Michael Anton – författare

In September 2016, the provocative essay “The Flight 93 Election” galvanized many voters by spotlighting the stakes ahead in November and reproaching complacent elements of the Right. It also drew disparagement from many who judged it too apocalyptic in its assessment of the options facing the electorate.Its author, Michael Anton—writing as “Publius Decius Mus”—addressed the main criticisms of his argument soon afterward in a “Restatement on Flight 93.” A new criticism emerged later on: that he had painted a dire scenario to be averted, but no positive vision.Here, Anton presents the positive ideal that inspired him—a distillation of his thinking on Americanism and the West, refined over decades. He lays out the foundational principles of the American and Western traditions, examines the biggest threats to their survival, and underscores the necessity of continuing to defend them.

Charles R. Kesler, an eminent scholar and prodigious editor, has exerted a profound influence on the study of American politics and the practice of American conservatism.A precocious high-school student, he impressed a visiting William F. Buckley Jr. who, before becoming a life-long friend, wrote him a recommendation letter to Yale. Kesler asked for another—to Harvard, where he completed his undergraduate degree and earned a PhD under the legendary professor Harvey C. Mansfield. An early passion for political journalism, played out largely on the pages of National Review, led Kesler to author an NR cover story on his third great influence, Harry V. Jaffa.Kesler became a faculty colleague of Jaffa’s at Claremont McKenna College and Claremont Graduate University and is perhaps best known as the editorial helmsman of the Claremont Review of Books. The author of I Am the Change: Barack Obama and the Crisis of Liberalism and Crisis of the Two Constitutions: The Rise, Decline, and Recovery of American Greatness, Kesler also co-edited (with William F. Buckley Jr.) Keeping the Tablets: Modern American Conservative Thought. His edited volume of The Federalist Papers is the best-selling edition version in the country.In this volume, Kesler’s students, friends, and colleagues commemorate his four-decade career as a teacher, mentor, and scholar.

Michael Anton’s writings weave in and out of public and private life. Through examining a wide range of topics from his "motherland" of California to the intellectuals at the Claremont Institute and elsewhere who influenced his thinking, Anton invites the reader to understand the nature of the American regime and share his love for America itself.In this volume, Anton offers insights into the international order through musings on George Kennan (the first who held the position Anton took up at the start of the second Trump Administration), containment, nuclear war, and an America First foreign policy doctrine—which President Trump said Anton has “defined."An observer of fashions and taste, he touches on subjects from cooking and the culinary arts, the golden age of shipbuilding, and his literary hero, novelist Tom Wolfe.

What does it truly mean to pursue power—and what are the costs for those who seek or resist it?Studies in Machiavellian Political Philosophy gathers Michael Anton’s work on the founder of modern political thought and his enduring influence on the Western tradition. Concentrating on The Prince, but also traversing the Discourses, the Florentine Histories, Xenophon’s Memorabilia, Montesquieu’s Considerations, and The Federalist, this book attempts to unpack the true gravity of the Italian philosopher’s ambitious political and philosophic project.Anton also explores the spiritual and psychological dimensions of Machiavellian teaching through examinations of war, propaganda, friendship, and the enduring tension between philosophy and political power. His scholarship, informed by the works of Leo Strauss, Harvey Mansfield, and Leo Paul S. de Alvarez highlights important and hitherto under-explained dimensions to Machiavelli’s philosophy and art of writing, as well as the enduring influence of the ancients on the American Founding.This book further explores the recurring dilemma at the heart of all politics: the allure—and the danger—of ambition, and the timeless struggle between spiritual ideals and pragmatic necessity. It is within this tension that Machiavelli’s reimagination of conquest, virtue, and prudent statecraft helps forge a new path for effectual truth and practical action.Fluidly written and intellectually rigorous, Studies in Machiavellian Political Philosophy is essential for students, theorists, and anyone intrigued by the foundational problems and possibilities of political life.

AMERICA AT THE POINT OF NO RETURNThe next election is the most important one America has faced in more than a century.That’s not campaign hype. America is divided as almost never before—with contesting political factions regarding themselves not as rivals but as enemies. And the frightening thing is that, in large part, they’re right.The Democratic Party has become the party of “identity politics”—and every one of those identities is defined against a unifying national heritage of patriotism, pride in America’s past, and hope for a shared future.Offering only antagonism based on group identity—whether race, sex, or something else—the Democrats look forward to imposing nationally what they have achieved in California: one-party rule in a lockdown nation, where the ruling class makes every decision and doles out benefits to favored groups.Against them is a divided Republican Party. Gravely misunderstanding the opposition, old-style Republicans still seek bipartisanship and accommodation, wrongly assuming that Democrats care about playing by the tiresome old rules laid down in the Constitution and other fundamental charters of American liberty.The new core of the Republican Party is the populists and nationalists, who are tired of losing. The party’s only hope of victory, they are all that stand between the United States as we have traditionally understood it and a revolution—less dramatic in appearance but just as consequential as the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.Michael Anton, the author of the most scathing, memorable, and quoted essay of the 2016 campaign season, “The Flight 93 Election”—which Rush Limbaugh called “one of the greatest columns ever written”—now explains in depth why the stakes have risen even higher.Ranging across every hot-button political topic of our time—from immigration to nationalism to war—and informed by a profound understanding of classical and American political philosophy, The Stakes will transform the way you view politics and America’s future.