National Affairs

National Affairs National Affairs is a quarterly journal of essays about domestic policy, political economy, society,

06/19/2025

Our Summer issue is now live! Featuring:

-Mike Pence & Ed Feulner on rediscovering order in an age of populism
-Christian Fong on preserving a responsible filibuster
-Michael Rosen on applying ancient wisdom to AI
-Daniel Sonnenfeld on a more compassionate approach to writing history
-Michael Lucchese, Howe Whitman III, and Vincent Phillip Muñoz on the Age of Revolutions
-And much more! Happy reading: https://nationalaffairs.com/

05/08/2025

President Trump has moved to constrain birthright citizenship, and the Supreme Court will consider its constitutionality in oral arguments on May 15. In a preview of our Summer issue, John Yoo and Robert Delahunty argue that, according to the best reading of the 14th Amendment, all individuals born on American soil are American citizens: https://nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/originalist-case-birthright-citizenship

Steve Teles joined our latest podcast to discuss the left's embrace of minority rule and how lawmakers might restore a m...
04/19/2025

Steve Teles joined our latest podcast to discuss the left's embrace of minority rule and how lawmakers might restore a more majoritarian, democratic politics:

The National Affairs Podcast, Episode 59: On restoring majoritarian and democratic rule to our politics.  ...

Allen Guelzo on why "we would do well to recall the admonition of justices Davis and Robert Jackson, and think twice bef...
04/18/2025

Allen Guelzo on why "we would do well to recall the admonition of justices Davis and Robert Jackson, and think twice before leaving a loaded weapon within reach of government authorities."

Writing during the Second World War, Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson warned that when a court rationalizes a federal order based on emergencies and anomalies, the precedent "lies about like a loaded weapon, ready for the hand of any authority th...

The shift in medicine toward social justice and activism has harmed doctors and patients alike — the most vulnerable pat...
04/15/2025

The shift in medicine toward social justice and activism has harmed doctors and patients alike — the most vulnerable patients most of all, Sally Satel writes:

In recent years, under the approving eyes of the American Medical Association and other professional groups, political advocates have shifted the primary mission of medicine toward social justice and the core identity of the physician toward activist...

Christian Alejandro Gonzalez on why consolation should play a key role in the conservative worldview — helping conservat...
04/12/2025

Christian Alejandro Gonzalez on why consolation should play a key role in the conservative worldview — helping conservatives not only recognize the harsh realities of life, but also explain how we might cope with them:

Conservatism is in many respects a pessimistic philosophy. It sees human beings as fallen, and so believes that all social orders will contain some measure of injustice. For this reason, the concept of consolation should play a key role in the conser...

Jedd Medefind on a new perspective that can help guide us toward better solutions to America's child-welfare crisis:
04/10/2025

Jedd Medefind on a new perspective that can help guide us toward better solutions to America's child-welfare crisis:

Few words appear more frequently in discussions of child welfare today than the term "upstream." That metaphor invites us to adopt a wider view of the child-welfare crisis — a view of the whole river, indeed of the entire water ecosystem. This new pe...

Shockingly, child and adolescent mortality have risen in recent years. Naomi Schaefer Riley on why Americans must grasp ...
04/08/2025

Shockingly, child and adolescent mortality have risen in recent years. Naomi Schaefer Riley on why Americans must grasp the fact that substance abuse hurts far more than the users themselves:

Despite all the advances of modern medicine and the prevalence of safety technologies, our society is going backward when it comes to keeping kids alive: Child and adolescent mortality have risen in recent years. A key reason involves the secondary e...

"At a time when many principled voters again find themselves politically homeless, we would do well to understand the st...
04/06/2025

"At a time when many principled voters again find themselves politically homeless, we would do well to understand the strategies that propelled the anti-slavery movement from the periphery of politics to the halls of power in less than a generation."

Whether it's foreign-policy hawks on the right, cultural conservatives on the left, or fiscal conservatives anywhere, the reductive binary of today's electoral options can be deeply frustrating for intraparty minority groups. Considering how various ...

Paul McDonnold on helping those left behind in rural America:
04/03/2025

Paul McDonnold on helping those left behind in rural America:

Rural poverty rates in America have remained high largely because well-meaning attempts to reduce them have involved separate, uncoordinated policies thrown haphazardly at the problem. By instead considering their options in full and recognizing how ...

Should public support be extended to the poor and needy, or to all citizens regardless of their economic circumstances? ...
04/01/2025

Should public support be extended to the poor and needy, or to all citizens regardless of their economic circumstances? Chris Pope makes the case for a targeted welfare state:

Should public support be extended to the poor and needy, or to all citizens regardless of their economic circumstances? The debate between these two approaches has shaped the modern welfare state. Its implications might be best understood by consider...

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