In recent years, American conservatives seem obsessed with lamentation. Intellectual magazines and other outposts of conservative intellectualism have promoted several narratives of national decline which lift up a mythic American past to contrast with a supposedly dreary American present. But scratching beneath the surface, there is nothing particularly innovative about concerns for American deracination such as those expressed by Notre Dame political theorist Patrick Deneen. In fact, writers from that supposedly glorious past, such as Norwegian-American novelist O.E. Rølvaag, explored themes of American alienation decades before the current generation of conservative intellectuals was even born. Not only is their work more original and interesting, it also offers better solutions to the problems the American republic faces today.
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Michael Lucchese
Michael Lucchese is the founder and CEO of Pipe Creek Consulting, a communications firm based in Washington, D.C. He is also an associate editor of Law & Liberty and a contributing editor to Providence, as well as a member of the Academy of Philosophy and Letters. Previously, he was a Krauthammer Fellow with the Tikvah Fund, a visiting scholar at Liberty Fund, and an aide to U.S. Senator Ben Sasse.
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