⬅️ Back to 60.3 Politics · Sister MOCs: The Right — Conservatism (MOC) · Leftism & Woke (MOC) · Analyzing Political Positions (MOC)
First principles — the founding, the American character, the map of ideologies, and the fault line between left and right.
Robert Conquest’s Three Laws of Politics
- Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.
- Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.
- The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.
→ Robert Conquest's Laws of Politics (attribution and wording in the existing note)
Keep three questions apart
What Kind is United States? asks how the constitutional system is described; Conservative vs Liberal Visions compares moral and political assumptions; The Generational Collapse of American Patriotism collects claims about attachment to that system. An answer to one is not evidence for either of the others.
The American Founding
- Founding Fathers — people and roles in the American founding.
- Nation’s Founding vs. “Biblical Order” — the religious-political interpretation, filed in Religion & Politics.
- What Kind is United States? — republic vs. democracy
- The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates
- Plain, Honest Men - The Making of the American Constitution
Mapping the Ideologies
- 60 Knowledge/60.3 Politics/60.3.10 - Books & Courses/Courses/Political Ideologies — the course/overview
- Intro to Political Science - Eric Kaufmann (Peterson Academy)
- Conservative vs Liberal Visions
- Classic Liberalism vs Leftism
- Richard Hanania Notes — essays and excerpts on democracy, liberalism, and political hierarchy.
- Moral Politics - How Liberals and Conservatives Think — the Lakoff frame
Fascism and Democratic Breakdown
- Fascism — central hub: comparative definitions, movement process, regime boundaries, historical cases, and a complete vault-wide route
- Robert Paxton - Anatomy of Fascism — process model: mobilization, conservative alliances, power, violence, and radicalization
- How to Make a Fascist — cultural and intellectual preconditions from war and modernity to myth and organized violence
- Mention network → Fascism - Vault-Wide Mention Index
- Cross-vault → Far Right & Woke Right (MOC) · Violence in Politics (MOC)
The Party System
National Character & Cohesion
- The Generational Collapse of American Patriotism
- Mandatory National Service
- Multiculturalism
- Bowling Alone - Robert D Putnam
- Subversion & Demoralization
- Immigration MOC · Multiculturalism — the separate empirical and normative questions of integration and cohesion.
Base index
Politics.base (file not included in this release)
Filed captures and working notes — October 2026
National identity and ideology working notes
- Extreme Centre? — preserved working note or source capture
- Nationalism — preserved working note or source capture
- Radical Builds Like An Onion - Hannah Arendt — preserved working note or source capture
- Radicalization Pipeline Models — preserved working note or source capture
- Robert Conquest's Laws of Politics — preserved working note or source capture
- The idea of what unites nations — preserved working note or source capture
- oikophobia - declining national pride — preserved working note or source capture
- Excessive National Self-Criticism — merged capture, retained in the named section