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Articles by Michael Anton
James Lindsay’s Fever Dream
I really am—honest—trying to write a rather long and complicated book and don’t have time for things like this. But when one’s good name is impugned, sometimes thumos (to coin a phrase) gets the better of one. Professional X Troll James Lindsay keeps dragging me into his every little fever dream. I almost always let it pass, though I did once demonstrate that he knows nothing about Plato, Carl Schmitt, or political philosophy generally.
Tune In, Drop Out, Start Up
Editors’ Note What follows is an excerpt from Michael Anton’s essay, “Tune In, Drop Out, Start Up,” from the Fall 2026 issue of the Claremont Review of Books. Because I’m going to be quite critical of Theo Baker’s How to Rule the World, it feels only right to start with three pieces of sincere praise: the book held my attention all the way to the end, I learned things from it, and I read it twice.
Claremont Review of Books
Lonesome Dove, Yellowstone, and the closing of the frontier. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer at 150. A tale of two revolutions. Making Charles de Gaulle intelligible to the world. The politics of translation. What, if anything, Obama meant.
Tune In, Drop Out, Start Up
This article appears in the forthcoming Fall 2026 Claremont Review of Books Because I’m going to be quite critical of Theo Baker’s How to Rule the World, it feels only right to start with three pieces of sincere praise: the book held my attention all the way to the end, I learned things from it, and I read it twice. These are not reactions I expect most new books to generate, let alone one written by someone not yet of legal drinking age.
The Federalist and the Ancients
Editors’ Note This is an excerpt from Michael Anton’s forthcoming book, Studies in Machiavellian Political Philosophy (Encounter Books, 2026). This chapter was originally published in slightly different form in Leisure with Dignity: Essays in Celebration of Charles R. Kesler, eds. Michael Anton and Glenn Ellmers (Encounter Books, 2024). An old, not to say ancient, debate among certain scholars is whether and to what extent the American Founding was ancient versus modern.
We’re all Machiavellians now
Michael Anton is the author of “Studies in Machiavellian Political Philosophy,” from which this essay was adapted. “How, if at all, is Niccolò Machiavelli relevant today?”
Tom Wolfe, Money, and Me
When I read James Rosen’s review of my Dispatches from the Late Republic, I panicked a little over the following: Anton is way off base when he asserts that Wolfe’s creative decision-making was at any point driven by exigent financial needs…. For Wolfe—who never borrowed money—the 1990s were flush: The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987) had been a titanic success, and he had, as a matter of public record, sold a brownstone and bought a co-op.
Laura Field Mangles the Founders and Lincoln
Laura Field once again accuses me of “distort[ing] and obscur[ing] a specific passage from an important speech by Lincoln.” She also accuses me, once again, of betraying the teaching and legacy of Harry Jaffa—an extraordinary claim for Field to make, considering that in her book she admits to finding Jaffa “unreadable” and plainly demonstrates that she doesn’t understand him.
Tom West’s Founding
Convention requires me to disclose that I have known, admired, and learned from Thomas G. West for more than thirty years. I also, in 2018, became his colleague as a scholar and lecturer at Hillsdale College. Moreover, Professor West and I studied many of the same subjects, with some of the same teachers. Cynics might therefore be tempted to discount the ensuing praise for his new book as logrolling by an ally.
Claremont Review of Books
Download The shock of the 2016 election that first propelled Donald Trump to the White House produced a few good-faith attempts in the prestige press to understand the president’s supporters, especially among the white working class. Those days, fleeting as they were, are far behind us now. Laura K. Field’s Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right is less a book than the cornerstone of an information operation.
Michael Anton and the Fate of the Republic – The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Dispatches from the Late Republic: The Culture, Politics, and Prophets of American Greatness, Decline, and RebirthBy Michael Anton Encounter Books, 640 pages, $35 This past September, Michael Anton left his perch as the State Department’s director of policy and planning, where he oversaw the completion of President Trump’s National Security Strategy.
Everything Is NOT Fine
It is honestly amazing to be noticed, even if negatively, by someone of the eminence of Steven Pinker. I respect Pinker because (among other reasons) Steve Sailer, whom I also respect, respects him and has explained in terms I can understand why Pinker’s work is worthy of respect.
Refuting the Schmitt Smear
At Wired, Laura Bullard writes that “Among the relatively few people associated with National Conservatism who do cite Schmitt openly in their own work are Thiel and Michael Anton, the essayist and sometime Trump administration official.” We may leave to one side the extent to which I am “associated” with National Conservatism. I did not attend its last two conferences, having been invited and then disinvited in 2024 and not invited at all in 2025.
The Decline and Fall of Gabe Schoenfeld
I see Gabe Schoenfeld has attacked me again. I usually try to let these things go, but sometimes a little context is demanded. The piece is, as usual, filled with bile and unrelieved nastiness. What Gabe leaves out is that we used to be friends, or at least friendly acquaintances. We met through Manhattan conservative circles, where we had many friends in common, including the late, great Fred Siegel (whom I am confident would be distressed at what Gabe has become).
Paradise Lost and Regained
Editors’ Note In light of the passing of Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys, what follows is an excerpt from Michael Anton’s essay, “Paradise Lost and Regained,” from the Spring 2012 issue of the Claremont Review of Books. The release last fall, after 44 years, of the Beach Boys’ abandoned masterpiece Smile is a milestone of American popular culture. Rolling Stone has called it “the most famous unfinished album in rock & roll history.” But Smile is also something much bigger.
Claremont Review of Books
Some coincidences are so striking—Adams and Jefferson both dying on July 4, 1826—they make fate seem plausible. Others are merely felicitous but perhaps more revealing.
Back in the Saddle
“Ridin' the range once more Totin' my old .44 Where you sleep out every night And the only law is right Back in the saddle again” —Gene Autry Howdy, Stranger. I have been away for more than a month, and I think you have been neglected long enough.
Birthright Citizenship: A Response to My Critics
I expected the reaction to a recent op-ed I published calling for the end of birthright citizenship to be cantankerous. I even expected it to be hysterical—from the Left. I did not expect self-described “conservatives” to be just as hysterical as the Left, and to use precisely the same terms.
How inclusive insight fuels better campaigns
With the business case for inclusion clear Dr. Michael Anton shares advice on how to implement it starting from within. Head of Insight Mr. President Advertising has become more inclusive. Just over half of UK adults “have noticed an increase in inclusive advertising in the past year”. It’s not just the morally and ethically right thing to do, a recent report from TheUnstereotype Alliance (The UA) proves, from an analysis of 392 brands in 58 countries, the real business case for inclusivity.
Claremont Review of Books
Just as the war in Ukraine called forth many people’s inner military strategist, so the COVID-19 pandemic called forth many people’s inner epidemiologist. Never before had medical statistics been examined by so many with such close attention. People started to look at the numbers of daily deaths in the obsessive way that traders look at stock prices.
The Many Links Between Project 2025 and Trump’s World
Led NASA efforts on Trump transition team Office of Senator Steve Daines No known connection The American Main Street Initiative Director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics Deputy assistant to the President for Strategic Communications on the National Security Council No known connection Center for Immigration Studies Panel member at the Federal Labor Relations Authority Adviser for financial regulations on Trump transition team Center for Immigration Studies Senior adviser to the associate...
Claremont Review of Books
It seems that in every decade of his distinguished career in Harvard’s Government Department, Harvey C. Mansfield opens up a new vista on some vast topic—the origins and nature of party government, original versus contemporary liberalism, modernity, executive power, manliness—only to turn his attentions to something else. The exception, the one subject to which he has repeatedly returned, is Niccolò Machiavelli.
The American Nation: Resurrections
Michael Anton: This is a hard question for me to answer (though not to write about at numbing length). I was so to speak “raised in the faith” — that is, the Claremont faith, or now the Claremont-Hillsdale faith. I mention that because Rufo’s argument, as presented — and I do not find your summary of the original debate inaccurate — sounds very “Claremontian.” Indeed, Rufo was a Lincoln Fellow of the Claremont Institute in 2017 and remains on friendly terms with us.
You are the enemy
USA Today recently published a piece excoriating Project 2025 and all who worked on it as (you guessed it) “racist.” I had very little to do with Project 2025 — I was asked for some thoughts on how best to organize the National Security Council staff, provided those thoughts, and then was never contacted again — but my name ended up on the thing, so I suppose, according to the sketchy rules of “journalistic ethics,” that makes me “fair game.” At any rate, USA Today reported that I did not...
You Are the Enemy
USA Today recently published a piece excoriating Project 2025 and all who worked on it as (you guessed it) “racist.” I had very little to do with Project 2025—I was asked for some thoughts on how best to organize the National Security Council Staff, provided those thoughts, and then was never contacted again—but my name ended up on the thing, so I suppose that, according to the sketchy rules of “journalistic ethics,” that makes me “fair game.” At any rate, USA Today reported that did not...
Claremont Review of Books
Victorian leaders really were eminent, Simon Heffer insists in his long and authoritative social, political, and intellectual history, High Minds: The Victorians and the Birth of Modern Britain. A journalist and historian, Heffer argues that we must credit the Victorians with a broad and deep range of reforms that brought archaic systems into alignment with the demands of modernity.
Looking for Meaning in All the Wrong Places
A review of The Meaning of Human Existence, by Edward O. Wilson and The Soul of the World, by Roger Scruton Suppose that, after the events portrayed in The Godfather Part III, the Corleone family went completely legit. Suppose its new leaders solemnly denounced the way their forefathers Vito and Michael Corleone had acquired the family’s wealth.
Claremont Review of Books
“Democracy,” Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed in his 1932 Commonwealth Club Address, “is a quest, a never-ending seeking for better things.” Filmmaker Michael Moore spoke more precisely in his film Capitalism: A Love Story (2009): Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil. You have to eliminate it, and replace it with something that is good for all people. And that something, is called Democracy.
The Art of Grand Strategy: A One-Day Virtual Event
Much of contemporary foreign policy focuses on frivolous details of international relations without a view to long-term strategy, the art of statesmanship, or philosophic principles. As such, this leaves America’s foreign policy distracted, needlessly at odds with other nations, at odds with our own interests, and without a strong sense of direction. Most importantly, it gives our leadership class impetus to be irresponsible in its pursuits.
Authoritarianism From the Left
Editor’s Note: Much ink has been spilled in recent years over Donald Trump’s supposed injection of “authoritarian” tendencies into American politics. Even now, woke propagandists warn that Trump could act as a “dictator” if the people of the United States elect him to another term as president. Yet wouldn’t these labels be more aptly applied to the left-wing power-brokers who use the “authoritarian” smear to silence any dissent?
Intercollegiate Studies Institute
What are America's national interests today? What are America’s national interests today, and how does our foreign policy serve best serve those goals? The end of the Cold War ushered in a “unipolar moment” of American geopolitical dominance, in which we enforced a “rules-based liberal international order” of freedom and increasing economic prosperity across the world. The last 30 years have almost unquestionably been the highpoint of American exceptionalism.
A dynamic environment for services in Trinidad - The Energy Year
Trinidad and Tobago Michael Anton, managing director of Anfield Services, talks to The Energy Year about the benefits of taking on onshore contracts, how regional developments are impacting the local workforce and the company’s most significant achievements of 2022 and 2023. Anfield Services provides downhole Fishing and Abandonment services for drilling and workover operations in the Trinidadian oil and gas sector.
Claremont Review of Books
Works by Tom Wolfe discussed in this essay: “The Woman Who Has Everything,” in The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby The Right Stuff The Bonfire of the Vanities A Man in Full I Am Charlotte Simmons Back to Blood The literary establishment has worked hard to dismiss Tom Wolfe’s novels.
Claremont Review of Books
Glenn Ellmers’s The Narrow Passage is a strange little book that is hard to summarize. What makes the task even harder is, paradoxically, its brevity. Rarely is so short a book so densely argued—so packed with ideas and information that what begins as a precis veers into what feels like a full recounting. Still, one must do one’s best—especially in the case of a book that answers two of the most burning practical and theoretical questions of our time: what is going on and how did we get here?
A liberal’s credo, a conservative’s complaint and dumb conspiracy theories
We live in a partisan age, and our news habits can reinforce our own perspectives. Consider this an effort to broaden our collective outlook with essays beyond the range of our typical selections. FROM THE LEFT From “Why I Am a Liberal,” by Cass R. Sunstein in The New York Times at tinyurl.com/mry5dv2r.
Claremont Review of Books
It has now been 50 years since President John F. Kennedy was cut down on the streets of Dallas by rifle shots fired by Lee Harvey Oswald, a self-described Marxist, recent defector to the Soviet Union, and ardent admirer of Fidel Castro.
Everything Is-Still-Fine
A consistent theme of my writing over the past seven years—that is to say, since the publication of “The Flight 93 Election”—is that a non-trivial number of the leaders of America’s legacy “conservative” institutions are either liars or fools.
Commentary: The Guardian’s murderous gutter ‘journalism’
The title, in case anyone is wondering, is more or less Tom Wolfe’s, which he cribbed together from the various outraged responses to his 1965 send-up of the New Yorker. In that instance, the allegedly “murderous gutter journalism” was his. I consider Wolfe’s lampooning of William Shawn’s ossified magazine neither murderous nor gutter, but it was unquestionably journalism.
Is Custom King?
For those who want or need a refresher, Paul Gottfried and I have been debating the existence and utility of natural right generally, and of rights specifically, for some time now on various websites. His latest, to which is this is mostly a response, is here. Neither of us has changed the other’s mind and it’s a near certainty that neither ever will. Yet we keep going because the topic is important and we enjoy the dialogue (I’m not putting words into his mouth; he’s said that).
Religion & Political Philosophy
Salvo On tradition, rights, and what justifies them. Salvo How radical relativism leads to ideological fanaticism. Salvo The presidential candidate stands against the Left's attacks on the ties that bind. Salvo A perfect theory and a buck fifty will get you a ride on the subway. Feature A demonology of the internet. Salvo The divide between church and state doesn’t separate religion from public education. Salvo Christians must reclaim a robust understanding of Christianity’s role in public life.
The Dishonorable Doctor
One wishes one could go through life without facing such little contretemps, but for reasons known only to the Almighty, human nature is not made that way. I recently saw Sebastian Gorka at an event at which I rather impetuously, perhaps foolishly, approached him. Foolishly, because I know he hates me. How do I know? Because for six years now, Seb has been slandering me most vigorously all over Washington, including to many of my friends.
Defending Natural Right
A response to Chronicles Editor Paul Gottfried’s critique Chronicles Editor Paul Gottfried and I had an exchange in the current issue of the magazine on the topic of natural right, which in modernity takes the form of “natural rights,” plural. I regard this topic as one of the most important of our time, or even of all time, because it gets directly to the heart of political legitimacy.
Claremont Review of Books
Patrick Deneen finds himself between a rock and a hard place. His new book, Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future, is too scandalously right-wing for the typical “normiecon,” but not nearly reactionary enough for the contemporary Right’s edgier voices. It is customary, most of the time, for intellectuals or political figures who find themselves attacked simultaneously from left and right to declare that this is proof they’re on to something.
Do Natural Rights Exist?
An Exchange Between Michael Anton and Chronicles Editor Paul Gottfried Michael Anton states: Natural Rights Do Exist About six or so months ago, I took to task an Alt-Right, anonymous blogger who calls himself “The Z-Man” for making the extraordinary assertion, on his own supposed authority, that “human rights do not exist.” (This was hardly his only extraordinary claim.
The deep state is gearing up to fight a second Trump Presidency
Read full article If there is a second Trump administration, everything will be against him. Every institution in the United States will be against him, including at least half of his own political party. I expect Trump will win the Republican primary.
Claremont Review of Books
Critical race theory is so intellectually empty that it might not seem worth criticizing. But “CRT”—the fashionable new code of dogmas, slogans, and political demands regarding race—should not be underestimated. It has infiltrated almost every institution of learning, the media, government, the corporate world, and even the military. It is now close to a mandatory doctrine.
Noblesse Oblige: Death & Rebirth
How Oligarchic Philanthropy replaced Nobility If I had to identify a line that best captures the spirit of our current elites, it might be the Joker’s crack from Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight: “This town deserves a better class of criminal — and I’m going to give it to them.” Many of the shenanigans of the past few decades – pandemics, market manipulations, endless wars in the name of “democracy” – point to the work of criminals.
Claremont Review of Books
If you know one thing about the late George Frost Kennan (1904–2005), it’s that he was the principal author of the “containment” doctrine at the heart of America’s winning strategy in the Cold War. If you know two things, you probably know that he came to doubt and even repudiate and regret his own decisive contribution to America’s role in that struggle.
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