents looked less to the ancients than to Montesquieu, the philosopher by far most oft-cited in The Federalist. Hence, when Publius first refers to Montesquieu (in No. 9), it is to show (or attempt to show) that those who cite him as an authority against the possibility of the large republic do not understand him. Publius equates Montesquieu’s “confederate republic”—a defensive confederacy of otherwise sovereign states that vest power over foreign affairs in a central government while reserving to themselves authority over domestic matters—with The Federalist’s extensive republic. In other words, he turns Montesquieu back against those critics of the Constitution who cite the French philosopher in support of the argument that the state governments are alone sufficiently republican to secure Americans’ liberty. To the contrary, Publius replies: the state governments are already too large to fulfill Montesquieu’s requirement for small republics, and yet at the same time too small to serve as proper “extended republics” that can secure liberty for the long term.

At any rate, Montesquieu’s argument that republics must be small of course channels the ancients. Publius must therefore vindicate the large republic tacitly against ancient theory, explicitly in contrast to ancient practice, as well as (he claims) against a mistaken interpretation of modern theory.

“New” or “Improved” Science?

Advocates of the founders-as-moderns thesis sometimes attribute to Publius (or other American founders) the phrase “new science of politics.” The passage most often cited in support of this assertion is from Federalist 9:

The science of politics, however, like most other sciences, has received great improvement. The efficacy of various principles is now well understood, which were either not known at all, or imperfectly known to the ancients. The regular distribution of power into distinct departments; the introduction of legislative balances and checks; the institution of courts composed of judges holding their offices during good behavior; the representation of the people in the legislature by deputies of their own election: these are wholly new discoveries, or have made their principal progress towards perfection in modern times.

If this were not enough to establish the Constitution’s novelty, and hence modernity, we may add this passage from Federalist 14:

But why is the experiment of an extended republic to be rejected, merely because it may comprise what is new? Is it not the glory of the people of America, that, whilst they have paid a decent regard to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons of their own experience? To this manly spirit, posterity will be indebted for the possession, and the world for the example, of the numerous innovations displayed on the American theatre, in favor of private rights and public happiness. Had no important step been taken by the leaders of the Revolution for which a precedent could not be discovered, no government established of which an exact model did not present itself, the people of the United States might, at this moment, have been numbered among the melancholy victims of misguided councils, must at best have been laboring under the weight of some of those forms which have crushed the liberties of the rest of mankind. Happily for America, happily, we trust, for the whole human race, they pursued a new and more noble course. They accomplished a revolution which has no parallel in the annals of human society. (Emphasis added)

One hallmark of modern political philosophy is its assertion that it alone is grounded or scientific, that it “reduces” “justice and policy…to the rules and infallibility of reason,” whereas all prior political teachings “had been built in the air.” In Federalist 31, in the midst of a relatively mundane discussion of taxation, Publius all but compares political science to math:

Though it cannot be pretended that the principles of moral and political knowledge have, in general, the same degree of certainty with those of the mathematics, yet they have much better claims in this respect than, to judge from the conduct of men in particular situations, we should be disposed to allow them.

To this we might add Publius’s defense in Federalist 38 of Americans’ reliance on an “assembly of men” to devise their constitution rather than on “some individual citizen of preeminent wisdom and approved integrity” as was customary in the ancient world (cf. Discourses I 9). The collective wisdom of many is bound to be superior to the judgment of one alone, especially since the latter avowedly depends on divine inspiration which, even if not knowingly fabricated, is at a minimum “unscientific.” All this, and much else besides, might seem to settle the question in favor of the Constitution’s being wholly modern.

Yet Publius never actually uses the phrase “new science of politics.” Charles Kesler points out that, as “readers of cereal boxes know, ‘new’ and ‘improved’ are not the same, and hence cereal companies like to use both terms to communicate the sheer magnificence of their work. Publius, on the other hand, claims only to have added new elements to an already existing science, to have improved but not remade it.” That is, Publius sees himself as building on insights already known, supplementing and improving them with subsequent discoveries learned through investigation and experience.

Because nearly all of Publius’s references to the classics are to failures of practice that teach lessons to avoid, one might suspect that he entirely rejects ancient wisdom. Yet Publius nowhere criticizes ancient political philosophy in The Federalist. He does, however, levy one criticism against modern political philosophy that I believe has received insufficient attention. In No. 14, he writes:

To this accidental source of the error may be added the artifice of some celebrated authors, whose writings have had a great share in forming the modern standard of political opinions. Being subjects either of an absolute or limited monarchy, they have endeavored to heighten the advantages, or palliate the evils of those forms, by placing in comparison the vices and defects of the republican, and by citing as specimens of the latter the turbulent democracies of ancient Greece and modern Italy. Under the confusion of names, it has been an easy task to transfer to a republic observations applicable to a democracy only; and among others, the observation that it can never be established but among a small number of people, living within a small compass of territory.

The “error” in question is the opinion “which limits republican government to a narrow district.” Its “accidental source” is the inability or refusal of “some celebrated authors” to see the key difference between a democracy and a republic, namely that “in a democracy, the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic, they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents.” These authors “confound” the two—whether from incomprehension or artifice, Publius does not aver—in a way that flatters the monarchies under which they live. In other words, certain influential modern political philosophers either do not understand or deliberately obfuscate a fundamental political distinction.

Nature, Modern versus Ancient

This criticism by itself cannot establish that Publius is not, or does not understand himself to be, a modern: he might be criticizing modernity from a more modern position.

I believe the solution to this difficulty can be found in Publius’s statements on “nature.” It would be a whole ’nother chapter just to summarize Publius’s views on this vast topic (“nature” or a variant appears in The Federalist 247 times). Suffice it to say for present purposes that Publius explicitly bases his entire political science on his views of human nature, the nature of human understanding, the nature of government, and the comprehensive “nature of things.”

But neither is this observation in itself decisive, since early modern no less than classical political philosophy claims to take its bearings from nature. It would be less a book than a life’s work (and in a sense was Leo Strauss’s life’s work) to demonstrate the many and profound differences between ancient and modern thought. I present instead the barest summary, focusing on those features that bear directly on the heart of the issue at hand.

Taking a quick stroll through the moderns’ statuary hall, we first find Machiavelli, who argues—contra the ancients—that man is not the social and political animal; he is instead radically selfish, but his selfishness can be the basis of a just political order if channeled through institutions forged by the right kind of founder, who is himself motivated by the selfish passion of desire for glory. We next find Hobbes, who disparages glory (and any higher or aspirational impulse) as “Pride,” a “Selfe-Conceipt; or great Dejection of mind,” which he includes with “Injustice, Ingratitude, Arrogance,…Iniquity, Acception of persons, and the rest,” which “can never be made lawfull.” We then find Locke, who elevates Hobbes’s imperative for self-preservation to men’s “comfortable, safe, and peaceable living…in a secure enjoyment of their properties” acquired through diligent industry. And we find Publius’s “celebrated Montesquieu” who, in the course of rejecting ancient virtue in favor of modern “trade and finance,” declares that “commerce cures destructive prejudices” and that the “natural effect of commerce is to lead to peace.” (Quick glances at Harrington, Spinoza, Sydney, and others yield not dissimilar results.)

Is this picture true to Publius’s estimation of man? It may at first seem so, considering his apparently jaundiced view of human nature. For instance, he says it is “human nature” for nations to “make war whenever they have a prospect of getting anything by it” (No. 4); that the “causes of faction are…sown in the nature of man” (No. 10); that no one with a “tolerable knowledge of human nature” needs reminding that “personal considerations” often produce “great national events” (wars and other destructive quarrels not in the national interest; No. 6); that “the constitution of human nature” includes a “love of power” that induces men occupying lower offices to disobey the lawful edicts of those above them (No. 15); and that “the frailty of human nature” prevents men from sorting truth from falsehood (No. 24). He also advises “making the proper deductions for the ordinary depravity of human nature” (No. 78) and observes that “in the general course of human nature, a power over a man’s subsistence amounts to a power over his will” (No. 79).

We find in addition references to “inhumanity and cruelty” (No. 6), “human avarice” (No. 12), “the capriciousness of the human mind” and “human selfishness” (No. 15), “the unruly passions of the human heart” (No. 31), “the imperfection of the human faculties” and “the infirmities and depravities of the human character” (No. 37), “the caprice and wickedness of man” (No. 57), as well as “the vanity,…conceit, and…obstinacy of individuals” and “the effects of this despicable frailty, or rather detestable vice, in the human character” (No. 70), among others.

In The Federalist’s most famous statement on this theme, Publius asks:

What is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. (No. 51)

This litany of vices might seem to mirror Publius’s litany of ancient failures and cause one to conclude that he takes a dim view of man. To the extent that Publius holds out hope for better behavior, he might seem to do so only on the basis of modern premises, namely, that it is foolish to count on man’s alleged higher motives, which are unreliable (if they even exist); that “institutions with teeth in them” rather than character formation through education will deliver justice; and that the purpose of those institutions should be to channel selfish passions toward productive ends. For instance, Publius declares in Federalist 71:

It is a general principle of human nature, that a man will be interested in whatever he possesses, in proportion to the firmness or precariousness of the tenure by which he holds it; will be less attached to what he holds by a momentary or uncertain title, than to what he enjoys by a durable or certain title; and, of course, will be willing to risk more for the sake of the one, than for the sake of the other.

In the very next essay, Publius adds that “the desire of reward is one of the strongest incentives of human conduct.” In this vein, he also specifically refers to the United States as a “commercial republic” (No. 6), speaks of the “commercial character of America” (No. 11), and describes Americans as a “commercial people” (Nos. 24 and 34). In other words, the key to political success is aligning human passions, especially acquisitiveness, with earthly incentives. If modern (or at least early modern) political philosophy could be boiled down to one tenet, this would be it.

Yet once again, this is not the whole picture. Some of Publius’s observations about human nature simply reflect common sense. For instance, in Federalist 17 he notes:

It is a known fact in human nature, that its affections are commonly weak in proportion to the distance or diffusiveness of the object. Upon the same principle that a man is more attached to his family than to his neighborhood, to his neighborhood than to the community at large, the people of each State would be apt to feel a stronger bias towards their local governments than towards the government of the Union.

Other passages evince a keen, noncynical awareness of the higher virtues. Indeed, the movement of The Federalist overall is from lower to higher: from “safety” in The Federalist’s first part to “happiness” in its second. The first part (Nos. 1–36) focuses on union, or more precisely on the necessity of union to self-preservation. As Kesler explains,

it is only in The Federalist’s second [part], which turns to the merits of the proposed Constitution as such, that Publius begins consistently to look at matters from a higher point of view. Here we learn that the Constitution strives to secure “the common good of the society,” “the happiness of the people,” and a complex “public good” that incorporates such elements as “a due sense of national character,” the cultivation of “the deliberate sense of the community,” and even “extensive and arduous enterprises for the public benefit” that will be championed by future presidents. (Introduction xvii–xix)

Hence Publius’s assessment of human nature turns out to be much more balanced than his account of ancient political practice, and more in keeping with ancient political philosophy, which sees the low but also the high, and the former always in the light of the latter.

“The supposition of universal venality in human nature,” Publius declares in Federalist 76, “is little less an error in political reasoning, than the supposition of universal rectitude.” In No. 55, he observes that “as there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust, so there are other qualities in human nature which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form.” Among these qualities, “there is in every breast a sensibility to marks of honor, of favor, of esteem, and of confidence, which, apart from all considerations of interest, is some pledge for grateful and benevolent returns” (No. 57). And: “Ingratitude is a common topic of declamation against human nature; and it must be confessed that instances of it are but too frequent and flagrant, both in public and in private life. But the universal and extreme indignation which it inspires is itself a proof of the energy and prevalence of the contrary sentiment” (No. 57).

To these “qualities” (or “virtues” 33), thoroughly familiar to the ancients, Publius adds one of his own that, despite its relative novelty, is perfectly in keeping with the basic premises of classical political philosophy. As Kesler was the first to show, Publius gives the new(ish) word “responsibility” “its classic definition.” In Publius’s usage, “responsibility” has two meanings. First, government must be responsive to what the people want, responsible to them for delivering it, and its officers subject to punishment (losing elections, impeachment) for failure. The second, higher meaning goes “beyond mere responsiveness” and encompasses serving “the people’s true interests or their reasonable will”—that is, giving them not merely what they want or demand but what they ought to want or what is good for them. “Responsibility” thus enters the pantheon of virtues to help further elevate the founders’ political science, and their regime, above mere concern for mere life to facilitation of the good life.

Publius even relies—Machiavelli would say foolishly—on higher motives to uplift the thoughts and actions of officeholders: “Every consideration that can influence the human mind, such as honor, oaths, reputations, conscience, the love of country, and family affections and attachments, afford security for [senators’] fidelity” (No. 64). And: “There are strong minds in every walk of life that will rise superior…and will command the tribute due to their merit…and I trust, for the credit of human nature, that we shall see examples of such vigorous plants flourishing in the soil of federal as well as of State legislation” (No. 36). Similarly, one finds passages that describe, and ascribe to Americans, “wisdom and virtue” (No. 36), “humanity” (No. 42), “moderation” and “prudence” (No. 43; emphasis in original), noble refusal to tolerate corruption (Nos. 66 and 76), and the sagacity of the common people (No. 41). One may dismiss these sentiments as naïve, but one must also concede that naïvete is not, to say the least, a hallmark of modern political philosophy.

Returning to Publius’s criticism of modern political philosophy in Federalist 14, we see that the chief reason he rejects direct democracy is that it allows and even encourages human vices to predominate. His solution is representation, which is not only necessary in a large republic but also choiceworthy in itself because it encourages the better angels of human nature to come to the fore. The election of representatives—in addition to being the only way to maintain popular government in an extensive country—will “refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations” (No. 10).

Even in matters of epistemology, Publius turns out to be closer to ancient circumspection than to modern certitude. Federalist 37—the beginning of the work’s second of two main parts—is mostly a long lament on the limits of the human mind and the difficulty of human prudence to address concrete problems. And in Federalist 55 Publius retracts his earlier comparison of political science to math: “Nothing can be more fallacious than to found our political calculations on arithmetical principles.”

In sum, Publius does not think human nature has changed from ancient times: it remains just as bad, but also just as good, as it always was. Nor does he give any indication that he thinks ancient writers understood human nature or politics incorrectly. He is concerned rather with correcting practice, and not just ancient practice but all practice, modern emphatically included. This chapter has not focused on (because that is not its intent) Publius’s criticisms of modern political practice, but they are often just as pointed as his recounting of ancient failures.

Ancient Versus Modern Failure

The argument that there is an ancient element to the American founders’ political science, as well as to the country they built, is typically advanced against the notion that America is solely or mostly focused on getting and spending, and thus is a flawed regime whose decay into its present condition was inevitable. Of course, to those who see nothing amiss in the country’s present condition, this whole argument is moot. But among those who do, the ones who believe the founding’s sole basis was “low but solid” modernity cannot find the present outcome surprising. By contrast, those of us who believe the founding was ennobled by ancient philosophy have some explaining to do.

Are we wrong to argue that the founders paid as much attention to ancient wisdom as to examples of ancient failure? I hope to have demonstrated the opposite. Is it possible that, whatever the founders’ intent, their incorporation of ancient elements into their new regime was unsuccessful? Perhaps. Or was it that the ancient precepts themselves turned out to be wrong, which explains why they didn’t produce the effects intended? I doubt this.

One hypothesis is that the alien import of Progressivism later corrupted and supplanted the founding. But precisely those of us who accept this argument must still ask: Does not this explanation beg the question, or force us to wonder what it was about the founders’ regime that made it susceptible to the worst elements of late modernity? Or is this rather the wrong question, presuming—as it does—that political permanence is possible, and that where and when regimes decline and fall, not just a cause but a culprit must be identified?

Be that as it may, there is no question that the American Founding was a stunning achievement—among the greatest political achievements, if not the greatest, in human history. Those of us who lament the present state of the United States and fear its passing should ask ourselves whether, in the course of human events—especially amidst the acid wash of late modernity—250 years is not in fact a very long time over which to deliver liberty, security, justice, prosperity, and happiness to hundreds of millions (to say nothing of what this country has done for foreigners).

Recall that Publius himself defines one criterion of a successful republic as being “long-lived” (Federalist 63). The three republics he cites in that passage—Sparta, Rome, and Carthage—all lasted about five hundred years as republics. Would Publius be dissatisfied with half as long for his handiwork? Or did he know or believe that there is something about modernity that speeds history along, thwarting the attempts of even the wisest men to hold things steady?

Whatever his answer, Publius must perforce, as I do, lament the end whenever it comes. I, at any rate, do not know what or how he and his fellow founders could have done better.

The post The Federalist and the Ancients appeared first on The American Mind.

At the outset of Marco Rubio’s tenure as Secretary of State, his department introduced a new paradigm for U.S.-European relations: civilizational alliance. Rubio and his aides have persistently sought to remind Europe that our relationship is based not merely on trade deals and defense agreements, but ultimately on a shared Western anthropology and history.

Rubio’s July 4 message declared,

[America’s] seeds were planted by the philosophers of Athens, the imperial majesty of Rome, the monks and kings of medieval Christendom—centuries of European exploration, science, faith, and restless ambition finally unleashed from every constraint on the boundless American frontier. America was the destiny of an entire civilization.

These overtures, though sometimes welcomed by European citizens bearing the brunt of civilizational decline, have been met in conventional diplomatic circles with reactions ranging from ambivalence to indignation. European elites are loath to admit they have a civilization to maintain, and if they do, they speak of it with contempt. Rather than face the matter head-on, the most typical response has been to accuse the U.S. of brashness and insincerity. Critics scoff that we are hypocrites for touting civilizational alliances while unabashedly pursuing America First policies. This apparent contradiction rests on three errors.

First is ignorance of the very Western tradition Americans wish to revitalize, in which duty to one’s country is second only to God. This wisdom was passed down from Cicero to Augustine to Aquinas, who taught that “just as it belongs to religion to give worship to God, so does it belong to piety, in the second place, to give worship (cultum) to one’s parents and one’s country.” The duty of patriotism stems from the gift of life we received from particular people in a particular nation. Naturally, those who see no significance in national origin can see no duty stemming from it.

But in truth, even nations that share a common civilization are perfectly free—and indeed obliged—to be patriotic and to pursue their own interests for the sake of their citizenry. Working to preserve a shared civilization is exactly what helps them clarify the just pursuit of interest or “interest well understood,” as Tocqueville calls it. For example, a businessman who is outmaneuvered in the market never objects to competitors seeking their own prosperity. He objects only if they cheat to get it. So too with nations. This is doubly true for the civilization that produced Aquinas and Tocqueville, Parliament and Congress.

Second, these dynamics of Western civilization are lost on contemporary Europeans because they have abdicated both individual and national sovereignty. They fear individual action apart from collective consensus. Of course, this is to misunderstand both consensus and individuals, since authentic consensus arises only from the free assent of individuals. But contribution to a consensus is far from the only sovereign power individuals hold.

There are a host of matters that individuals may decide for themselves without needing permission from anyone else. The sum of these choices makes up moral character, and indeed, sovereignty itself. To circumscribe them is to destroy the possibility of the moral greatness and virtue that the West champions. As is true for individuals, so also for nations.

The nations of Europe have to a large extent surrendered their sovereignty to the E.U., which acts like a nation but does not take responsibility for its actions. Those in Brussels claim merely to be following the consensus of European nations, whose leaders themselves take no responsibility and dutifully follow the decisions of the E.U. To those within a system built on a shared abdication of responsibility, the sight of Americans letting their yes be yes and their no be no is an unconscionable disturbance of global order—and, if European member states catch on, to their job security.

Third, abdication of sovereignty is not applied equally. The real objection is not so much to any national interest but to the assertion of American national interest. If Ghana or Paraguay stood up at the U.N. and cited their national interest, everyone would murmur appreciatively. Only strong nations are not supposed to seek their interests, and since the U.S. is the strongest, we are expected to support the interests of others over our own. This moral hierarchy is one of the glaring symptoms of how much globalist institutions have been captured and perverted by radical “Third Worldist” policies.

But this critique rests on another false premise: that American national interest is inherently at odds with the welfare of others. In practice, the opposite is often true.

America might be prosperous, but we also have millions of poor people living here, so many that we spend around 25% of our considerable budget for their ostensible welfare. The U.S. is also deeply concerned with global welfare. We dismantled boondoggle institutions like USAID precisely to redirect funds from woke nonsense to real needs. Just recently, Secretary Rubio spearheaded $100 million in direct aid to the Cuban people. Finally, another 15% of U.S. spending goes toward preserving the longest large-scale peace since the fall of Rome, enabling billions of otherwise vulnerable people to live in relative security.

So separating U.S. interest from the interests of the poor and marginalized is dodgy at best.

But on a deeper level, the contention that strong nations have no legitimate self-interest is a dangerous absurdity. Yet it is embedded deep in the minds of Western elites who distrust not the self-governing individual in principle, but only those who govern themselves well. The weaker, the meaner, and the baser, the more license they grant, particularly over those who are naturally stronger.

This is the logic that has afforded migrant rape gangs the protection of law in Britain and outlawed objection to them. It is the logic that grants or withholds jobs and benefits based on race and victim status. It is the logic that demands the United States submit to tyrannical institutions like the International Criminal Court that could not even exist without the Pax Americana.

It is difficult to pinpoint the source of these inversions. Many have suggested they spring from a perversion of Christian charity. That may be, although I hesitate to blame even the perversion of a theological virtue. Rather, one of the seven deadly sins seems a more likely culprit: despair.

Many on the Left believe that the West never offered humanity anything besides oppression and that it now offers a vast storehouse of ill-gotten gains, good only for distribution and dissolution. On a fundamental level, Western nations have no right to pursue their own interests because they have no right to exist.

America disagrees. Humanity’s best hope does not live in the grave of the West. It lives here, where the flame of Western civilization has been burning for 250 years. We intend to keep it burning, both for our own sake and for the world’s.

The post Keeping the West’s Flame Burning appeared first on The American Mind.

A little over a year ago, General Mills, maker of Trix and Lucky Charms, promised to pull synthetic dyes from all its U.S. cereals and school foods by the summer of 2026, and from its whole retail line by the end of 2027. Kraft Heinz made the same pledge days earlier, while Nestlé USA, Conagra, and Tyson followed with similar commitments.

Nobody forced them. They read the room.

The room had changed because of one man: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The Secretary of Health and Human Services has transformed how Americans think and talk about health policy. For years, Washington rightly worried about access to affordable care, especially in troubled federal programs like Medicare and Medicaid. Kennedy took on a bigger task: making Americans healthier.

This can’t be done without tackling our chronic disease crisis, especially among children. Backed by a presidential order to “Make America Healthy Again,” Kennedy and his colleagues have rolled out sweeping plans to do just that. Their approach rests on gold standard science, better economic incentives, and private-sector partnership.

We spend more than $5 trillion a year on health care, yet an epidemic of chronic disease still plagues us, including obesity, diabetes, and many autoimmune disorders. The CDC reports that roughly three out of four Americans have at least one chronic condition, and about half have two. We suffer some of the highest chronic disease rates in the developed world. That’s why, as the CDC also notes, about nine of every ten health-care dollars go to treating chronic disease.

Why? We move too little. We eat too much of the wrong kinds of food—often following bad, outdated advice from the government. We also use all manner of drugs and substances. And screens and artificial light have created an environment out of sync with one in which humans thrive. Against this backdrop, it is unsurprising that our obesity rate tops 40% and drives much of our chronic illness.

Kennedy has taken bold steps to address this crisis, even as corporate special interests and the chieftains of America’s medical-industrial complex attack him. Consider a few examples.

Better Food Quality. Under Kennedy, the Food and Drug Administration launched the Chemical Contaminants Transparency Tool, a searchable database that shows the public what is in our food.

The agency is also phasing out petroleum-based synthetic dyes. It revoked approval for Orange B and proposed revoking Citrus Red No. 2, while working with the food industry to drop six remaining dyes. In a joint effort with the Department of Agriculture, Kennedy’s HHS team helped states secure waivers allowing them to restrict SNAP purchases of soda and junk food.

In January, the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans gave this commonsense advice: “Eat real food.” Secretary Kennedy said that this includes eating “whole, nutrient-dense foods,” and cutting back on “highly-processed foods,” added sugars, and refined carbs. Working with the Department of Education, HHS also secured voluntary commitments from 73 medical schools to require at least 40 hours of nutrition education.

Childhood Health. In 1970, only 2–4 children per 10,000 were diagnosed with autism. By 2000, the CDC reported that 1 in 150 children had autism. Today, the United States has one of the highest rates in the world, at 1 in 32.

Even if some of this is due to expanded diagnostic criteria, the spike in cases is real and shocking. Under Kennedy, the National Institutes of Health launched the $50 million Autism Data Science Initiative, funding 13 projects that mine large datasets to study the causes, prevalence, exposures, and treatment of autism.

Kennedy and his colleagues have also pressed for a saner approach to psychiatric care. They want to curb the overprescription of psychiatric drugs, deprescribe them when clinically appropriate, and insist on informed consent.

Beyond mental health, Kennedy restored the performance-based Presidential Fitness Test, an updated, age-appropriate measure of children’s strength, endurance, speed, and agility.

A Rational COVID-19 Vaccine Policy. On May 11, 2023, the federal government declared the COVID-19 emergency over. Yet the FDA did not revoke the remaining Emergency Use Authorizations for the COVID-19 vaccines until August 27, 2025, long after the emergency had passed.

The FDA then approved updated vaccines for all Americans 65 and older, and for younger Americans with underlying conditions that put them at high risk of severe illness, hospitalization, or death. Kennedy also announced that the CDC would no longer recommend routine COVID-19 shots for pregnant women and healthy children, and he called for clinical trials of boosters for those under 65.

These are big changes, but they should not be controversial. Kennedy’s COVID-19 vaccine policy moves the United States closer to the approaches of our European friends and allies such as Britain, France, and Germany. They focus boosters on high-risk groups: the elderly and people with immune deficiencies or underlying conditions. Thanks to Kennedy, the United States is no longer an outlier.

Nor should it be startling that Kennedy chose to remake the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the panel that advises the CDC. He replaced President Biden’s industry-friendly appointees with a new group of leading medical scientists and professionals. Elections have consequences for government personnel as well as policy.

Vaccines can be part of the arsenal of weapons against disease. But studying the scope, necessity, and safety of these pharmaceutical products—many of which have been added in the last few decades—is long overdue. This is why President Trump signed an executive order last week that reduced the number of vaccines children receive and spaced them out, aligning the United States with gold standard science.

Critics often accuse Kennedy of undermining trust in vaccines. But as congressional investigators concluded, Biden’s own flawed COVID-19 policies did far more to erode public trust and stoke “vaccine hesitancy.” Contrary to his early promise, Biden pushed mass vaccination, most notably through a failed and illegal mandate. He did so as evidence mounted that the shots did not prevent transmission or infection.

Worse, by February 2021, his administration was aware of serious adverse reactions in young people, especially heart inflammation, yet routinely stonewalled congressional inquiries. More evidence of harm has surfaced since, both in professional journals and in a Senate report based on sworn testimony.

A fearless opponent of the status quo, Kennedy took a tough job with guaranteed setbacks. While 23 states wisely sought SNAP waivers to stop taxpayers from funding soda, a federal judge partly blocked the effort. And a lower court has likewise stayed the updated vaccine recommendations from Kennedy’s ACIP appointees.

These and many other battles are far from over. But it will take courage and grit to win them. Fortunately, Kennedy has plenty of both.

The post Making Americans Healthier Again appeared first on The American Mind.

On foreign policy, Washington agrees on almost nothing. How much or whether to arm Ukraine, how hard to push Israel, what to do about Iran—these questions split both parties. But one issue cuts across the partisan divide with something close to consensus: China is the greatest strategic challenge of our era, and America must prevail.

That consensus is both practical and ideological. Unlike when our competition with the Soviet Union during the Cold War was mostly measured in missiles, ships, semiconductors, and satellites, our competition today with China is mostly measured in economic growth, minerals, manufacturing, and supply chain security. In both cases, the ultimate competition is between a nation built on freedom and limited government and one built on command and control.

The parallel runs deeper than most people appreciate. When America competed against the Soviet Union, we did not try to out-Soviet the Soviets. We did not build a command economy to match theirs. We built a freer one, trusted it to outperform, and won. The technologies that defined American victory—GPS, the microchip, the internet—were byproducts of a freedom-driven competition that unleashed American ingenuity at a scale no command economy could match.

And yet the temptation to abandon this system is growing stronger.

As a Communist country, China does not play by free-market rules. It subsidizes relentlessly, dumps strategically, and builds dependency globally. In response, Washington is reaching for tools that would have been unthinkable in an earlier era of conservative governance—direct government subsidies, price floors, and even federal equity stakes in private companies. The impulse is understandable because the stakes are so high for the future of economic growth and supply chain security. But before cheering an anything-goes industrial policy, it is worth asking what has worked before. Because America already has a robust, limited government policy playbook that leans libertarian and away from government strong-arming.

The model is simple: government funds the pre-commercial frontier where private capital will not go, entrepreneurs scale the breakthrough once viability is demonstrated, markets determine the winners, and—when the industry can stand on its own two feet—government steps back. This is not industrial policy in the European or Chinese sense, which picks winners, sustains losers, and builds permanent bureaucratic constituencies around protected industries. It is something distinctly American: strategic intervention followed by competitive freedom.

History shows how effective this approach can be.

Building American Strength

The internet began as ARPANET, a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency experiment launched in 1969 to link four computer nodes at research universities. The original purpose was to create a distributed network that could survive a nuclear strike. But the vision was broader. For two decades, DARPA and the National Science Foundation funded the network’s expansion, trained a generation of computer scientists, and built the basic architecture of what would become the most transformative communications technology in human history.

It’s hard to imagine a private company that would have funded this without the magic of future hindsight. The payoff horizon was too uncertain, too distant, and too diffuse for any single firm to capture the return. The federal investment was patient and risky in a way that markets cannot be.

Then, in 1991, the government lifted restrictions on commercial use of the network and stepped back. What followed is one of the great stories of American entrepreneurship: an ecosystem that began with dial-up has, within a generation, entered the age of AI. The return on that government investment—economic and strategic—is incalculable.

The shale revolution followed the same arc. The Department of Energy invested $92 million beginning in the 1970s to develop the enabling technologies for shale gas extraction—massive hydraulic fracturing, microseismic imaging, and directional drilling. The expert consensus at the time was that shale gas was not commercially viable. The private sector largely agreed. But the DOE funded the frontier anyway, launching the Eastern Gas Shales Project in 1976 and working through the following decades with national laboratories, university researchers, and small private operators.

George Mitchell, the Texas oilman who would ultimately crack the Barnett Shale and prove the doubters wrong, relied on DOE mapping techniques and Gas Research Institute data throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Dan Steward, Mitchell’s own geologist, put it plainly: “They did a hell of a lot of work, and I can’t give them enough credit for that. DOE started it, and other people took the ball and ran with it.” After the private sector took charge, America became the world’s largest oil and gas producer.

Semiconductors are the same story—and one that is still being written.

America invented the transistor at Bell Labs in 1947 and the integrated circuit in the late 1950s. Then, in subsequent decades, it offshored the manufacturing until nearly 90% of the world’s leading-edge chip production was concentrated in Taiwan.

Although Taiwan has long been a strong, strategic ally of the United States, such a high concentration of critical capabilities in one place that China claims as its own is not the definition of supply-chain resilience. The strategic vulnerability this created became undeniable when COVID-era supply-chain disruptions froze automotive production and exposed how dependent the American economy had become on a single country for its most critical technology.

The CHIPS and Science Act invested $52.7 billion to rebuild domestic capacity. The result so far has been positive. Private sector commitments linked to CHIPS incentives have exceeded $920 billion across 160 projects in 30 states. Annualized semiconductor manufacturing investment surged from under $7 billion per year before 2020 to roughly $90 billion by 2024. TSMC’s Arizona fab is already producing advanced chips ahead of schedule.

The critical question—whether Washington will have the discipline to step back once domestic industry can genuinely compete—remains open. The answer will determine whether CHIPS becomes a model or a missed opportunity.

Because America has missed opportunities before.

Taking the Wrong Path

Corn ethanol is what happens when government funds the frontier, achieves its objective, and then refuses to leave. Beginning in the 1970s, federal subsidies for ethanol were defensible—a nascent industry needed support to prove viability and reduce oil dependency. It was a worthwhile mission, and not every early-stage government investment should be expected to transform the global market.

Nonetheless, instead of stepping back as the industry matured, Washington layered on a federal mandate called the Renewable Fuel Standard. Taxpayers have spent $45 billion in tax credits alone since 1980, on top of mandates, tariff protections, and more. The result is a mature industry locked in distorted agricultural and food markets that has lost its innovation edge because of guaranteed subsidies.

Instead of bridging the gap between a promising technology and a self-sustaining market, the government has created an entrenched interest that can’t be touched without committing political suicide. That is what permanent industrial policy looks like—not industrial strength, but industrial dependency dressed in the language of national security.

Washington should keep that image in mind as it deploys an industrial playbook against China today—because the temptation to make every bridge permanent will be strong.

The American Way

We can already see this in critical minerals. China has undercut global markets through decades of state-subsidized overcapacity, leaving American and allied producers unable to compete on price. It controls the refining of 19 of 20 strategic minerals the global economy depends on, and has already demonstrated willingness to weaponize that position—banning exports of gallium and germanium to the United States in December 2024, then restoring access as a trade bargaining chip.

Washington made its bet that somewhat limited government action can level the playing field against such predatory practices. The $7.5 billion provided by the One Big Beautiful Bill to support domestic mining and processing, the Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement’s coordinated friendshoring across 54 allied nations, and the Department of Energy’s $1 billion critical minerals initiative funding pilot projects, partnerships, and new rare-earth facilities reflects this logic. While this bet seems to be paying off for now, Washington should reject the temptation for further intervention by making price floors and equity stakes permanent.

We must remember that the ultimate goal is a competitive American minerals industry, not a government-dependent one.

Thankfully, the U.S. government is starting to make the right moves on solar. The subsidies that originally helped the industry get off the ground were poorly structured—rewarding developers for how much they spent rather than how efficiently they produced, accelerating dependence on Chinese supply chains. The Trump Administration rightly allowed these subsidies to expire on July 4 while tightening limits on Chinese components. Policy now targets distortion instead of creating it, giving more room for market efficiency to drive superior results.

The government should also resist the temptation to get involved in other nascent industries. American artificial intelligence, for example, is making incredible strides and attracting private capital faster, and at a much larger scale, than Washington could ever direct. The biggest risk is not that government fails to assist the technology, but that our leaders stifle it by banning data center construction or choking the industry with regulations.

When the market has already arrived, the government’s job is to clear the road, not build it.

The American way that built the internet and powered the shale revolution, and is now rebuilding the semiconductor, critical-minerals, and solar industries is more effective and dynamic than command-and-control economies. It requires the discipline to engage before viability is proven and the equal discipline to step back when viability is achieved.

The American industrial playbook works. The only question now is whether Washington will continue to use it.

The post America’s Winning Playbook Against China appeared first on The American Mind.