Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics

and the Trump presidency for the new Spectator USA website. I'm joined today by Daniel McCarthy,

who is editor of modern age and a spectator USA columnist. And we're going to be

asking, what is the future of American conservatism? Now, Dan, I should say, first of all,

for our listeners, you are speaking live from a hotel in Alexandria, but you are the, in my mind,

the ultimate authority on this. So I'm very glad we've got you on.

Thanks, Freddie.

I think for our British listeners and probably for quite a few of our American ones too,

it's worth sort of starting out why we're having this,

spelling out why we're having this conversation.

Because a couple of weeks ago,

Sora Bermari wrote an article in First Things, attacking another American writer

called David French, essentially for, I mean, as David French will put it, for being too

civilized and meek in the culture war, I suppose it is, in the political war against

liberalism. And David French has replied,

and for a certain section of Twitter, this has become an incredibly important fight. To my

rather cynical mind, it's perhaps a little too arcane. But I think what it boils down to is

coming up to 2020, how fully on board with Trump should conservatives be?

And that is probably a real tension between French and Amari.

And it speaks to a larger question of where is conservatism going?

Is the conservatism that sustained got Bush elected? Is it finished?

Is the post-war conservative movement over? Are we now entering into a new nationalist and more robust form of conservatism?

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