The Foxy Essayist

The release of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith in 2005 divided conservative fans of the series. I knew many who were frustrated by a conversation between Darth Vader (Hayden Christensen) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor). In it, Obi-Wan warns Vader about the path that he is on: OBI-WAN: You have allowed this Dark Lord to twist your mind until now . . . until now you have become the very thing you swore to destroy. ANAKIN: Don't lecture me, Obi-Wan. I see through the lies of the Jedi. I do not fear the dark side as you do. I have brought peace, justice, freedom, and security to my new Empire. OBI-WAN: Your new Empire? ANAKIN: Don't make me kill you. OBI-WAN: Anakin, my allegiance is to the Republic ... to democracy. ANAKIN: If you're not with me, you're my enemy. OBI-WAN: Only a Sith Lord deals in absolutes. I will do what I must. Many objected to Obi-Wan's identification of the Sith with absolutes. I push back on that interpretat...

In 2014, the film God's Not Dead came out to moderate fanfare. In it, a Christian college student named Josh (Shane Harper) takes a philosophy class from a professor (Mr. Radisson, played by Kevin Sorbo), whose goal for the semester is to convince his students that there is no God. The movie culminates in a debate over the existence of God between Josh and Radisson. Josh wins the debate and convinces his class that God exists, and the movie ends with a Christian rock concert.   In and of itself, there is little original to it. It was made by veteran Christian film maker David A.R. White, and the plot is similar to that of the first film that he produced, End of the Harvest (1998). Such stories exist in various forms and have for decades as folk legends in American religious communities. Since then God's Not Dead has generated two sequels. God's Not Dead 2 , flips the script: a Christian history teacher (played by Melissa Joan Hart) in a public school is threatened with...

When asked recently by a few different people how I self-identify politically, I struggled. I have a visceral desire to identify as conservative, but I'm not sure that anyone would understand what I mean with the word. Thoughtful conversations and comments regarding my letter to Conor Friedersdorf and other posts have convinced me that trying to work out the meaning of conservative is necessary for effective dialogue. To begin this conversation,  I will consider the origins of the modern conservative movement and what light it sheds on politics in the era of Trump. The modern conservative movement began in reaction to the French Revolution of 1789. It was (and usually remains) reactive, opposing change rather than advocating for it. As such, it has tended to lack a normative description of how the world should be, and instead has generally opposed changes that threaten the order that is. This was the key idea that drove William F. Buckley, Jr. to found the National Review in 195...