B. Duncan Moench

How the Next Civil War Begins

America is lurching toward collapse. Its democratic norms will bring about its final unraveling. All national declines ebb and flow. The street violence and chaos of the summer of 2020 marked the moment the curtain was pulled back, the country’s true…

Punks vs. Posers

It’s the only culture war worth fighting Fifty years into our poser-filled age, we now live in a zeitgeist so devoid of genuine art and even earnest human engagement that the concept of seeking a life of meaning strikes us as an against-all-odds…

Roe and the Fable of Progressive Neoliberalism

The coming Supreme Court decision will extend the culture wars long enough to keep real economic reforms off the table forever Last month, in what some are calling “the scoop of the century,” Politico obtained a copy of a Supreme Court draft decision…

Did Bernie Sanders Fail to Seize His Moment?

The senator joined with the openly corrupt operatives of the Democratic Party instead of starting a pro-worker New Deal party that could have united an American majority Over the past few months, Bernie Sanders has stood on the precipice of possibly…

Americans Hate Each Other

It’s time to embrace what that means for the country’s future In the late 1990s, Michael Lind wrote about different “republican” epochs in American history: the Anglo-American republic (from the Founding to the 1920s), the Euro-American republic…

Is Musa Al-Gharbi the Last Academic Who Can Tell the Truth?

The superstar Columbia grad student was canceled by Fox, an experience that only strengthened his belief in convincing his opponents Following last November’s election, exit polls appeared to convey some shocking news: Relative to four years before,…

Shaq, LeBron, and the specter of anti-Mormonism

Just In... As the NBA went into its spring All-Star break, the Utah Jazz, led by three league All-Stars, held the best record in basketball. Given the misconceptions the media often encourage about Utah and its fans, the team’s success has created…

S2:E8: Walter Russell Mead | Is the liberal order crumbling or functioning as we should expect?

Walter Russell Mead and Duncan Moench greatly disagree on whether the First World War was a murky battle between two equally imperfect and imperialist forces. They follow up this discussion with a prescient conversation that anticipates the attempted…

S2:E8: Walter Russell Mead | Is the liberal order crumbling or functioning as we should expect?

Walter Russell Mead and Duncan Moench greatly disagree on whether the First World War was a murky battle between two equally imperfect and imperialist forces. They follow up this discussion with a prescient conversation that anticipates the attempted…

The Three Stigmata of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

More than a half century after the civil rights leader’s assassination, the trauma of his death keeps expanding In Philip K. Dick’s novel The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, an intergalactic United Nations has organized residents of an…

What Is Progressivism?

The dream of a utopia administered by technocrats Twenty years ago, few Americans identified as “progressive.” Ralph Nader’s first Green Party presidential campaign changed that. Naderites needed a way of distinguishing themselves from the followers…

S2:E7: Robert Putnam | Can Americans ever see each other as family again?

Why did American culture build strong community ties in the second quarter of the 20th century only to have it all unravel in the mid-1960s — did immigration restriction play a role? Dr. Moench and acclaimed Harvard sociologist debate the thesis of…

The WASP Roots of the Social Justice Movement

The ideology is nothing less than the Anglosphere’s first modern authoritarian political movement The rise of identity politics authoritarianism has led to scenes that look like something out of a pulp horror flick like Invasion of the Body…

Jack Mormons

When I left the church, I found myself, and some Jewish roots There is no more misunderstood place on Earth than Salt Lake City. Unless you were raised in the area you probably think of SLC as one of the nation’s great red-state bastions, a city run…

A Producerist Manifesto

Growth is the problem. The solution is producerism, the hidden American philosophy. Just before calling for the breakup of the United States, my spouse and I watched the new documentary Planet of the Humans. Over and over, the film exposes the bait…

S2:E6: Yascha Mounk | What good might come from populism’s rise? A tense conversation

Two scholars of political thought with highly contrasting perspectives (and totally different backgrounds) explore what promise the rise of populism may - or may not - hold. Dr. Moench and Prof. Mounk do their best to disagree amicably on the meaning…

The Great American Breakup

Political scientist Louis Hartz accurately described the United States’ underlying cultural hyperindividualism. Is the next logical step the dissolution of the centralized federal state to become more like the EU? It’s time to face facts, America:…

S2:E5: Tomás Jiménez | ”Build a Wall to Mexico” - Wait, Why? Mexicans Aren’t Even Coming Anymore

Has Mexican American immigration been substantively different from German or Irish immigration to the United States — or, is it merely newer? Dr. B. Duncan Moench speaks with Tomás Jiménez to discuss the overlooked similarities —and unseen…

S2:E5: Tomás Jiménez | "Build a Wall to Mexico" - Wait, Why? Mexicans Aren't Even Coming Anymore

Has Mexican American immigration been substantively different from German or Irish immigration to the United States — or, is it merely newer? Dr. B. Duncan Moench speaks with Tomás Jiménez to discuss the overlooked similarities —and unseen…

S2:E4: Reihan Salam | The Trade-offs to Mass Immigration

The Manhattan Institute's Reihan Salam joins Duncan Moench to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of mass immigration. When low-skill workers call for less immigration do they have genuine concerns regarding competition for jobs and benefits -…