(no subject)

As Samuel Johnson famously said, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." It looks like national-patriotism is going to be the key conservative issue for the 2020 elections.

The national conservatism we are developing is going to have some hard edges and provoke some clever counterattacks and dismissals.

An important virtue of the nation-state is that it is a constraint.

Resources are limited. Lasting achievement is possible only within a structure. My own favorite field, economics, is out of favor these days, but it has at least one profound truth, that of opportunity cost: Everything we do necessarily involves not doing something else.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-nationalist-awakening-11563574717

"Америка не резиновая". It's a good fit because Trump knows how to sell patriotism and he loves playing a zero-sum game.