Description: Celebrating the things we know, and know we don't.
Around this time last year, I began a self-imposed experiment. I wanted to see if a diet of center-right conservative thinking could rattle my default center-left leaning.
Perhaps it was the hyper-politicized environment of 2016, perhaps it was reading Daniel Oppenheimer’s wonderful Exit Right , but I realized that I had never given conservatism serious thought, or, for that matter, thought very deeply about my own or any political ideology. Instead, I had engaged in the common and intellectually lazy shortcut of relying on cultural cues—Fox News is silly, ergo conservatism is silly; conservatives are religious fanatics, ergo conservative ideas are baseless; Jon Stewart makes
So, ashamed at myself for this lack of rigor, I decided to binge for a year on the National Review . And while I won’t be naming my cat “Buckley,” I did learn an awful lot and can positively recommend the experience. In part thanks to this experience, I’m ending 2017 feeling more ideologically objective and independent than I’ve ever felt.