Scott McConnell, Author at The Spectator

Tuesday

March 10, 2026

I spent 25 years fighting neocons. Then Trump became one

Like everyone, I’m glued to the news coming out of Iran. I’m experiencing some depression, as one might, upon realizing that much of what one has worked on for 25 years has suddenly gone up in smoke, destroyed when Donald Trump discovered he was pretty much a neocon after all. Like everyone else, I have no idea what will happen in Iran, whether Trump’s bombing and perhaps breaking apart a very unpopular regime will lead to something better, or just chaos, a failed state spitting out a cohort of embittered men.

Thursday

March 13, 2025

Scott McConnell

Neoconservative moment

In younger MAGA circles, “neocon” is a term of derision. It’s not always clear what twenty-somethings understand by the word, though its rough connotations are plain enough: “globalist” (often paired with “neocon”) and “forever wars.” The latter is what the US has fought continuously since the Soviet Union stood down thirty-five years ago — at great cost with no victories. Neoconservatism was the dominant strain of elite conservatism in the US from the Reagan era until fairly recently. So the new MAGA outlook might seem like a decisive turnabout in political and intellectual fashion. In some ways it is. Donald Trump mocked the neoconservatives’ most infamous project, the Iraq War, during his 2016 campaign and won nonetheless.

Friday

September 28, 2018

Scott McConnell

Why the Ryder Cup is great

I made no time for the Blasey Ford testimony, and never do for the NFL, but the TV will be on for Ryder Cup this weekend, the greatest show in golf. The bi-annual Europe v. America spectacle is being held at Le Golf National, a relatively new course outside of Paris this year, which seems odd because golf has few roots in France. But tens of thousands of French people will be going, and tens thousands more will journey from Britain and Ireland and the continent. Since 1979, when our Ryder Cup opponents became European (because postwar, the US was beating the British-Irish team too consistently) the Euro team has become one of the few well-regarded symbols of a united Europe, in counterpoint to the sovereignty threatening bureaucrats of Brussels.