“When the holidays approach and the weather turns cold, you spend your nights watching and rewatching saccharine movies until you fall asleep, hoping for some gleam of happiness or catharsis that never comes, a version of life that looks like a Hallmark movie or where your idealized prince finally shows up.”
― Ben Domenech
“Careful authors and journalists cultivate relationships with a wide variety of sources so as to avoid bad information or being led down an inaccurate path. Gossip columnists don’t particularly care if the path is inaccurate, so long as it gets attention and results in more fuel for the fire.”
― Ben Domenech
“Making a good meal for someone, even if it is nothing complicated, is an expression of love: it is an invitation to share, for one dinner at least, in our common humanity.”
― Ben Domenech
“One of the things I endeavor to remind people of consistently when I am asked to speak to groups around the country is to consider the possibility that we are led by a pack of idiots. This is not out of any animus toward our leadership class, but borne out of experience.”
― Ben Domenech
“If your team is good, you watch all the games – but if they’re no fun to watch? You have a plethora of options. Just switch to Netflix.”
― Ben Domenech
“Belief that your tribe is good and other tribes are evil is what everyone thought for most of human history.”
― Ben Domenech
“The ‘freedom agenda’ of George W. Bush’s second inaugural was a noble concept – but in practice, it offered ignoble results.”
― Ben Domenech
“Conservatives recognize that college campuses and their frames of reality have an outsized impact on the culture, training the next generation of leaders.”
― Ben Domenech
“You should never meet your heroes.”
― Ben Domenech
“We need a Moneyball revolution in the NFL. We need Spread teams and Run and Shoot teams and Option teams.”
― Ben Domenech
“I’ve rooted all my life for a marginal team.”
― Ben Domenech
“I love football. But it goes through periods of poor play.”
― Ben Domenech
“For years, the NFL was the one league apparently immune from ratings downturns of any significance.”
― Ben Domenech
“Conservative voters will put up with a lot of things in the culture that disagree with their views. They have proven time and again they will roll their eyes at actors and musicians saying negative things about the presidents and candidates they vote for and still consume their product.”
― Ben Domenech
“Sometimes, quarterbacks just get hurt. So do running backs, so do linemen, so do wide receivers. Blaming innovative schemes for these injuries is shortsighted.”
― Ben Domenech
“Scarcity of quarterback talent ought to inspire innovation in a sport that desperately needs it.”
― Ben Domenech
“Every day, we publish articles at ‘The Federalist’ with which I disagree.”
― Ben Domenech
“I will not apologize ever, for any reason, for publishing the views of people who don’t make a living in politics about why they plan to vote a certain way.”
― Ben Domenech
“The goal of any worthwhile and effective journal of opinion analysis in navigating what is an increasingly tribal and divisive period in American history should be to promote real debate. That does not mean retreating to our corners and pretending that, if we ignore the perspectives we don’t like, they will magically go away.”
― Ben Domenech
“We all consume Netflix and other streaming services in different ways. Sometimes, it’s a movie you’re really going to focus on; other times, it’s background noise to something else, where you won’t really pay attention.”
― Ben Domenech
“One of the differences between what happens when an author and a gossip columnist sit down to write a book is that the former tends to make every effort at disguising and protecting their sources, while the latter doesn’t particularly care.”
― Ben Domenech
“Reviewing Michael Wolff’s ‘Fire and Fury’ presents a challenge for those of us tired of a media environment where the dominant voices consistently try to have it both ways.”
― Ben Domenech
“It’d be nice to say that American media doesn’t hate this country.”
― Ben Domenech
“It’d be nice to claim that the American press, while maintaining objectivity and balancing against bias, is still inherently American – that they are patriots who love this country even as they report on its defects.”
― Ben Domenech
“Being a bureaucrat means never having to say you’re sorry.”
― Ben Domenech
“While I am not a journalist, I have, myself, written more than one thing that has been plagiarized in the past.”
― Ben Domenech
“I know that charges of plagiarism are serious.”
― Ben Domenech
“I came from a religious, homeschooled background; I had conventional views across the board.”
― Ben Domenech
“I stopped being a Republican because of the Iraq War.”
― Ben Domenech
“What we try to do at ‘The Federalist’ is to provide opinion and analysis that brings in a lot of different perspectives from across the Right. You’ll see, a lot of times, us running an article that argues one side of something and then an article that argues the opposite.”
― Ben Domenech
“I think that one of the errors that social conservatives made – particularly Christian social conservatives – was a belief that they needed to use the power of government to try to shore up the various things that they believe make up a life well-lived.”
― Ben Domenech
“Evangelicals have, for decades, believed that the country was more conservative than not, more Christian than not. The bipartisanship on religious liberty and the civic faith of the country was conducive to that. Now they’ve woken up to a reality in the Obama years that this was a polite fiction.”
― Ben Domenech
“If you’re a conservative who thinks the culture wars are over (they’re never really over, of course), then you are a lot more open to the idea of a unprincipled blowhard who promises he’s got your back on political correctness.”
― Ben Domenech
“Ever since the 1980s and the Moral Majority, evangelicals have been loyal to the Republican Party, giving their votes in return for promises on abortion, family, and other arenas of policy which promised them protection for their churches and their priorities.”
― Ben Domenech
“Unilateral sanctions on Cuba have been oppressive and largely ineffective, and that’s why the public largely supports lifting them.”
― Ben Domenech
“The government in Havana is best understood as a cross between violent left-wing radicals and organized crime.”
― Ben Domenech
“Trump represents a vibrant and fed-up mass of people who see the Republican Party as standing for nothing, so they have turned to someone who can beat the party by standing for anything.”
― Ben Domenech
“Trump is playing to an audience of people who think of themselves less as Republicans and more as Americans – moderates, conservatives, and independents – who feel that the Republican Party has completely ignored their priorities and beliefs and insulted them along the way.”
― Ben Domenech
“In 2008, many Democrats and Republicans believed Hillary Clinton to be a responsible public leader – a firm hand on the wheel, experienced in matters of diplomacy, conflict, and national interest. The 3 A.M. phone call was a question mark with Barack Obama, but not for Hillary Clinton.”
― Ben Domenech
“Try to name any meaningful thing Hillary Clinton accomplished in her role as Secretary of State. The small things she did accomplish have almost universally turned out badly.”
― Ben Domenech
“Our leaders do us no service when they fail to recognize that the threat the so-called Islamic State and its allied terrorists represent is a civilizational, not a geopolitical, conflict and can only be understood through that lens.”
― Ben Domenech
“The radicals who perpetrated the Charlie Hebdo attack were not motivated by Western imperialism but by members of a free society violating Islamic law.”
― Ben Domenech
“American policymaking in the Islamic world must begin with a foundation of respect for Muslims, especially when they tell us about their faith.”
― Ben Domenech
“The lesson of the Scott Walker, Rick Perry, and Bobby Jindal failures is simple: You can’t run a presidential campaign from the undercard stage.”
― Ben Domenech
“Jindal’s record in Louisiana is controversial, in part because, in a state which has historically favored patronage culture and a bureaucracy that offered uninterrupted employment for those who backed the right horse, he aimed to destroy the old spoils system.”
― Ben Domenech
“A repeated problem with the Obama administration has been the lack of understanding that contracts only matter if they are enforceable – and if there is a party willing to do the enforcement.”
― Ben Domenech
“The world of campaign consulting is full of hype. It is designed to offer those desperate for an edge on their opponent the promise of a silver bullet and a consultancy willing to go to any lengths – including all those things you’d like to do but can’t – in order to win.”
― Ben Domenech
“A smart, intellectual magazine is a difficult thing to run because of the need to manage conflicting personalities and opinionated writers who clash constantly, whose clashes make the publication better. It is exhausting and draining, and honestly, the only thing that’s harder is probably running a university.”
― Ben Domenech
“Writers who do great work must be coddled and encouraged.”
― Ben Domenech
“Writers who do crap work believe they have turned in spun gold and all their little darlings must be defended.”
― Ben Domenech
“The firing of Kevin Williamson from ‘The Atlantic’ on the day he was set to give an opening Q&A in their offices was sadly unsurprising given the pattern of these types of hires.”
― Ben Domenech
“When contrarian voices are elevated to publications once viewed as places where contending ideas shared space, organized online backlash is now inevitable.”
― Ben Domenech
“You shouldn’t have to be a chair at a think tank to speak your mind.”
― Ben Domenech
“Ordinary people in such positions – working at firms, companies, or chains – have the absolute right to have their voice in the public square.”
― Ben Domenech
“It used to be you could just write vaguely conservative things while running a Starbucks – now, you can’t.”
― Ben Domenech
“There are consequences for just expressing generally conservative views. And if those views take on the more extreme dint, the judgment can be swift.”
― Ben Domenech
“Trump knows where his strengths exist, and he is emphatically in favor of doubling down on them. This goes far beyond appointing Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.”
― Ben Domenech
“The ongoing argument over whether the Enlightenment is a good thing is hardly a new facet of American political life.”
― Ben Domenech
“It is at best insufficient and at worst inaccurate to settle on a definition of the Enlightenment, for the obvious reason that there was not just one.”
― Ben Domenech
“Contemporary defenders of the Enlightenment shouldn’t overgeneralize: the Enlightenment, however it is defined, is not an unalloyed good.”
― Ben Domenech
“Racist assumptions, ethnolinguistic assumptions of inferiority or superiority, are as old as mankind.”
― Ben Domenech
“The disturbing truth we have to recognize is that Bourdain is not alone in his loneliness and depression.”
― Ben Domenech
“It is a common thing for supporters of President Trump, even as early as when he was a candidate, to say, ‘He fights.’ And yes, he does fight. He fights everyone. He gets into all kinds of scraps that are pointless and unnecessary. He insults when he doesn’t need to.”
― Ben Domenech
“Trump’s supporters have taken over the Republican Party – not just because they like him but because they believe his approach to politics has been consistently vindicated.”
― Ben Domenech
“We saw a true wave election in 2010 for Republicans. There was no such repudiation offered by Resistance Democrats in 2018.”
― Ben Domenech
“In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, everyone in America assumed that there would be wars to follow – wars over the reunification of Germany, over the nations within the sphere of Soviet influence, and more. There weren’t, because George H. W. Bush’s policies and diplomacy prevented that.”
― Ben Domenech
“What can be said of George H. W. Bush beyond the personal accolades is that, as president, he was a man who did nothing by half measures. He was hands-on, engaged, and thought deeply and seriously about the purpose of the nation.”
― Ben Domenech
“Father John Misty imagines that he is a rebel. He is, but he does not realize what he is rebelling against.”
― Ben Domenech
“Father John Misty is rebelling not against repression or foolishness but the ephemeral nature of mankind. He seeks permanence in a fleeting age, and he does not find it because the one place he could find an answer, he considers closed off: a locked door.”
― Ben Domenech
“’The Federalist’ is a small staff, and our close-knit family of senior contributors outwork our competition because of that closeness.”
― Ben Domenech
“At 26, I barely knew who I was.”
― Ben Domenech
“To think that the heritage of the West, including post-war liberalism, was a selfish, secular, practical arrangement of politics is a fiction.”
― Ben Domenech
“Tolerance as practiced by the Christian, enlightened West was never about thinking that bad people are good but that we are all called to love the sinner and hate the sin.”
― Ben Domenech
“The human heart tends toward tribalism before tolerance. We can go back to that world. It still lives in all of us. Fighting it is the challenge, particularly at a time when the most audacious thing you can do is show some grace.”
― Ben Domenech
“I grew up watching ‘The Lone Ranger.’ I would get up every Saturday morning, earlier than all the other kids, to watch a black and white western with Clayton Moore that hadn’t filmed a new episode since 1957.”
― Ben Domenech
“The first time I watched ‘The Magnificent Seven’ on TV on a Sunday afternoon, I knew it was going to be a different kind of western.”
― Ben Domenech
“’Rogue One’ does not feel like a ‘Star Wars’ movie. There are no scrolling yellow letters. There is no classic John Williams score. It feels like a movie of a different type set in the ‘Star Wars’ universe, a movie where there is no magic to save you. It is not a movie for children.”
― Ben Domenech
“For many Americans, 2016 will be remembered as a terrible year. It was a year in which the lack of faith in our institutions was laid bare.”
― Ben Domenech
“The biggest loser in 2016 was Washington, D.C.”
― Ben Domenech
“When Barack Obama arrived in Washington, many in the media welcomed him with optimism as a historic figure focused on progressive change. But their overwhelmingly favorable treatment of him ultimately turned Americans who disagreed with Obama’s policies away from traditional media sources they came to distrust.”
― Ben Domenech
“Trump’s rise was contingent on wide swaths of the country completely tuning out so-called mainstream media sources, while all too many outlets did a poor job covering 2016.”
― Ben Domenech
“Much of the media failed to anticipate the potential Trump represented as a disruptive populist force, understand why his supporters trusted him, or offer honest reporting on the underlying trends that made his rise possible.”
― Ben Domenech
“Engaging in a sycophantic way with any politician in the short term is tempting. It offers the lure of access and the promise of influence. But ultimately, it can lead to misreading the environment, giving too much of an ear to the politician’s circle, and confining your audience to partisans.”
― Ben Domenech
“In a healthy republic, there is a need for figures who understand that the presidency is not the be-all and end-all of the people.”
― Ben Domenech
“It is unhealthy to live in an environment where every aspect of our culture requires a great sort, where creative talents are for some but not for all, and where performing for the president of the United States becomes a point of regular and significant controversy.”
― Ben Domenech
“Politics is downstream from culture.”
― Ben Domenech
“In a time of fractured politics, our need for unifying cultural events is more acute, and particularly our need for creators who do not deny the people their art because of the votes they cast.”
― Ben Domenech
“We have all had the experience at some point in our lives of sitting across from someone whose favorite subject is themselves. This is true of nearly everyone to some respect – but for some people, it is a particularly acute problem.”
― Ben Domenech
“You have the right to free speech as an American – you have no right to use YouTube to do it. And the mobs that exist can form very quickly if they are offended by your presence there.”
― Ben Domenech
“I have seen cabinet secretaries who type with two fingers.”
― Ben Domenech
“I have seen a man charged with revolutionizing incredibly complex government information technology systems who did not know how to use a thumb drive.”
― Ben Domenech
“One of the frequent blind spots for economic libertarians, speaking as one who has personally dealt with this log in the eye, is a tendency to allow principles of how economies work and the beauty of trade to make us ignore perceived threats animating people who value more than just the power to buy and sell.”
― Ben Domenech
“It is no accident that the place that lends itself to creating conflicts between the dominant order of thought and people who want to speak their minds freely is the college campus, where conservatives feel outnumbered and crushed by a system of higher education that believes in academic freedom for me, not for thee.”
― Ben Domenech
“When I was much younger, my siblings and I would routinely tune in to watch ‘Bill Nye the Science Guy’ on PBS. He was a fascinating instructor bent on helping kids achieve a basic understanding of science. When he engaged in politics, it was only very briefly if at all.”
― Ben Domenech
“We must not fall into the trap of thinking speech that offends is speech that must be forbidden. A healthy culture demands that much of us, to equip the next generation of Americans with the knowledge and reason they will need to confront an uncertain future.”
― Ben Domenech
“Gawker was a site built to destroy lives. Its mission was to discover the worst moment in a person’s life – and then publicize it for profit.”
― Ben Domenech
“Gawker thrived on embarrassment and shame, seeking to demolish not just celebrities or politicians but average random people whose sins it would expose for traffic and commenters who gloried in its actions.”
― Ben Domenech
“Throughout the history of America, we have been a nation driven by the idea of the frontier – a place where law was slim and liberty was enormous, where you could make your way in the world based on your own ambition and abilities, not fenced in by the limitations of society.”
― Ben Domenech
“The idea of the frontier is a stand-in for the idea of liberty.”
― Ben Domenech
“For being the largest generation in American history, the Millennial generation inspires a ridiculous degree of overgeneralization.”
― Ben Domenech
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