February 27-28, 2024: Conservativism in America

Top Conservative Commentators David Brooks, Helen Andrews, Matthew Continetti, and Matthew T. Martens Speak At Tocqueville Center Two-Day Event, Conservatism In America

“The state of society and the Constitution in America are democratic, but there has been no democratic revolution. They were pretty well as they now are when they first arrived in the land. That is a very important point”

— Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

“Conservatism in America” PART 1 – FEBRUARY 27, 2024 – 6:30-8:00PM – Watkins Room, Trone Student Center

“Conservatism in America” PART 2 – FEBRUARY 28, 2024 – 5:00-6:30PM -Watkins Room, Trone Student Center

Public Intellectuals:

David Brooks (New York Times)

David Brooks writes for The New York Times and is a commentator for PBS NewsHour. He has also worked for The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, Newsweek, and The Atlantic Monthly. He earned his BA from the University of Chicago. Brooks is the author of Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There and On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense. His third book, The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement, was a No. 1 New York Times best seller. He is also the author of The Road to Character; The Second Mountain; and most recently, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen. Brooks is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Helen Andrews (The American Conservative)

Helen Andrews is a senior editor at The American Conservative. She earned her BA in Religious Studies from Yale University. She is the author of Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster. Previously she was managing editor of the Washington Examiner magazine. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, First Things, The Claremont Review of Books, Hedgehog Review, and many others. In 2017-18 she was a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.

Matthew Continetti (AEI)

Matthew Continetti is the director of domestic policy studies and the inaugural Patrick and Charlene Neal Chair in American Prosperity at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). He earned his BA in History from Columbia University. His work is focused on American political thought and history, with a particular focus on the development of the Republican Party and the American conservative movement in the 20th century. A prominent journalist, analyst, author, and intellectual historian of the right, he was the founding editor and the editor-in-chief of the Washington Free Beacon. He is also a contributing editor at National Review and a columnist for Commentary Magazine. He has been published in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, among other outlets. He is the author of three books, including The K Street Gang: The Rise and Fall of the Republican Machine; The Persecution of Sarah Palin: How the Elite Media Tried to Bring Down a Rising Star; and, most recently, The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism.

Matthew T. Martens (Partner at WilmerHale)

Matthew T. Martens is a trial lawyer and partner at the international law firm of WilmerHale in Washington, DC. He earned his JD at the University of North Carolina School of Law and an MS at Dallas Theological Seminary. He served as a law clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist at the US Supreme Court and also as a political appointee in the criminal division of the US Justice Department under Attorney General John Ashcroft. He has spent the bulk of his twenty-seven-year legal career practicing criminal law both as a federal prosecutor and as a defense attorney. He is the author most recently of Reforming Criminal Justice: A Christian Proposal.

View Lecture Part 1 Here

View Lecture Part 2 Here

American conservative political commentators discuss diverse trends in the conservative movement at Furman University

By: Tocqueville Center

Helen Andrews, author of Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster and senior editor and apolitical analyst at The American Conservative, claimed victory for America First, Donald Trump Republicanism, while NY Times columnist and best-selling author, conservative David Brooks, defended his support of Democrat Joe Biden.

These divergent views, representative of many conservatives today, along with the views of political commentator Matthew Continetti (director of domestic policy studies, American Enterprise Institute) and Matthew T. Martens (trial lawyer and partner, WilmerHale), were on full display at Furman’s Tocqueville Center for the Study of Democracy and Society event, Conservatism in America, which was held in two parts on Feb. 27 and 28 in Greenville, South Carolina. 

The event is one of a series that brings to Furman’s campus prominent scholars and public intellectuals who exemplify the Tocquevillean approach to political thought. 

The program was designed to showcase the diversity of American conservatism – including smaller government conservatives, social conservatism, free markets, Ronald Reagan, individual liberty, and the culture wars – and illuminate some of its fundamental divides.

Part 1 featured Andrews and Martens, and Part 2 featured Brooks and Continetti. Both talks were followed by a question and answer period with all four panelists, moderated by Jim Guth, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Furman and a distinguished scholar for the Tocqueville Center.

Read the rest of the Event Summary here.