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Category Archives: Christopher Caldwell
‘The Lamps Are Going Out’
Christopher Caldwell writes in the Claremont Review of Books: Westad astutely notes that the Industrial Revolution was, in its own way, an information revolution avant la lettre. The speed with which fast trains allowed countries to mobilize troops, and with … Continue reading
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The Christopher Caldwell Arc Over The Past 18 Months
The sequence runs: October 31, 2024: “How quickly would Trump wash his hands of Ukraine?” Pre-election assessment of Trump’s Ukraine policy as the likely winner. March 13, 2025: “What’s in a rename?” First principled critique of Trump on the Gulf … Continue reading
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Christopher Caldwell: The deep state vs Nixon
On Feb. 24, 2026, Caldwell writes: The outline of this story has been known to historians since James Hougan laid it out in Secret Agenda (1984): a brilliant young sailor named Charles Radford memorized, photocopied, and purloined classified documents from … Continue reading
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Christopher Caldwell: A change has come over Trump
Caldwell writes Apr. 17, 2026: Geostrategists used to fret over the “Eastern Question” or the Maginot Line or the Missile Gap. Today there is no doubt that the overriding geostrategic question of our day is whether the President of the … Continue reading
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The Conservative Who Read the Left: An Intellectual Biography of Christopher Caldwell
Christopher Caldwell, born in 1962 in Lynn, Massachusetts, graduated from Harvard College with a degree in English literature. He entered conservative journalism in the early 1990s as assistant managing editor of The American Spectator, then moved to The Weekly Standard … Continue reading
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Wikipedia’s Conservative Commentators Series
I was looking at the entry for Christopher Caldwell and I saw something new on the page – he’s listed with a series of conservative commentators. I find the list hilarious. What other august names are linked with Caldwell? These … Continue reading
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Ten Convenient Beliefs For Christopher Caldwell
Stephen Turner (b. 1951) argues that some beliefs last because they help a group hold together, not because they describe the world well. They lower the cost of staying inside a coalition. They cut friction. They let a man keep … Continue reading
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Caldwell’s Premature Autopsy of Trumpism
Christopher Caldwell writes: Contrary to its portrayal in the newspapers, Trumpism was a movement of democratic restoration. At its center was the idea of the deep state. In recent decades, selective universities created a credentialocracy, civil-rights law endowed it with … Continue reading
Posted in America, Christopher Caldwell, Donald Trump, Iran
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Stewards Of Democracy: Law As Public Profession (1999)
Law professor Paul D. Carrington wrote: * American law in the last half-century has been increasingly disdainful of the expressed wishes and expectations of the citizens it purports to serve. * Robert Wiebe, for example, has identified World War II … Continue reading
Posted in America, Christopher Caldwell, Law, Rony Guldmann
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Decoding Christopher Caldwell
ChatGPT says: Alliance Theory reads Christopher Caldwell as an elite defector who specializes in translating institutional change into legitimacy crises. Early positioning. Caldwell entered through establishment lanes. He wrote for top magazines and mastered elite prose norms. That gave him … Continue reading
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