Edmund burke

Addressing the question of whether now is the time for counterrevolution rather than conservation, I will take “counterrevolution” to mean the idea that all-out political and cultural war is what the moment requires, not the alleged conservative gradualism or restraint that those crying out for such war detest. (There are a variety of factions that march under different banners — nationalists, populists, integralists, MAGA. And while there are meaningful differences between these troupes, the shadows of their banners overlap like the shaded part of a Venn diagram this idea of counterrevolutionary war. For brevity’s sake I’ll call them the “war party.”) I think this framing is part of the problem. I am all in favor of counterrevolutionary war where necessary.

President Trump surprised some on Saturday when he shared a video from Business Insider explaining that billionaires have amassed half-a-trillion dollars during the coronavirus pandemic as millions face unemployment. A conventional, supply-sider Republican president of the past would have never harped on about income inequality, especially not in an economic recession. But Trump bucks conventions. He voiced his approval of the video in his usual exclamatory style: ‘I actually agree with this. Too much income disparity. Changes must be made, and soon!’ Inevitably, that tweet drew criticism from free-market fundamentalists within the Republican party. Some compared his statement to the socialist rhetoric coming from the American left. But Trump is right.

The conservative legal movement has again been bludgeoned. The culprit, as has far too often been the case, is once more the Supreme Court’s most mercurial chief justice, John Roberts. In June Medical Services LLC v. Russo, a 5-4 Court majority enjoined Louisiana’s enforcement of its law that would require abortionists to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of a prenatal abattoir. The Court’s four liberals, ever-reliable in their outcome-oriented efforts to further the progressive political agenda, wrote for a pro-abortion plurality. Roberts, for his part, wrote a separate opinion concurring in the judgment — notwithstanding the fact he dissented in a virtually analogous Texas case, Whole Women’s Health v.