The Unwinding

Reagan cared more about the functions of self-government than his most ideological supporters. He knew how to persuade and when to compromise. But after he was gone, and the Soviet Union not long after him, Free America lost the narrative thread. Without Reagan’s smile and the Cold War’s clarity, its vision grew darker and more extreme. Its spirit

The oldest conflict in American politics is the one between individualism and centralism. Reagan changed the terms by inverting them: the descendants of Jefferson’s yeoman farmers, with their desire for independence, became sturdy car-company executives and investment bankers yearning to breathe free of big government. The heirs of Hamilton’s arist

Sam was trying to buy a seat in Congress so that Congress might finally begin to address an existential risk to humanity.

Yet the weakness of the moderates’ influence, this time on the Democratic side, was quickly revealed. Over the next few months, the news was monopolized by partisans on the left, who tried to redefine their party as champions of expanded and progressive government—with new entitlements for families, a “green new deal” for the world, a debt jubilee