Ross Douthat is a conservative author, blogger, and New York Times opinion columnist known for his writing on politics, religion, and culture. He contributed essays and cultural commentary to The Weekly Standard between 2005 and 2007, exploring topics ranging from conservatism and feminism to philosophy and populist politics. His co-authored 2008 book 'Grand New Party' grew in part from ideas he developed in pieces like 'The Party of Sam's Club.'
When Rudolph Giuliani first ran for mayor of New York in 1989, he made a critical mistake. Assuming that he'd be running against the blue-collar, socially conservative Democrat Ed Koch, Giuliani cast himself as a liberal. Playing against his tough-guy image, he spent his first months on the…
AFTER AN ELECTION SEASON in which the GOP shot itself in the foot at every opportunity, it's easy to explain last week's sweeping midterm defeat as having more to do with Republican weakness than Democratic strength. But give the Democrats their due. They succeeded in spite of the "firewall" that…
WHEN THE Washington Monthly recently asked seven conservatives to explain why they were rooting for GOP defeat this November, some of them complained about the Iraq war, some about the Bush administration's expansive view of executive power, some about the GOP's opposition to stem-cell research.…
FOR UNDERSTANDABLE REASONS, Christians of an orthodox stripe tend to grow suspicious when the conversation turns to dispensing with elements of the faith that may have overstayed their welcome. We've been led down that primrose path before: You start with bright talk about paring down the Christian…
AMONG HARVARD UNDERGRADUATES, the open-enrollment Harvard Extension School--whose continuing education program offers a Harvard diploma, of sorts, to anyone willing to pay a modest fee--maintains a faintly sketchy reputation, and not without reason. A homeless man who attempted, with some success,…
THE PRESIDENCY OF GEORGE W. Bush has three years yet to run, but this season of scandal and disillusionment is an opportune moment for conservatives to start thinking seriously about the post-Bush era--and particularly how to fashion a domestic policy from the wreckage of Bush-style, big-government…
IT'S A TESTAMENT to feminism's success that so many people, over so many years, have been so eager to write its obituary. From the 1970s onward, the public has been treated to regular bulletins announcing that feminism has failed, is finished, has expired of natural causes or been slain in a…
OF ALL THE LEFT-wing responses to Bush's reelection--the crying jags, the applications for Canadian citizenship, the bulk orders of Nicholson Baker's Checkpoint--perhaps the strangest of all can be found online at left2right.typepad.com, where a roster of academic all-stars have embarked on a…