William F. Buckley Jr.

Stephen Bright and Bryan Stevenson defended the abolition of capital punishment at a moment when political support for that movement reached its nadir.

Long before the rise of Trump, the American conservative mainstream enjoyed a complex partnership with the Far Right.

Why the far right embraces foreign tyrants.

The right’s long and all-too-unanswered war on liberal institutions claims a big one.

The modern Republican Party has always exploited and encouraged extremism.

A new biography of Robert Welch traces the origins and history of the anti-Communist John Birch Society and provides historical perspective on the Trump era.

Is the Republican Party compatible with democracy?

In his lifetime, Robert Welch toiled in the mocked and marginal fringe. Today his ideas are the mainstream of the American right.

On the laughing emptiness at the center of the Republican Party.

Why it’s foolish to think the modern GOP will ever break with its lunatic fringe.

Sixty years ago, many GOP leaders resisted radicals in their ranks. Now they’re not even trying.

Censure brought down a crusading anti-communist senator but fired up his followers.

In the 1960s, the precursor to PBS explored the burgeoning conservative movement, providing a remarkable window into the history of conservatism.

Well before Watergate broke, John Ashbrook waged a primary campaign that the Right took very seriously.

In 1990, one of America's most beloved sitcoms took on the HIV epidemic with humor and sensitivity.

Today’s Republicans would have fit right into Herbert Hoover’s administration.

If you're wondering how Trump happened, all you have to do is let Pat Buchanan beguile you with a history no one else can tell.

A detailed, exhausting, and ultimately too-gentle treatment of the midcentury writer and editor, Frank Meyer.

How the New Right emerged from neoliberalism’s inner split.

How did libertarians come to embrace Henry George, a thinker championed by political coalitions ranging from early zionists to the global Green Party?