How Yoram Hazony Gets Abraham Lincoln, the Declaration, and the Constitution Wrong

The American conservative movement is at a crossroads. Should it hold fast to the traditions of Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley Jr., or should it adopt a more nationalist view of politics?

Yoram Hazony is squarely on the side of the latter. Conservatism: A Rediscovery, his latest book, is an attempt to steer the Right toward what he calls National Conservatism, a more tribal and traditionalist iteration of our political philosophy. While right-wing liberalism has served us well in some forms, it has allowed the Left to accelerate the deterioration of our cultural norms. The movement must return, he claims, to the classical Anglo-American conservative tradition, which will provide an antidote to our society’s moral decay, caused by left-wing indulgence of hooliganism.