The National Affairs Podcast

<p>American society has become radically permissive of some serious vices in the past few years. Drugs, gambling, and pornography are easier to access legally than ever before. A backlash against this permissiveness has...

<p>In principle, federal agency missions are set when agencies are created, and so remain rooted in the ambitions of the president and the Congress who decided they were necessary. But in reality, political change tends...

<p>Higher education has a civic mission. The public knows that, but faculty and administrators seem to have lost sight of it. Instead of transmitting shared civic principles, universities often frame civics through...

<p>Has artificial intelligence advanced to the point where robots possess creative abilities and impulses? If so, or if that moment comes, what could it mean for humanity, and what would it demand of us? These are...

<p>As the American republic approaches the 250th anniversary of her birth, conservatives face a serious paradox: How can we ever hope to preserve a revolutionary foundation? The thought of Russell Kirk offers an...

<p>Whether it’s foreign-policy hawks on the right, cultural conservatives on the left, or fiscal conservatives anywhere, the reductive binary of today’s electoral options can be deeply frustrating for intraparty...

<p>The left in America has long accused the right of advancing minority rule and rejecting the principles of democracy. Though there is some truth to that charge, it applies as much to the left itself as it does to the...

<p>Technology is a force for change in the world, both positive and negative. Its ability to rapidly transform our way of life poses an inherent challenge to families. If conservatives wish to restore the family as the...

<p>At first glance, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Russell Kirk do not have all that much in common. Yet it is striking that King and Kirk converged on certain first principles that rightfully mark King himself as part of...

<p>Democracy is a central feature of Democrats’ 2024 electoral campaign. The party has worked to present its proposals on that front as designed to reject Donald Trump’s authoritarian narcissism and make government more...

<p>In a disturbing development, assisted suicide and euthanasia have become more prevalent across the West in recent decades. Government and health authorities are encouraging voluntary death, even for patients who do...

<p>The chaos at the border in recent years has cast into stark relief one of the central issues surrounding illegal immigration: its fiscal costs. Unfortunately, most discussions on the subject tend to be filled with...

<p>Politics requires building coalitions in order to win elections. For those on the right, this means there is no alternative but to pursue some kind of fusionism among its competing elements. A revitalized fusionism...

<p>The emergence of generative artificial intelligence in the last few years has drawn a growing chorus of advocates offering proposals for how to regulate this new technology. Many of them want to treat AI as an...

<p>The textbooks most commonly used in high-school history classes are badly deficient. These books, which shape the rising generation’s perception of the country they are inheriting, often leave out the core ideas that...