Will an Influential Conservative Brain Trust Stand Up to Trump?
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Question of the Week
What’s been your personal experience with the health-care system in the United States (or the country where you live) and what larger lessons, if any, have you drawn from it all?
Send your responses to conor@theatlantic.com.
Conversations of Note
When I was 18 or so, I discovered the Claremont Institute because its headquarters was near my alma mater, Pomona College. Then I learned that its stated mission was “to restore the principles of the American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life.” As a fan of rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and Madisonian checks and balances, that sounded good to me.
A few years later I briefly did editing and writing work for a newsletter on local government that the think tank published, during which I was exposed to , the formidable historiography of the Lincoln-Douglas debates by Claremont’s intellectual progenitor, the political philosopher and gave to different Republican presidents, and for , I value some of what is published in the and elsewhere on its website—especially, as with its best critiques of the administrative state and the foreign-policy writing of Christopher Caldwell, when formidable challenges to the establishment are aired. On the whole, however, I no longer believe the core of Claremont’s work is restoring the principles of the American founding.
