The Brion McClanahan Author & Historian Blog

You can’t keep the Struassians down. In fact, they want to define what it means to be a “conservative,” and they might just be successful, unfortunately. This doesn’t mean I don’t agree with them on several issues. But their insistence on “national conservatism” presents major problems, not the least of which is their entire “nationalist” worldview. Calhoun said he was a “conservative” because he was …more

Every so often, Victor Davis Hanson writes a piece that gets a few things right. Take for example his recent effort at American Greatness, “The Sovietization of American Life.” Hanson describes the wholesale destruction of traditional American society as a byproduct of the Marxist drift of American culture over the last half century. What he doesn’t get is that his hero Abraham Lincoln was partly …more

A lot of people on the right are banking on a “red wave” this November to turn the tide of American politics. Uncle Joe’s approval ratings are tanking, and the Democrats don’t seem to have a clue about what is causing the worst inflation since the 1970s. Americans are tired of the culture war, tired of woke stupidity, tired of mental illness being called normal, …more

If you listen to progressives, “originalism” is nothing more than a crackpot conservative way to discriminate against minorities through “bad” court decisions. Or maybe it’s just to overturn what they consider to be “good” court decisions. Either way, the fear is that conservatives will scrap their ability to legislate from the bench. Most progressives believe that “originalism” wasn’t an intellectual movement until the 1980s. But …more

A listener asked if I thought Ron DeSantis was wrong about Alexander Hamilton. Most people are wrong about Alexander Hamilton, particularly those who consider him to be the most important American in the founding generation. He was certainly driven, intelligent, and patriotic, but he was also a duplicitous liar who laid the foundation for the destruction of the federal republic established during the American War …more

Yesterday was Memorial Day. Most Americans don’t know three facts about the holiday: 1. It originated in the South to honor Confederate (and Union) dead. 2. The day became an officially recognized holiday because GAR commander John Logan copied the Southern event in 1868. 3. John Logan helped push through the legislation that prohibited blacks from living in Illinois in 1853. In other words, the …more

Nikole Hannah-Jones is clearly a “neo-Confederate.” Why? Because she had the audacity to claim that the War wasn’t fought to end slavery. Gasp! You can almost hear the head of every righteous cause mythologist exploding. How dare this faux historian/journalist claim that the War was not about slavery. And she not only said it, she TRIPLED DOWN on the assertion, meaning she really believes it. …more

The left wants more “democracy.” You see, they think more “democracy” means better government. But what does that term mean, and more importantly, what if more “democracy” meant worse government? Calhoun certainly thought it would lead to that, but you have to understand how he defined “democracy.” To most eighteenth century Europeans–democracy didn’t exist anywhere else–democracy was the opposite of hereditary aristocracy and monarchy. In …more

During the 2020 Summer of Love, progressives were orgiastic about tearing down traditional American society. The low hanging fruit had always been Confederate history. 2020 was just a continuation of 2015 and 2017. Of course, no one could identify how a school named for Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley affected police officers in Minnesota, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that the woke …more

While most American conservatives have embraced “Let’s Go Brandon!” the problems of executive abuse run deeper than the drooler in chief. Real American conservatives should have been chanting “Let’s Go Brandon” to virtually every president over the last one hundred years. Not even the “conservative” Reagan should get a pass, but he does. In fact, you could say that most American presidents should have been …more