On the evidence we have, the meritocratic ideal ends up being just as undemocratic as the old emphasis on inheritance and tradition, and it forges an elite that has an aristocracy’s vices (privilege, insularity, arrogance) without the sense of duty, self-restraint and noblesse oblige that WASPs at their best displayed. Ross Douthat Read Quote
I think that ultimately the Christian vision of sexuality – the New Testament vision – is not compatible with same-sex marriage. And I don’t see a way to change that without entering into a kind of deception, basically. Ross Douthat Read Quote
When a newspaper columnist wants to write about a novel, the rule is that you’re supposed to have a ‘hook,’ an excuse, a timely reason to bring up the book in question. Ross Douthat Read Quote
When I started reading George R.R. Martin’s ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ novels, it was the late 1990s and obsessing over fantasy novels was (if painful memory serves) a super-nerdy thing to do. Ross Douthat Read Quote
Our great national drama was a westward expansion that conquered a native population rather than coexisting with it. Ross Douthat Read Quote
If we had a populist president who didn’t alienate so many persuadable voters, who took full advantage of a strong economy, and who had the political cunning displayed by Modi or Benjamin Netanyahu or Viktor Orban, the liberal belief in a hidden left-of-center mandate might be exposed as a fond delusion. Ross Douthat Read Quote
In general, I think that not voting is a perfectly honorable and civic-minded course in an election with two options that you consider unacceptable. I think casting a protest vote is a totally acceptable course. I have done both in my life. Ross Douthat Read Quote
In the end the recrudescence of racism on the right is conservatism’s problem to solve, and it has to be solved independently of whatever liberals and leftists happen to be saying. But the task of solving it still gets a little harder with every nonsense charge or bad-faith accusation. Ross Douthat Read Quote
When it comes to explaining the phenomenon of right-wing populism, liberals are likely to argue both that the populist era has exposed a darkness always present at the heart of conservative politics and that a toxic, post-truth new-media ecosystem has greased the skids for President Trump, Brexit and the rest. Ross Douthat Read Quote
