As we approach the 250th anniversary of the American Founding, it’s important to point out that the Declaration of Independence does not begin with politics. Before it speaks of rights, consent, or government, it makes a claim about the structure of reality itself. The rights it asserts are not the product of historical circumstance or collective will. They are grounded in a prior truth: that human beings are created by God.

The Declaration’s appeal to “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” is not ornamental or rhetorical—it is the foundation on which its entire argument rests. The founders believed they were obligated to explain to mankind the reasons for their separation, and those reasons started with God and his law.

With this foundation, we can then proceed to the Declaration’s most famous sentence—“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Though it is often treated as a moral flourish or a proto-democratic slogan, it is in fact a tightly ordered philosophical claim that proceeds in three stages, each dependent on the one before it.

First, it makes an epistemological assertion: these truths are “self-evident.” They are not established by deduction, tradition, or positive law, but are known by reflecting on the observable world. Truths about God, human beings, and the good must be knowable if human beings are to be responsible for ordering their lives and laws accordingly. To deny that such truths can be known is not merely to revise political theory, but to undermine moral accountability itself.

Second, the Declaration makes a metaphysical claim: human beings are created and therefore possess a given nature. Equality is not asserted as a political preference but affirmed as a consequence of creation. It follows from the reality of a shared human nature, which exists because God created it. Human equality is intelligible only if there is something real that human beings equally are.

Third, the Declaration draws an ethical conclusion: because human beings are created in this way, they are endowed with rights (life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) that no just government may rightly violate. To say that human beings are created by God is to say that they possess a given nature grounded in divine intention, not in change, appetite, or contingency.

This sequence is as decisive as it is brilliant. Remove any part of it and the argument collapses. Without a grounding in self-evident truths, claims about rights become matters of opinion or will. Without creation, equality loses its grounding in nature and becomes a political assertion to be enforced rather than an a priori truth. Without both, liberty ceases to be a moral claim and becomes a grant of the state for licentiousness. What remains is a thinner conception of freedom—one incapable of sustaining either justice or joy.

The assumptions that creation is intelligible, that God is knowable, and that human beings are responsible for acknowledging both stand at the foundation of the American experiment. They are the stress points at which its coherence either holds or fails.

A Vague Deity or Christ?

At this point, the Christian reader may be tempted to object that the Declaration does not go far enough. It speaks of God as Creator but says nothing of Christ. It appeals to natural theology but makes no reference to revealed religion. Does it leave us stranded with a Deistic account of God or a thin moralism that cannot sustain the claims it makes? The concern is understandable, especially when the Declaration is contrasted with documents such as the Solemn League and Covenant that explicitly confessed allegiance to Christ the King. Yet this objection rests on a misunderstanding of both the Declaration’s purpose and the relation between natural and revealed religion.

The Declaration of Independence is precisely that: a declaration of independence. It is not a confession of faith, a catechism, or a constitution. It has a specific and limited purpose: to justify political separation from Great Britain by appealing to truths binding on all human beings as such. The absence of explicit Christological language does not indicate theological indifference, but a focus on the specific political question at hand.

It is also worth remembering that many of the founders likely assumed that explicitly Christian commitments would find expression elsewhere. Nearly every state constitution in the founding era contained explicit Christian language, often including affirmations of Christianity or requirements that officeholders affirm specific Protestant beliefs.

The Declaration was never intended to bear the full theological weight of American public life on its own. It establishes a common foundation; it does not exhaust the moral or religious commitments of the people who affirmed it. Just as Romans 1 demonstrates that there is a clear general revelation (the study of natural theology) that shows the reality of universal sin and then explains our need for Christ, the Declaration’s three-fold assertion of knowability, God, and what is good provides a basis for the path to salvation.

This points to a second consideration: the Declaration’s appeal to natural theology is not compatible with every religious or philosophical system. The Declaration’s affirmation of God the Creator excludes belief systems that deny God the Creator such as monism (all is one) and dualism (God and the world are both without beginning).

It presupposes that God is distinct from the world, that the world is created rather than eternal, and that human beings possess a knowable nature grounded in that act of creation. Natural theology, on this view, is neither trivial nor thin; it is full and clear. It tells us a great deal about God, about ourselves, and about the moral order.

At the same time, natural theology is not redemptive revelation. Scripture does not merely restate natural truths more clearly or add moral instruction where reason falters. It answers a question that natural theology cannot answer on its own: how a just and holy God redeems sinners who suppress the truth they ought to know.

The founders were well aware of this distinction. The Bible was the most frequently cited book in their writings, and most took for granted that Christianity answered the question of redemption. Yet they also recognized that this answer could not be imposed by civil authority without corrupting both church and state. They had no interest in adjudicating disputes among Protestants, much less between Protestants and Roman Catholics. The Declaration’s silence on these matters reflects not skepticism about Christian truth, but a judgment about political competence.

In this light, the Declaration’s appeal to natural theology appears not as a theological retreat, but as a principled boundary. It affirms all that reason can and must know about God and human nature, while leaving the work of redemption where it belongs: in the proclamation of the gospel and the ministry of the church. The coherence of the American experiment depends on honoring both truths. Confuse them, and politics becomes a counterfeit religion. Separate them rightly, and both church and state are free to pursue their proper ends. This can serve as a call back to American Christians to remember the need for evangelical work if they hope for lasting positive change in America.

The post The Declaration’s God appeared first on The American Mind.

The American Mind’s ‘Editorial Roundtable’ 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.

America 250: Go Big Or Go Home | The Roundtable Ep. 318

Associate Dean of Hillsdale’s graduate school of government Matthew Mehan joins the guys to discuss his latest work, The American Book of Fables. It’s a richly illustrated tour through the nation’s wonders, celebrating America in thirteen tales for the whole family. Then, updates from the midterms: Trump endorses Ken Paxton against John Cornyn in the Republican Senate primary in Texas, Kentucky representative Thomas Massie faces off with Trump pick Ed Gallrein, and more!

The post The American Mind Podcast: The Roundtable Episode 318 appeared first on The American Mind.

Though hype and doomerism tend to suck up a lot of oxygen in the AI discussion, it will probably be more productive for Americans to focus on the concrete goals desired by leaders in the industry. Then we may ask whether and how a majority of citizens might be convinced those goals are worthy of the effort required to attain them. I propose we focus first on the question of “compute”—how much computing power is required to operate cutting-edge AI at scale, and what kind of data centers are required to provide it.

There are some in the AI industry—developers, advocates, and the “hyperscalers” who want to build super-massive data centers—who do what they do out of an obsessively spiritual devotion to what they’re building. But a great deal of the business is run by successful Americans in the industry who mostly just really enjoy doing what they do best, which is building new things using state-of-the-art tools. This may not be obvious to the cross-partisan group of citizens who range from skeptical to hostile toward AI, who tend to think of all tech enthusiasts as wide-eyed, quasi-religious fanatics dreaming of a robot apocalypse or singularity. So for skeptics, an important reality check is realizing that many—probably the majority—of AI’s day-to-day builders have more practical and cosmically modest aims.

Another key reality check, this one for the accelerationists who do dream of an AI-saturated future, is that insisting on more compute, accessible anywhere and everywhere and as fast as possible, is not a form of politics that is going to win any elections anytime soon. To be honest, it’s hard to win elections with that approach to anything. Pounding the table like this, even on something as nice and popular as liberty itself, doesn’t sweep you (or your supported candidates) into office; even a blanket demand for equality-maxing does not guarantee the kind of electoral victory needed to protect, much less advance, your sweeping but vague agenda. People want—and, in our system of government, people justifiably expect—concrete details.

I sound these two notes of caution together because of several recent conversations with AI-savvy people at the intersection of politics and tech about the debate over data centers—how, at what scale, and on what timeline to build them. I was struck by a sense that concretely detailed policy proposals around data center scaling seemed absent from the industry and policy conversation.

Seeking a clear place to begin hammering out something specific, I chatted my way to an understanding that the big goal was a certain quantity of compute, sufficient to meet domestic (including government) targets and to avoid a sudden eclipse by international competitors (read: China). Okay, I replied, why not change the debate in a way that could benefit everyone involved by pitching, say, a “dynamic dozen” data center plan? With a simple number like that, I reasoned, the debate could shift to the tactical terrain of determining the best places to site the builds, taking advantage of preexisting natural, strategic, and infrastructural conditions while avoiding watchouts and pitfalls—including, yes, local resistance.

The response I got—from people on the policy side as well as the hard tech side—was that this sounded like an interesting and probably fruitful approach. Then why hadn’t someone else inserted it into the debate yet? Why hadn’t I seen such a proposal, and why did it seem that no one else had either?

The answer refers back to the reality checks above. It wasn’t that accelerationists had muscled such nuts-and-bolts thinking out of the debate, or that the main players didn’t think details would improve the quality or the outcome of the debate. It was simply that the builders were busy building. The executives were busy inking what deals they could in a highly competitive space. The thinktankers were heads-down in their own narrow lanes. The staffers were aswim in ungainly draft legislation. The hyperscalers were training their models. Everyone was busy doing what they thought they did best.

The industry leaders who believed in the value of the more-faster-now mantra were beginning to realize that the political appeal of that approach among the broader electorate might be limited. But they had demanding day jobs and highly agentic rivals to contend with, and the bandwidth was lacking to spool out a comprehensive data center plan with specific goals and targeted pathways to them. This despite the fact that to do so would likely do much to take the fear, confusion, and sense of helplessness that presently characterize the national debate over data centers. Which helps explain why fear, confusion, and helplessness currently reign supreme.

Existential Questions

To very briefly sum up how we got here: for a very long time, hard-working builders coexisted fruitfully with America’s form of government. Super-concentrated industrial wealth did cause serious political unrest for certain periods of time, but not until the AI takeoff has the sheer act of building fast and big seemed to many citizens like a direct threat to the fundamental political structure and social identity of America itself. What does it profit an American citizen to gain a utopia of material abundance but lose the heart and soul of the United States?

It’s a primal question of identity. Many millions of people are not very excited by the prospect of trading the best regime yet invented—where individuals, families, and communities are free to live and worship largely as they please—for a supposedly even better regime in which all that old-fashioned individualism, family values, and community self-determination is dissolved in a technological acid bath of posthuman collectivism. Many people feel that this exchange, in fact, amounts to a metaphorical, perhaps even literal, devil’s bargain.

So here we are, with majorities across the country firmly opposed to building data centers in their localities, bills proposing moratoria on AI development spreading throughout state legislatures, and deepening purple-hued fury from voters who feel swindled out of their already diminished political agency by an accelerationist fait accompli. It’s rough because many of those voters aren’t simply haters of AI. Polling shows that most people who don’t love AI use it anyway—instead of boycotting the tech, protesting the industry, or hurling improvised explosive devices at the homes of industry leaders.

The overwhelming majority of Americans would really rather not have to choose between scrapping AI on the one hand and scrapping their country on the other. They want balance: a sustainable middle path that preserves (maybe even strengthens?) our longstanding social contract—the one that reconciles open innovation, political freedom, and cultural decentralization, on terms beneficial to just about everyone involved.

How can voters possibly be faulted for wanting to keep America America without its becoming a stale and brittle museum of itself?

Imagine my surprise and relief, then, when, after not that much digging, I discovered that some leaders in the AI space are indeed doing the hard work of hammering out a carefully reasoned, detail-rich, and practically delimited approach to data center construction. You wouldn’t know it from your social media feed, or from the established news media, but a small group at the Department of Energy (DOE), working with research from the RAND Corporation and Anthropic, has been developing a robust and rigorous program quite a lot like the commonsensical one I had in mind. It’s very real, fairly nonpartisan, and well underway. But if you’re not a professional insider, or the kind of private citizen who hangs out on energy.gov or browses the Federal Register, you probably had no idea until now.

The DOE plan

Here’s the shape of the Energy Department’s schema. Due to explosive demand, driven in significant part by the strategic imperatives of statecraft, RAND began last year with a projection that by next year world compute targets would amount to nearly 70 gigawatts (GW). Nearly 12 months ago, Anthropic estimated the requisite minimum for U.S. needs at about 50 GW by 2028. Getting there is tricky: our existing infrastructure is subject to congestion, energy spikes, wild swings in power loads that can destabilize or fry electrical grids, and unsurpassable hardware limits on capacity even under ideal conditions—a little over 4 GW per site according to RAND research conducted this spring. As the AI critics have observed, although their catastrophizing has often been overhyped or just overestimated, those challenges can be expected to put unacceptable pressure on our natural and man-made resource systems.

Yet, of course, pulling the national e-brake on data center development won’t freeze time and deliver us into a magical parallel universe where we no longer have to address hard problems. Citizens have every right to flex their political muscle to squeeze out or shut down local builds they duly judge misbegotten, but the AI backlash against hand-wavey accelerationism is poised to deliver the worst of both worlds.

That’s why DOE has spun up a strategic siting initiative that well-intentioned people with a range of views on AI can reason their way through, like well-functioning citizens are supposed to.

The agency’s initial RFI—a so-called Request for Information, which prepares the way for a full-blown proposal and procurement process—identified last spring not a dozen but 16 sites already managed by DOE, boasting man-made and natural infrastructure adequate to clearing permitting hurdles fast enough to spin up active data centers in time to contribute to hitting next year’s compute targets.

By summer, DOE had zeroed in on a Big Four: Idaho National Laboratory, Oak Ridge Reservation in East Tennessee, Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in western Kentucky, and South Carolina’s Savannah River Site. Requests for Proposal went out to the private sector in the fall. Anthropic, meanwhile, focused their approach to site assessment around executive-branch prospects for adding 50 GW of compute by leasing out federal lands, taking advantage of preexisting power plants and sources, and, as in DOE’s case, speed-running permits where conditions allowed. And in March of this year, when RAND evaluated 22 site candidates, a majority scored moderately across onsite infrastructure and readiness for further construction, deployment, and use.

While some AI boosters and AI doomers might squint at consensus support for a carefully scoped approach to hitting ambitious compute targets—such as the Bipartisan Policy Center’s approving review of the DOE’s pragmatic effort—populist voters in both parties, feeling skeptical or unsure about data center growth, won’t be so negative.

Tailored to the Stakes

A dynamic-dozen database project, carefully scoped to hit key compute targets with builds at the best sites for swift, efficient, and not-unwelcome construction and operation, will keep a variety of options open for the future while respecting citizens’ present judgments, strengthening buy-in on the foundational layer of any strategic plan going forward. Political disagreement will recalibrate away from escalating confrontations over abstract visions of catastrophe toward grounded engagement that’s both more technical and more human. Geopolitical imperatives will receive their due, as will kitchen-table economics. A little sprinkling of patience, humility, and forbearance will go a very long way.

Of course, some savvy observers and policymakers already have their critiques of such an approach despite its many advantages. The sharpest criticism, however—that the federal government we actually have is too degraded an institution to be counted on to lead on AI deployment—is also the most sweeping. Its conclusion—that, on balance, hyperscalers and citizens alike are just going to have to wing it and the chips will fall where they may—may reflect a certain degree of realism about the difficulties of America’s situation. But its implications invite judgments that are simply too post-political, post-American, and ultimately too post-human to hold the civic body together amid threats foreign and domestic, or even, alternatively, to wind down and retreat to decentralized fragmentation in orderly and salutary fashion.

As presently configured, America can’t afford a strategic defeat of our tech industry, our federal government, or our body politic. No person or institution can assert complete control over any of those three sociopolitical pillars—the price of freedom! But while the three independently do what they do, it serves all well for us to at least move forward confidently with something like a dynamic-dozen data center plan, carried forward from the concrete siting selection process already begun.

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Justice Clarence Thomas’s recent speech at the University of Texas was vintage Thomas: deeply reflective, historically grounded, and unapologetically devoted to first principles. At a moment when many public officials seek safety in ambiguity, Thomas instead offered moral clarity. He spoke not merely as a jurist, but as a statesman concerned with the long-term health of the American republic. In doing so, he echoed themes long championed by scholars associated with the Claremont Institute: the primacy of natural rights, the centrality of the Declaration of Independence, and the necessity of civic courage in preserving constitutional government.

Thomas’s remarks were particularly striking because they resisted the fashionable reduction of constitutional interpretation to technocratic expertise or evolving social consensus. Instead, he returned repeatedly to the enduring truths that undergird the American experiment. The Constitution, in Thomas’s telling, is not simply a procedural document or a malleable framework for administrative governance. It is the institutional embodiment of a moral and political philosophy rooted in the self-evident truths proclaimed in 1776.

This insistence on recovering the moral foundations of constitutionalism places Thomas squarely within the tradition of political thought cultivated by Claremont scholars over several decades. Figures such as Harry Jaffa, Thomas West, and William Allen have argued that the American Founding cannot be properly understood apart from the natural right principles articulated in the Declaration. The Constitution derives its legitimacy not from historical accident or mere democratic will, but from its grounding in the equal natural rights of all persons.

Thomas’s jurisprudence has long reflected this understanding. Unlike many modern judges who treat constitutional law as a balancing test among competing interests, he approaches the Constitution as a document with an ascertainable meaning anchored in enduring principles. His originalism is therefore not merely methodological—it is philosophical. It rests on the conviction that the founders believed certain truths about human nature and political authority to be universally valid.

That philosophical seriousness was evident throughout Thomas’s Texas speech. He warned against the erosion of institutional integrity and the growing tendency to subordinate constitutional limits to ideological expediency. Such warnings resonate powerfully today. Americans increasingly inhabit a political culture that prizes administrative efficiency over self-government and emotional grievance over civic responsibility. Thomas challenged this drift by reminding his audience that liberty requires restraint—not only from government officials but also from citizens themselves.

This, too, is a deeply Claremontian insight. Claremont scholars have consistently argued that republican self-government depends upon civic virtue. Free institutions cannot survive indefinitely among a people unwilling to exercise prudence, moderation, and moral responsibility. The administrative state, in this view, grows not simply because elites desire power, but because citizens gradually relinquish the burdens of self-rule.

Thomas’s own life story lends extraordinary credibility to these themes. He rose from poverty in segregated Georgia to the highest court in the land through discipline, perseverance, and intellectual independence. Yet unlike many public figures who emerge from hardship only to embrace fashionable orthodoxy, Thomas has retained a fierce commitment to personal responsibility and constitutional principle. He has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to stand alone when necessary—a quality increasingly rare in contemporary public life.

Indeed, one of the most compelling aspects of Thomas’s speech was his emphasis on courage. He spoke candidly about the pressures facing judges, public servants, and citizens in an age of relentless political polarization and media intimidation. But he insisted that fidelity to principle must outweigh the desire for approval. Such courage, he suggested, is indispensable to constitutional government.

Here too the parallel with Claremont thought is unmistakable. Harry Jaffa famously argued that statesmanship requires moral courage rooted in an understanding of justice. Abraham Lincoln, perhaps the central figure in Claremont scholarship, exemplified this ideal through his steadfast defense of the Declaration’s principles against the moral relativism of his age. Thomas’s speech suggested that our own era demands similar fortitude. Constitutional government cannot endure if leaders lack the conviction to defend first principles against transient passions.

Critics often portray Thomas—and, for that matter, Claremont scholars—as nostalgic traditionalists seeking to resurrect an idealized past. But this caricature misses the deeper point. Neither Thomas nor Claremont advocates a simplistic return to the 18th century. Rather, they insist that the permanent truths underlying the American regime remain relevant precisely because human nature has not changed. Questions of justice, equality, liberty, and political legitimacy are not obsolete relics. They are perennial concerns of republican government.

Thomas’s remarks also offered an implicit rebuke to the increasingly dominant view that American institutions are irredeemably corrupt or fundamentally illegitimate. In recent years, much of elite discourse has portrayed the Founding as little more than a mask for oppression and exclusion. Thomas rejected this cynicism without ignoring America’s historical failures. Like Lincoln before him, he understands that the existence of injustice does not invalidate the principles by which injustice is condemned. On the contrary, the Declaration’s promise of equal natural rights supplied the moral standard by which slavery and segregation were ultimately defeated.

This point is essential. The American Founding contains within itself the resources for moral renewal. That has long been a cornerstone of Claremont scholarship, and Thomas’s speech reaffirmed that point powerfully. America’s principles do not require abandonment or reinvention. They require recovery and faithful application.

At a time when confidence in public institutions is collapsing, Thomas’s speech serves as a reminder that constitutionalism is not merely a legal arrangement but also a moral achievement. Self-government depends on citizens capable of understanding and defending the principles upon which their freedom rests. Courts alone cannot preserve the republic. Universities cannot preserve it. Political parties cannot preserve it. Ultimately, only a free and virtuous people can do so.

Justice Thomas’s address at the University of Texas was therefore more than a judicial reflection or academic lecture. It was a statesmanlike meditation on the condition of the American republic. By grounding constitutionalism in natural right principles and emphasizing the necessity of courage and civic virtue, Thomas articulated a vision strikingly consonant with the political thought of the Claremont Institute.

Whether one agrees with every aspect of that vision is beside the point. What cannot be denied is its seriousness. In an age dominated by ideological slogans, bureaucratic managerialism, and historical amnesia, Thomas offered something increasingly rare: a coherent defense of the American constitutional order rooted in first principles. For that alone, his speech deserves careful attention—and considerable praise.

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The Right won the 2024 election by successfully assembling a coalition capable of competing nationally. Whether it can consolidate that power into a lasting majority is far less certain.

The coalition that returned Trump to the White House is beginning to fracture. While support for the agenda the president ran on remains strong, confidence that it will be secured is fading. And that perception, whether justified or not, is lethal.

Voters in this coalition did not turn out for incremental change, executive orders, temporary regulatory reform, or procedural wins. They voted for a decisive shift in national direction—mass deportations, accountability for corruption, a more affordable daily life, an end to foreign entanglements, and political power given back to the American people.

A coalition built on expectations like these cannot sustain itself absent visible exercises of power. If it does not see power used to benefit the common good, it will break apart, first into frustrated factions, then into disengaged actors, and eventually into opposition.

That is what many on the Right still refuse to accept: the coalition that put Trump in power will not survive if the administration cannot deliver. The external pressures that have exposed these contradictions may break the coalition apart, possibly even before the 2028 election. And if that happens, power will have to be won again by a new coalition built to produce results, not just promise them.

For the current coalition to survive, the Trump Administration and the Republican Party must deliver on their promises, and this includes building a political operation capable of organizing, mobilizing, and expanding the base between election cycles.

Abstractions or Power

Bad habits still lingering on the Right make this task harder than it should be. Axiomatic conservatism treats the articulation of ideas as though it were itself the exercise of power, while performative conservativism substitutes slogans for substance and rhetorical intensity for force. Together, they drive the Right toward mistaking intellectual activity for political action. Drafting white papers, convening panels, and refining policy frameworks may produce internally coherent arguments—but they do not produce a durable political coalition.

On the campaign trail, these habits reveal themselves in wasting donor dollars on consultant-driven advertising campaigns, mass text message operations, and political vanity projects that enrich a professional political class while building little infrastructure or community in return. Meanwhile, the unglamorous work that binds coalitions together and builds a lasting political community—door knocking, ballot chasing, voter registration, and sustained voter contact—remains comparatively underfunded despite consistently delivering the highest returns on campaign spending.

There is a better model. Turning Point Action’s recent success in Indiana’s primaries and in the 2024 election offers a political playbook that must be adopted and scaled nationally.

We are no longer operating in an era where the primary contest is over ideas in the abstract. That era, if it ever truly existed, has given way to something far less forgiving. We are in the midst of returning to hard power politics: a contest not merely over what is true, but over who more effectively organizes, mobilizes, and governs—and whether that governing power produces tangible results for the constituencies that support it.

Ideas still matter—but only insofar as they are promoted by those willing and able to act on them. Political success emerges from organizing people, building coalitions, and using power in a disciplined way.

In practice, this means building precinct-level operations that can identify low-propensity voters and turn them out repeatedly. It means embedding influence in institutions that shape civic life: unions, churches, trade associations, parent groups, corporations, and local boards. It means controlling candidate pipelines so that those who run are aligned with the coalition they claim to represent. It means aggressive redistricting and funding operations that shape ballot access, election administration, and post-election adjudication.

It means maintaining sustained contact with voters not just during the final weeks of an election, but over years—through issue advocacy, a local presence, and visible follow-through on promises. It means building nonprofits and institutions that can both defend allies and impose costs on opponents. And it means that once election victories are secured, they are translated into tangible, directional change—not absorbed into the inertia of a political hamster wheel.

In other words, the Right must treat politics as a system of organization and reward, not simply a periodic exercise in persuasion. This shift in orientation may feel novel, but it shouldn’t; it reflects the underlying logic of American political development itself.

American politics has always been about acquiring and exercising power, assembling majorities and using them to direct national life for a generation, and forcing political opponents to operate within institutions one has constructed rather than the ones others have built.

The great realignments in American history have depended less on elegant rhetoric about ideas and more on the effectiveness of coalition-building. The re-founding of America under Abraham Lincoln, the insurgent nationalism of Theodore Roosevelt, and the rise of the New Deal coalition under Franklin D. Roosevelt were built through deliberate, organized efforts to assemble new political majorities: identifying voters, activating them, and binding them into a durable political community through leadership that was willing to act. Each of these men succeeded ultimately because they delivered for the coalition they assembled, not only because they were good orators with interesting things to say.

In those times, it was about campaigning in poetry and governing in prose. Today, we campaign in poetry and too often fail to govern in prose. This serves the consultant class well, but it is terrible for the American people who want fundamental political change.

If we intend to preserve our way of life—its people, culture, and Christian foundations—then we must adopt a posture closer to revolution than preservation. We must not engage in reckless destruction, but the deliberate, unapologetic construction of the institutions, incentives, and structures that can recover our nation’s traditions and history—while simultaneously dismantling those that do not.

This means the task before us is not merely to hold power but to use it to revive the country. It requires governing with genuine competence—not just consolidating the coalition that delivered victory in 2024, but earning its continued trust. It also means recognizing that the coalition in its present form may not be able to sustain this project in the long term. Some elements of it will need to be subordinated, or left behind, if the whole is to survive in 2028 and beyond.

Lessons from the Left

The Democratic machines of the mid-20th century understood coalition-building well. They began their quest for power by reaching voters, not drawing up policy frameworks. The Democrats identified voters, served them, bound them into networks of mutual dependence, and then translated that structure into governing power. They used tangible rewards and incentives, coupled with hierarchical organizations like unions, employers, and neighborhood associations, to maintain order. Policy followed as both an instrument and a reward—it alone did not capture hearts and minds. The illusion of soft power politics, the belief that sufficiently refined policy proposals will eventually realign the system, is comforting but ultimately misplaced.

The most effective operators in the modern Democratic Party eschew white-paper debates and deprioritize internal litmus tests, as seen in the normalization of radicals like Hasan Piker, in favor of cohesion and oppositional aggression. While the Right circulates op-eds after yet another Democrat avoids saying what a woman is or answering whether biological men can have babies, the Left smiles at another internal litmus test avoided and advances their cause diligently. Candidates on the Left are not looking to win arguments; they are trained to define their opponent, mobilize aligned constituencies through community organizing, and maintain narrative discipline. The result is not always intellectually coherent, but it is politically effective.

Colorado Governor Jared Polis described this practice with clarity in Adam Schrager and Rob Witwer’s book, The Blueprint: How the Democrats Won Colorado (and Why Republicans Everywhere Should Care): “All the participants checked their political agendas at the door. There was never any policy discussed. There was never any issues discussed. This was simply a group of people who believed that all of our issues, and regardless of what they were, what our differences were, would be better represented in a Democratic majority.”

That’s a difficult feat to accomplish, requiring resources and a tolerance for imperfection. It demands engagement with people as they are, not as one might wish them to be. And it often lacks the immediate gratification that comes from winning an esoteric policy argument or getting clicks online.

But it is difficult work that matters a great deal—yet too many of the most influential institutions and online voices on the Right still deprioritize the day-to-day work of practical politics in favor of being consumed with theoretical arguments. We may have acquired political power in 2024, but we are struggling to ensure we use it to enact generational change.

Coalitional Contradictions

One part of the Right is a vote-heavy, populist, working- and middle-class base that is acutely sensitive to foreigners displacing them in the workforce, automation, wage stagnation, and the offshoring of American jobs. Furthermore, they strongly distrust the government post-COVID and the pseudo-health regime that has been constructed. The other part relies on a numerically smaller donor and business class whose operating assumptions remain rooted in globalism, the availability of cheap and illegal foreign labor, stock market gains, foreign intervention, and Total Boomer Luxury Communism. One side produces the votes; the other the financing.

The differences between these two sides cannot be overcome through messaging. They represent different regimes: one willing to invest in national progress, the other demanding national decline under the guise of principle. Ultimately, each holds distinct definitions of what success looks like. These kinds of tensions are not unusual in political coalitions, but what makes them destabilizing is when they move from background differences to foreground demands. A coalition that promises incompatible outcomes simultaneously is not exercising power; it is refusing to choose how power will be used. And hard power politics requires choosing, not hedging or marketing campaigns.

Another fault line is civilizational. A significant portion of younger voters on the Right is animated by resolving questions of identity, cohesion, and national direction. Tackling civilizational problems like the question “What does it mean to be an American?” does not yield quick or easily measurable policy victories. Many young people don’t care for marginal gains; they want a fundamentally different trajectory. They seek mass deportations, an increase in marriage and fertility rates, a return to America’s Christian roots, justice and accountability for the corrupt, and more. They want to see power exercised in the service of the promises their parents and grandparents made to them: that the American Dream is real and that their lives are better than the generation that came before them.

However, the political system, particularly at the federal level, has been structurally oriented toward short-term outputs: discrete legislative wins, budget cycles, and regulatory actions within an election cycle. This creates a mismatch between what the growing part of the Right demands and what the system produces. Without visible signals of directional change, the perception of stagnation sets in, and with it, disillusionment. As a result, lower-propensity voters are less likely to turn out consistently if they feel that what they voted for is not materializing—a perception that matters more than any individual policy outcome.

The temptation, particularly among policy-oriented institutions and individuals, is to retreat into soft power politics: the belief that sufficiently refined policy proposals with rhetorical intensity will, in time, realign the system. It’s a comforting illusion, because it allows one to remain within the realm of ideas, insulated from the messiness of actual political contestation.

But a beautifully constructed policy proposal, no matter how compelling, requires a coalition capable of forcing it through a legislature and defending it against opposition. Without that, a policy idea remains what it always was: inert and ultimately irrelevant.

The political genius of Donald Trump was not that he abandoned ideas, but that he subordinated them to reality. He campaigned on what people wanted and, more importantly, on what no one else was willing to give them. Instead of beginning with a fully articulated policy architecture and trying to convince voters to accept it, Trump met voters where they were, listening to their frustrations, demands, and sense that the system had closed itself off from their demands. He then built outward from there.

Operating in this manner is deeply uncomfortable for legacy conservative institutions that are accustomed to thinking solely in terms of “principles.” But “principles” divorced from a constituency cannot elevate a movement; they give it a slow, painful death. And if the movement doesn’t die, it becomes dead weight, something to signal “seriousness” but in practice slowing the ability to move, to adapt, and to win. The truth is that a political movement that does not align, at least in substantial part, with what a majority of the country wants is not “principled” in any meaningful sense—it’s simply the preference of D.C. consultants and academics who want to impose their views upon the American people.

This does not mean conservatives have to abandon foundational ideals. But it does mean they must be tested regularly against reality. Conservatives should check themselves often, asking whether their current efforts will command allegiance, mobilize support, and then be executed. If not, they should quickly abandon them and focus their time on worthwhile matters.

From Argument to Authority

Voters on the Right are increasingly questioning whether anyone is truly willing to use power on their behalf. Opposition both outside of the Right and within it, especially those who pretend to put America first while governing in a way that puts America last, must be defeated.

The sooner it is acknowledged that we are in an era of political revolution, the sooner the necessary adjustments can be made. In politics, as in so much else, reality has a way of rewarding those who take authority seriously.

The alternative is to produce ever more sophisticated arguments, refine ever more detailed policies, and watch as those who have mastered the mechanics of power translate their own, often less coherent ideas into reality at the expense of the future prosperity of our children and grandchildren.

The Left has demonstrated a willingness to acquire and wield power in the service of managing America’s decline. The only remaining question is whether the Right will use its power to reverse course or continue to arrive too late, remain divided, and hesitate in the face of the contests that now define American political life.

The post The Return of Hard Power Politics appeared first on The American Mind.

Another week, another round of discourse on the idea that America is merely a “creedal” or propositional nation.

One of the thorny consequences of having a creed, of course, is the unavoidable conclusion that one must draw about those who refuse it: they are outside the body that holds the creed. If Justice Neil Gorsuch (following Vivek Ramaswamy and the Cato Institute a few months back) is correct that America is purely a creedal nation, doesn’t it necessarily follow that those in our midst who reject the creed are not Americans? Is Senator Tim Kaine not an American because he dissents from the doctrine of natural rights?

But merely professing a creed does not equate to being a member of a community. In Catholicism, adult converts (and godparents on behalf of baptized infants) recite the Nicene Creed as part of the sacramental liturgy of baptism. However, adult converts to the faith are also instructed in the Christian moral life—which concerns not just what one thinks about revealed truths, but also how one is to act as a member of Christ’s body.

In practice, it looks a lot like what we in America used to call “assimilation.” One joins a community—most of whose members have been raised in it from birth—as part of a web of families who work to maintain and pass on its identity and traditions. This is why it was not unusual for a convert before baptism to have his sincerity and commitment evaluated by a teacher, friends, and the pastor. Perhaps this is perfunctory these days, but it was not always so. Christian converts were once examined for their readiness to be killed by the Roman emperors rather than renounce their faith.

Likewise a convert to the American creed must necessarily leave behind his old nation and swear complete allegiance to the new one. Even under Justice Gorsuch’s creedal logic, a foreign-born person is not sufficiently American if he joins our workforce and sends a substantial amount of that benefit home in remittances, all the while retaining the option to choose the nation to which he will eventually pledge his loyalty. And what about an immigrant community that perpetrates systemic fraud on the taxpayer? Because that doesn’t sound very creedal either.

Considering the forthcoming Supreme Court decision on birthright citizenship that’s currently before Justice Gorsuch, is being born in a boutique American birthing center after your parents flew in from Shanghai, Mumbai, or Moscow a violation of the spirit of the American creed?

Of course, we all agree that America has a creed. But while understanding the creed as the founders understood it is a necessary part of being an American, it is not sufficient.

To return to the Christian analogy, the Nicene Creed is not a set of “first principles” from which the rest of Christian doctrine and life are elaborated. It is a basic set of conclusions arising from the multi-generational experience of particular communities of disciples trying to discern the fundamental articles of the faith and to practice living in light of them. One can make nothing of what the Nicene Creed really means without knowing the narrative of salvation history, first in the Bible and in Church history after the apostolic period.

Or imagine thinking you can enjoy baseball or know how it’s played only if you know and assent to the Major League Baseball Official Rules Book. That is ridiculous. You have to play baseball to know what baseball is. The rulebook is there to make sure you are playing it correctly, but baseball cannot be reduced to a rulebook. (Credit to Tim Gray of the Augustine Institute for this analogy.)

In the same sense, those who reduce America to being a creedal nation simply seem to imply that our country’s history, traditions, and mores, which would illuminate or limit their meaning and application, can be completely ignored.

The utility of such a view is that one can then nimbly elaborate all kinds of different and even violently incompatible ways of life from the founding principles without ever departing from the strict text of the creed. Any group of arrivals (of any size) can become American without regard to their integration into the existing community simply by reciting some phrases and asserting that they mean them.

But the creed cannot be separated from the specific character of the people who wrote it and lived by it. One has to be (or authentically become) a member of that community for the answers to mean something of significance. Just like the baseball rules book, the American creed cannot be understood apart from the historic character of the American people. Merely reciting the Declaration and the Preamble to the Constitution doesn’t accomplish that task, and it never will.

The cultural pressure that assimilated the waves of immigrants in the past did the heavy lifting of making those migrants Americans. Though that pressure was severe and regrettably violent at times, it was necessary in principle for immigrants to become Americans. Assimilation focused on forming the American character and teaching immigrants how to think about our rights and freedoms.

To assimilate the recent waves of those who have legally immigrated to our country, we must go beyond thinking of America as only a creedal nation. We need to act like Americans, not just assume that thinking like one is sufficient.

The post What the Hyper Creedalists Get Wrong About America appeared first on The American Mind.

The great Christian apologist and literary critic C.S. Lewis provides a surprising amount of moral and political wisdom despite not being a political thinker in any formal sense of the term. For example, the three lectures that form The Abolition of Man remain a must-read for understanding the crisis of our time, as well as the path to recovering the wisdom that will allow us to overcome it.

Without relying on divine revelation or biblical faith per se, Lewis takes aim at what he elsewhere calls “the poison of subjectivism,” and also makes a compelling defense of the existence of a moral consensus among mankind that transcends cultures, polities, and historical epochs. In the book’s final section, he provides a searing analysis of the profound tendency of the modern project “to conquer nature for the relief of man’s estate,” which leads to the temptation to conquer human nature in the name of illusory “progress”—that is, to abolish human beings once and for all.

As this example illustrates, in The Abolition of Man Lewis identifies and lays out the pathologies of the age with remarkable insight and clarity. He makes his prescience seem all too easy, precisely because it is in decisive respects the common sense of the matter. Indeed, our crisis might be defined by the very effort to expunge common sense and “right reason” about good and evil (recta ratio as Cicero called it) from the hearts and minds of modern men and women. The Abolition of Man reveals a Lewis who, while an amateur moral and political philosopher, puts his finger on essentials.

A quick perusal of Compelling Reason, a collection of Lewis’s “Essays on Ethics and Theology,” shows that The Abolition of Man does not stand alone as a contribution to first-rate moral and political reflection.

The essay “Why I Am Not a Pacifist” compellingly argues that pacifism not only has a “doubtful factual basis” but also ignores the “weight of authority both human and Divine” that stands against it, including the New Testament rightly understood. Another essay, “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment,” takes aim at an approach that severs punishment from just “desert,” and actually subverts justice by confusing deserved punishment with mere “revenge.” The “semblance of mercy” that informs it, Lewis argues, is “wholly false,” a sentimentalized substitute for both Christianity and right reason. In a final coup de grâce, Lewis exposes the paradox we see all around us: “Mercy, detached from Justice, grows unmerciful.”

Lewis’s most classically liberal essay (although it more deeply appeals to the twin sources of honor and self-respect), “Willing Slaves to the Welfare State,” sets its sights on a new oligarchy in the form of an increasingly unaccountable bureaucratic state, one evident at the time in Lewis’s England and the Western world more broadly. It diminishes human beings in the name of taking care of their manifold (and seemingly inexhaustible) “needs.” Renewing the theme of the third and final essay of The Abolition of Man, Lewis suggests that the thoroughly “planned” society, dominated by experts who have no special claim to moral and political wisdom, will turn excessive power over to sometimes “greedy, cruel and dishonest” men, and certainly imperfect ones. The concluding lines of the essay are at once apt and disturbing: “The more completely we are planned the more powerful they will be. Have we discovered some new reason why, this time, power should not corrupt as it has done before?”

Lewis is also a great guide for distinguishing true equality, consisting of intrinsic dignity and worth, from those misplaced substitutes that are inevitably corrupt and demeaning. Like Aristotle, Tocqueville, and Lincoln before him, Lewis distinguishes a noble conception of equality from the debasement that comes with every effort to transform moral and legal equality into a leveling and homogenizing egalitarianism. Tocqueville, for example, distinguishes true equality from a debased “passion for equality” that tears down the “great” rather than elevating the disadvantaged, the weak, and those striving for a higher level. Without ever having read Tocqueville (or so it seems), Lewis completely agrees with the French thinker. His most penetrating treatment of the problem of true and false equality can be found in a gem of an essay, the brief but wonderfully discerning “Equality,” which can be found in both Compelling Reason and another Lewis collection, Present Concerns.

In the essay, Lewis identifies with the democratic cause because he believes in “the Fall of Man,” not because he has undue confidence in the political potentialities of human nature. No human beings are so virtuous, so wise, or so good that they can or should rule others without an element of consent and reciprocity, and without the requisite constraints on “unchecked power.”

With a twinkle in his eye, Lewis agrees with Aristotle that some human beings are by nature “only fit to be slaves.” But he quickly adds, “I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.” Lincoln certainly agreed, and an argument can be made that Aristotle ultimately did too. The Greek philosopher defends “political rule,” or “ruling and being ruled in turn,” in contrast to despotism, the “rule of masters over slaves.” Aristotle may not have believed in original sin, but he readily acknowledged that the capacity for wickedness was inherent in human nature.

In the rest of this brief but scintillating essay, Lewis warns that equality can become poisonous when it is extended beyond its legitimate sphere. While “it would be wicked folly to restore…old inequalities on the legal or external plane,” he argues that “under the necessary covering of legal equality, the whole hierarchical dance and harmony of our deep and joyously spiritual inequalities should be” kept “alive.” In this way, Lewis deepens and enriches the best of liberalism by drawing on classical and Christian wisdom, the moral capital of the ages, so to speak. Without it, equality will readily undergo “diabolical” distortions, as Lewis makes clear in “Screwtape Proposes a Toast,” the delightful postscript to The Screwtape Letters that he finished writing in the year before his death in 1963.

In the speech that accompanies his toast “at the annual dinner of the Tempters’ Training College for young Devils,” the senior devil Screwtape reflects on the paucity of gastronomic delights—human souls!—for Satan’s minions in an age of profound spiritual mediocrity. The “lukewarm casserole of Adulterers” is hardly a culinary delight, and “great sinners” and “great Saints” are increasingly hard to find. Much of the human race, alas, has been reduced “to the level of ciphers.” But Screwtape finds solace in the promise of envy and unhinged egalitarianism in a democratic age.

Screwtape points out that democracy has become much more (and less) than a tolerably good way of organizing a political community, becoming a leveling claim that “I’m as good as you” whatever I do or say. In this connection, Screwtape reminds the young diabolic tempters never to mention Aristotle’s question from Book V of the Politics “whether ‘democratic behavior’ means the behavior that democracies like or the behavior that will preserve a democracy.” To remind democratic man of that question is to suggest to them “that these need not be the same.” Screwtape also states that while envy is as old as the human race, “the incantatory use of the word democratic” gives it a deceptive cover. The “fear of being undemocratic” saps both virtue and initiative and undermines authentic individuality.

One of Lewis’s deepest insights is that a radicalized, hyper-egalitarian democracy can more efficiently fulfill the age-old dream of the tyrant to level, flatten, debase, and tyrannize. Here too Aristotle helps. Screwtape alludes to Book V of the Politics where Aristotle gives an account of one tyrant instructing another tyrant about how to preserve his rule by lopping off heads of corn in a field to the same level. “Cut them down to a level; all slaves, all ciphers, all nobodies. All equals.” A debased democracy can do the work of tyranny through a “tyranny” all its own. Screwtape also makes clear that the ultimate goal of their diabolical efforts is not only the degradation of society but also the damnation of souls. Salvation is the true aim of all souls, including democratic souls. Via Screwtape, Lewis’s artful instruction is complete.

In delightful and charming literary forms, C.S. Lewis conveys moral and political insights that remain all the more true for being so profoundly countercultural. I recommend his writings and insights to those who are tired of the loud voices that dominate the public square and who wish to think about politics and the soul freed from contemporary blinders and distractions. C.S. Lewis the “political philosopher” remains well worth exploring, not to mention discovering, as it were, for the first time.

The post The Moral and Political Wisdom of C.S. Lewis appeared first on The American Mind.

The British political landscape has undergone a seismic shift following the May local elections. A map once dominated by the Labour Party’s familiar red has been dramatically redrawn, signaling widespread rejection of the political establishment across the U.K. This was not just a protest vote—it pointed to a complete collapse of the party in areas that were once considered its safest and most reliable strongholds.

Labour lost control of over 30 councils, watching its majorities disappear in traditional heartlands like Gateshead, Sunderland, and South Tyneside—areas where the party had held power for nearly half a century. Across the capital, Labour’s solid red blanket has been replaced by a multicolored patchwork of parties. The party lost 11 boroughs, including flagship councils like Westminster and Wandsworth, which were seen as key pillars of its 2022 resurgence. In East London, Havering saw a historic shift: once dominated by resident-led groups, Labour was swept out by an insurgent force: Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

By gaining over 1,400 council seats and taking control of 14 local authorities—including a commanding 39-seat majority in Havering—Reform has disrupted the liberal metropolitan consensus, signaling that the populist surge may become a permanent feature of British politics.

The scale of Labour’s defeat was most evident in Wales, where all 96 seats in the Senedd (the Welsh Parliament) were up for election. The party’s representation plummeted from 44 seats to just nine. Plaid Cymru surged to become the largest party with 43 seats, while Reform finished second and Labour in third, which had governed the Senedd since its establishment in 1999. In a historic moment, First Minister Eluned Morgan became the first sitting head of government in modern British history to lose her seat. Labour’s defeat ended a 104-year streak of it being the dominant party in Wales—the party had topped every U.K.-wide general election in the country since 1922.

Labour’s total collapse in Wales, coupled with widespread losses in England, underscores a widening gulf between party leadership and its traditional working-class base. For decades, the party assumed these communities were its loyal foundation, an assumption now thoroughly shattered.

In the U.S., when reliably blue states flip, it is often because working-class voters feel abandoned by the party in power. The same dynamic is emerging in Britain. The rise of Plaid Cymru in Wales, the Greens in London, and Reform across England shows that the public is no longer willing to accept a two-party system that many believe has failed them.

From the valleys of South Wales to the suburbs of the West Midlands, the message was the same: the managed decline offered by the centrist consensus was no longer acceptable. The British public is turning to alternatives on both the Left and Right that promise radical change. While Plaid Cymru offered a vision of Welsh self-determination, Reform UK offered a platform of national sovereignty and cultural preservation. Labour, caught in the middle, stood only for preserving its own dwindling power.

There are several reasons behind Labour’s decline, but perhaps none are more potent than the issue of immigration. For many voters in the northern heartlands and Welsh valleys, the government’s failure to control the U.K.’s borders has become a symbol of its broader inability to govern. While Labour campaigned on a platform of “smashing the gangs” and reducing net migration, the reality on the ground told a different story. The timing could not have been worse for Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer: the election coincided with new immigration data revealing a grim milestone—200,000 illegal migrants had entered the country since 2018. 

Migration Watch reported that of these illegal migrants, fewer than 8,000 had been deported. The remaining 192,000 could cost the country an estimated £65 billion over their lifetimes, a figure calculated based on the findings of a 2024 Dutch study on the long-term fiscal impact of asylum seekers.

Many British people have had enough of both Labour and the Conservatives—often called the “uniparty”—for letting tens of thousands of violent men into the country and housing them among families. The public is fed up with the crime, killings, and sexual assaults committed by some of these men. There is widespread anger at state-sanctioned diversity, which has led to rapid demographic change and sectarian tensions on the streets. People are also outraged that citizens who voice legitimate criticism of mass migration have been convicted and imprisoned. These policies have created an era of asymmetrical multiculturalism: minority groups are encouraged to celebrate their heritage and culture while the majority white population is made to feel uncomfortable about its own. The public did not vote for these changes, and they are now turning to the parties that speak forcefully about stopping them. 

Reform tapped into this swell of frustration, framing the local election as a referendum on a broken Britain. The party’s leader, Nigel Farage, argued that Labour was either unwilling or unable to stop the constant inflow of channel migrants, which resulted in sharp electoral gains for Reform in communities most affected by immigration. Reform’s message was clear and effective: Labour’s progressive metropolitan wing stands in direct opposition to the socially conservative views of the working class. Although Starmer adopted a performative “tough on immigration” stance, deep divisions within Labour prevented the party from forming any decisive policy. This left an opening for Reform to gain ground.

In her resignation speech, Eluned Morgan acknowledged that the party must “heed the anger” of the electorate and “change course.” She admitted that Labour had lost its connection to the working class, a sentiment echoed by veteran Labour MP Ian Lavery, who warned that the party faced “annihilation,” and could even cease to exist. Several high-profile Labour politicians, including former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, publicly called for the prime minister to resign.

This is a crisis of Labour’s own making. While the party was focusing on net-zero targets, hate speech laws, and diversity quotas, ordinary voters were left struggling with basic needs: affordable housing, access to schools, and timely medical care—all problems exacerbated by immigration. 

The 2026 local elections delivered an unmistakable warning to Downing Street: Labour can no longer rely on its traditional heartlands. The historic defeat in Wales, the loss of the Senedd, and the collapse of the Red Wall in England all point to a widening disconnect between the party and its core voters. Unless Labour aligns its national policies with the priorities of its traditional base—especially on immigration, border security, and crime—the 2026 results will be seen not as a temporary setback, but as the start of a potentially irreversible decline for a party that once defined British politics. 

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