At the end of an extremely alarming week, the most alarming development is prob Trump firing the Chairman of the JCs & heads of the Navy and Air Force, along with the top lawyers for the Army, Navy, & Air Force. Those are the people who will tell a POTUS "you can't do that." 1/4 Imagine, for example, the events of J6 unfolding in a reality where Trump orders troops to stop the certification of Joe Biden's win in the 2020 election. Or Trump invokes the Insurrection Act to "quell" protests and orders troops to fire on crowds. 2/4

I've gotten some push-back from people saying I'm being unfair -- even guilty of lying -- in saying (here:

https://twitter.com/DamonLinker/status/1666857405362188311?s=20

) that Patrick Deneen favors the "violent" overthrow of liberalism (note that I didn't say "the government"). 1/7 Does Deneen explicitly say in his new book, “To accomplish what I want, you should go participate in civil violence directed against liberal institutions and elites.” No. But this is what he does do: .... 2/7

To be clear: This is a nicely written, even-handed profile of a very well-connected guy who just published a book advocating the violent overthrow of liberalism in the United States. 1/8

politi.co/43rNMF2 via @politico Deneen on liberalism: "No tyranny lasts forever. Despotic regimes can persist for a time, sometimes too long and against reason, but all despotisms eventually fall due to some combination of internal corruption and external opposition..." 2/8

THREAD: Today I launch "Looking Left," a newsletter devoted to the analysis and criticism of so-called "woke" trends. 1/14

damonlinker.substack.com/p/welcome-to-l… As I define it, "wokeism" is the effort by progressives to take ideological control of institutions within civil society and use those positions to mandate that their moral outlook be adopted throughout the broader culture. 2/14

THREAD: I'm thrilled to announce that I'm relaunching my Substack today. Its new title going forward will be "Notes from the Middleground." 1/6 damonlinker.substack.com/publish/post/1… I'm proud of the work I've done these past nine months at "Eyes on the Right," and that work will continue. I expect the bulk of my writing will still appear in that newsletter going forward. 2/6 damonlinker.substack.com/s/eyes-on-the-…

THREAD: Today I wrote about why news of mass shootings -- in Buffalo, Uvalde, and now Tulsa -- lead me to despair rather than anger. Anger wants to do something. Despair is a response to a feeling of futility. 1/11

damonlinker.substack.com/p/the-real-rea… But just yesterday @DouthatNYT wrote a NYT column in which he explicitly proclaimed himself "not interested in futility" and proposed some "simple" policies that might save some lives. I urge you to read his column to see what they are. 2/11 nytimes.com/2022/06/01/opi…

THREAD:

Yesterday was my last day at The Week—and today I have two exciting announcements. First, I’m going to Substack! Unlike those who have made the move after one kind of mainstream-media cancellation or another, I’m doing so to put my “Eyes on the Right” full time. 1/10 This marks a return to the kind of writing and analysis I did in “The Theocons” and “The Religious Test.” There was some of that in my columns at The Week, but chasing and responding to headlines too often got in the way. Not any longer. 2/10

A thread about the implications of last Sunday's election in Hungary and the French presidential election coming up over the next few weeks (first round this Sunday, second round on April 24). 1/17 Earlier this week I wrote a column about Viktor Orban's sweeping victory. My argument: This is bad, but this isn't mainly a story about a stolen election, the consolidation of authoritarianism/dictatorship, etc., as many liberals are claiming. 2/17 theweek.com/democrats/1012…

This thread deserves some kind of award for the most reckless thing tweeted in the English-speaking world today. That people who should know better are retweeting it with criticism makes it much worse. 1/

https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1499088993736138754

In the current situation there is already a non-negligible chance the US and NATO are going to end up in a shooting war with a nuclear power simply through a series of escalatory provocations and miscalculations. We don't need cheerleaders on the sidelines egging it on. 2/

Five Thesis on Afghanistan:

1. It’s always possible to find things to criticize when events go worse than one might have hoped. But this is the reality Joe Biden faced: The Trump administration negotiated with the Taliban for American withdrawal by May 1, 2021. Biden pushed it back a few months, both because of logistical challenges and because he hoped it would go well enough to have withdrawal folded in a positive way into 20th anniversary stories about 9/11.

@DarrenJBeattie Interesting thread. Velkley’s Strauss isn’t quite mine, though it’s much closer to mine than most of the other Strausses out there. I also have immense respect for Heidegger as a philosopher, though I side with Strauss against him. I’d like to explain why. 1/22 @DarrenJBeattie I’d summarize Velkley’s position on Strauss as follows: The city is the natural starting point for philosophy because it reveals itself as a whole—a kind of cosmos, a moral order that makes sense of everything, and thus can satisfy eros. 2/22

Here’s a thread about the latest developments in “cancel culture.” I’ll use that term as shorthand, but I agree with the Harper’s letter in thinking it more accurate to describe it as a rising censoriousness in American life, usually backed up by cultural power. 1/20 Two things are obvious to me about this trend: First, it is getting worse, with every week bringing news of new firings, books being banned, etc. Second, many on the center left are anxiously eager to mock and dismiss those who are concerned about it. 2/20

I get that there are good and important libertarian arguments against the tech companies’ Trumper ban. But here’s a thread in its defense … 1/14 It’s a thread on why conservatives and liberals (as opposed to insurrectionists who would topple American democracy if they could) should favor banning speech that encouraged or cheered on Wednesday’s obscene events. 2/14

A short thread:

Criticism is: You’re wrong and here’s why.

Cancellation is: You can’t say that and I’m going to try and get you fired or considered a moral monster for daring to say it.

1/ All cultures cancel things. I suspect just about everyone thinks it’s a good thing, including most of those who signed The Letter, to cancel outright Nazis, defenders of slavery, and child molesters who would seek to advocate for their vile hobby.

2/

One of a oddest recurring things about the Trump presidency is the lack of clarity about whether he's on the verge of becoming a dictator or incredibly weak. The answer is both. (Short thread) 1/ Presidents have at least two powers: making the government do stuff and shaping public opinion. On the first, Trump is quite weak and ineffective. That's very clear in the current crisis, when the federal response has been so much more minimal than what we see in the states. 2/

Rusty Reno's talk at the National Conservatism conference. He proposes 7 propositions.... Prop 1: The church is the agent of Christian universalism. Only the church can overcome divisions and restore unity to the human race.