Conservative jurisprudence has been casting about for over 40 years, trying to find an anchoring ground or even a stable definition of “originalism.” But with the advent of Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court and the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), overruling Roe v. Wade (1973), the tagline for conservative jurisprudence might now be, “Conservative Jurisprudence: Seeking Justice by Changing the Subject.” And the mission statement: “We carefully, and steadily, steer around those questions of moral substance that stand at the heart of our gravest cases.”
In the Dobbs case, Kavanaugh took his bearings by noting that the country was deeply divided on this contentious matter. One notable sign, he said, was that “many pro-life advocates forcefully argue that a fetus is a human life”—”forcefully argue,” as though there is no long-settled, empirical truth on this matter, found in all of the textbooks of embryology, as though there never could be a truth of the matter. In other words, in this mode of conservative jurisprudence, the judges must affect not to know the plainest objective truth that bears on the practical judgment here.
2025 was a year of many milestones and achievements for our small but mighty team.
In 2026 Per Capita plans to:
• Expand our team to enable us to work on more projects
• Expand our work on diversity to enhance social cohesion
• Ramp up our tax reform advocacy
• Explore new avenues in affordable housing, worker’s rights and safe technology
We’re a small team but we have influence where it counts – with our government
and policy makers. But we can’t do it without funding. Please consider making a
tax deductible donation to to help us to continue this work.
Dig into bold ideas for a fairer, more productive Australia. Long summer days are perfect for catching up on the books, podcasts, and deep-dive content that challenge us to imagine a better economic future. Whether you’re by the beach, on the train, or hiding from the heat indoors, here’s a curated list of Georgist-friendly reads, […]
The Trump Administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) provides a rare official statement on the main threats facing the United States, as well as lays out strategies to address them. Typically released once per presidential term, this administration’s NSS focuses on how the U.S. can reestablish its military and economic might in a world that’s clearly moved well beyond the post-Cold War era. As stated in its introduction, the document aims to be a “roadmap to ensure that America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history, and the home of freedom on earth.”
Part of advocating a foreign policy of “principled realism” is pointing out how Europe, an important U.S. partner going back centuries, has been actively rejecting its historic ways of life.
The Trump NSS details several serious challenges the continent faces, including economic stagnation. However, that issue is overshadowed by the impact of mass immigration, which is transforming Europe by “creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.” The NSS forecasts that if current trends persist, Europe may become unrecognizable within two decades, as it is at risk of “civilizational erasure.”
Northwestern University recently struck a deal with the United States Department of Education (ED). The university will pay a $75 million fine and guarantee there will be no more Jew-hating on the quad and no race discrimination in the admissions office or on faculty hiring committees. Then, federal money will start to flow again. But can Northwestern be trusted to honor its end of the bargain?
It is honestly amazing to be noticed, even if negatively, by someone of the eminence of Steven Pinker. I respect Pinker because (among other reasons) Steve Sailer, whom I also respect, respects him and has explained in terms I can understand why Pinker’s work is worthy of respect.
Pinker and I have one major disagreement (and I assume many others), which is brought out in his tweet: I have a foreboding sense of apprehension about the future; Pinker by contrast wrote two whole books arguing that now is the greatest time to be alive. What I recall of them is that Pinker’s case centers around, first, a decline in violence. Which I don’t doubt is true in many respects, though as Sailer points out, it can be made easier or harder to argue the world is less violent than it used to be depending on when you start the clock. Second, Pinker enthuses about various advances of science and technology, much of which I would have to concede, especially since I am a beneficiary and consumer of so much of it.
Reducing energy use is the most common sacrifice Australians are making to afford their rent or mortgage, while many are limiting driving, skipping meals and delaying medical appointments, a new national survey has exposed.
Everybody’s Home’s report ‘Breaking Point’ captures the results of a survey of more than 1,100 Australians. Of those surveyed:
15 December 2025: Free Palestine Melbourne is appalled and deeply saddened by the massacre at Bondi beach. We extend our condolences to the family and friends of the victims.
This is to announce that the Past & Present Reading Group will be meeting to discuss, on a weekly basis and starting in February 2026, our next text which is:
If you only read social media, you’d think the conservative legal movement is in dire straits. Politicians lash out at judges and at the Federalist Society. Some on the Right grumble that originalism has yielded little more than panel discussions and law‑review symposia. In this very forum, friends suggest that our moment demands a new “constitutional morality,” a more ambitious jurisprudence that will somehow arrest civilizational decline.
Count me unconvinced. The short answer to “What comes after originalism?” is more originalism, plus better policy. The movement’s future lies in consolidating the gains of the last decade, deepening our commitment to the Constitution’s text and original public meaning, and building political and cultural institutions that can address the “crises of belonging, fertility, and meaning.” Courts have an important—but limited—role in that project. Asking judges to save the country is not just unrealistic; it’s a category error.
Chile rarely captures sustained American attention. It is distant, orderly, and often portrayed as a reliable outpost of stability in South America. But this image is vanishing—and the shift matters far more to the United States than many realize.
Chile is a crucial democratic partner in a region where China and Russia are expanding their influence. Its economy is tightly linked to U.S. markets, its copper and lithium reserves are central to American technological and defense supply chains, and its politics influences the balance of the entire Southern Cone.
The country features a two-round system for its presidential elections, the second round of which will be held on December 14. Two candidates are running: one from the Right and the other from the far left-wing. A Communist victory in Chile—or a prolonged period of instability—would affect U.S. geopolitical, economic, and security interests.
But the deeper reason Chile matters to Americans is that its current crisis illustrates a broader lesson: economic success without a strong cultural foundation cannot sustain a free society. The United States faces its own internal cultural fractures. What is happening in Chile is not only a regional concern—it is a cautionary tale.
To understand how Chile arrived at this fragile moment, one must look at its origins and the long-standing tensions that have shaped its national identity.
Today, Judge Paula Xinis ordered Kilmar Abrego Garcia released from immigration detention, granting his petition for habeas corpus. This is a signal ruling, though not the end of Abrego Garcia's journey through the looking glass world of a lawless executive branch's treatment of him.
By Andrew Purves Growing up in Hong Kong in the 1970s, I remember the noise and disruption of the Mass Transit Railway (MTR) construction. Cut-and-cover tunnelling tore up roads, while new property developments rose above the stations. These developments would reshape Hong Kong’s urban landscape — little did I know that I would be writing […]
Every few years, someone tells us the United States is not really the child of the long tradition of republicanism, English common law, colonial self-government, the natural rights principles enshrined in our Declaration, and the debates involving the framing of a new government that transpired in Philadelphia after the war. No, we’re subtly led to assume that our political father is someone else entirely: this time, it’s the Haudenosaunee—the Iroquois Confederacy.
Ken Burns’s new PBS documentary on the American Revolution leans into that claim, suggesting in the first episode’s preamble that the very idea of our Union was inspired by the Iroquois. By subtly juxtaposing the Iroquois and the Founding Fathers, viewers are invited to believe that if they thought Franklin, Washington, and company fathered America, then they’ve been building the wrong monuments.
Burns tells a vivid story. But it’s also a deeply misleading one—and the very treaty on which his opening narrative depends says almost the opposite of what he needs it to say.
The scene in question is the 1744 Lancaster treaty council. Representatives of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia met with Iroquois leaders to settle land disputes and keep them allied against the French. During the talks, an Iroquois speaker did just as Burns relates—namely, he advised the colonial governors to live at peace with one another and act together as the Iroquois nations did. But the colonial reply—effectively omitted by Burns—matters just as much.
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.
In the first part of my extended reflection on the character of conservatism, I warned that the American Right is confronted by a “pseudo-Rightist culture of repudiation” that in important respects mirrors the intellectual and political Left. The crude white nationalism and vociferous anti-Semitism of the so-called “groypers,” who delight in the nasty, transgressive utterings of the internet chameleon Nick Fuentes, present the most recent example of that phenomenon.
On another front, a spirit of ingratitude dominates in certain precincts of the Right. There is a marked tendency to dismiss even the most admirable conservative wisdom of the past as outdated, irrelevant, or worse. A young critic of mine at The American Conservative, who writes very much in that dismissive spirit, accuses me of making “rote” appeals to the likes of Burke and Churchill, as if deep immersion in the thought and action of these two great conservatives can only be formulaic and irrelevant.
But a conservatism that forgets the most capacious meaning of the social contract, the enduring bond that connects the living to the dead and the yet to be born, and the multiple reasons for gratitude to our noble if imperfect forebears—Burkean themes par excellence—has lost essential bearings, and will rather quickly lose its soul.
*All clips used in this interview are from the film, ‘‘The Encampments,” and are credited to Watermelon Pictures and BreakThrough Media*
The ongoing genocide in Gaza has become a litmus test of institutional integrity. When a university denies the reality of Israel’s brutality, it reveals complicity with the genocidal regime’s actions. To then misrepresent campus dissent over institutional investment in the Zionist entity as illegitimate — or even “antisemitic” — makes it clear that that these institutions are invested in the existence of Israeli apartheid and genocide.
On the final episode of Dollars & Sense for 2025, Greg and Elinor discuss why it’s a time for bravery in our economic policy-making and whether rate hikes are on the way in 2026.
This discussion was recorded on Thursday 11 December.
For half a decade, the Right has debated “free market fundamentalism.” This phenomenon is also known as “zombie Reaganism,” “libertarian neoconservatism,” and “neoliberalism.” Whatever you call it, it never happened. That is to say, the reduction in government expenditure and size that Reaganites promised and liberals feared turned out to be a mirage. What happened instead is that, starting in the 1980s, both parties set the country on a course toward Total Boomer Luxury Communism (TBLC).
TBLC is driving every aspect of American decline—from skyrocketing national debt and the erosion of our defense industrial base to the despair of young people. It’s not the only reason for the decline, to be sure, but it’s a major part of the problem. Yet TBLC has been entirely obscured from view.
The essence of TBLC is that it redistributes wealth from younger families and workers to seniors, who are on average much richer. America has achieved the Marxist paradise of hunting in the morning, fishing in the afternoon, rearing cattle in the evening, and criticizing after dinner. Only it looks more like golf in the morning, horseback riding in the afternoon, drinks at the social club in the evening, and a restful night’s sleep in a million-dollar home—all thanks to the largesse of the U.S. government.
Within 48 hours of the United Nations Security Council approving US President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Gaza on 17th November, Israel launched several airstrikes across Gaza that killed 28 people, mostly women and children, and injured over 70 others. In the same time period, Israel bombed numerous locations in Lebanon, including a Palestinian refugee camp that killed 13 people, and Prime Minister Netanyahu, wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, toured parts of Syria illegally occupied by Israel. In this context, the latest overtures towards peace by Western, Arab, and Israeli leaders at the Security Council are resoundingly hollow.
The Trump Administration recently released an extremely promising National Security Strategy (NSS)—but the same cannot be said about the proposed FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
The House and Senate’s compromise NDAA, which was published on Sunday night, appears to be in tension with the goals of the NSS. While the National Security Strategy prioritizes a hemispheric defense of the American homeland, the NDAA locks decision makers into maintaining unnecessary overseas troop levels. Despite the stated aims of the NSS, Congress seems to be looking to safeguard the national security priorities and infrastructure of previous eras.
Restricting the drawdown of troops stationed overseas, increasingly murky foreign entrenchment through legally binding efforts to sell arms, and dubious clauses requiring congressional approval at every turn all serve to bind the commander in chief’s hands. All of this reeks of a shadowy order desperately trying to maintain the status quo at the expense of the will of the people who elected Donald Trump in 2024.
