Welcome to Commonplace

A new home for the New Right

As its name suggests, our magazine’s purpose is twofold: First, to be a common place where not only the American right-of-center’s diverse factions, but also thoughtful interlocutors from across the political spectrum can gather to debate the future of both conservatism and the nation. Second, to focus those conversations on the commonplace—the economic, political, and cultural concerns that shape the experiences of ordinary Americans and, as a result, the trajectory of the American experiment.

For a long time, we resisted launching a magazine. Does the world really need another one? But the same could have been asked about think tanks. Yet as American Compass approaches its fifth anniversary pushing American conservatism forward, no one doubts the distinctive and indispensable role it has come to play as what the Wall Street Journal calls ”the most influential New Right group on Capitol Hill” and, per Politico, “ground zero in a fierce conservative clash over Trump-era economics.” When the establishment’s legacy institutions show themselves incapable of adapting to modern circumstances, and new entrants find easy rewards in farming angry engagement, the creation of a new institution committed to serious, relevant ideas is vital work.

So Commonplace will do for conservative writers and readers what American Compass has done for the movement’s policymaking community, and I predict we will do it even faster. Our assembled contributors already represent an unparalleled roster of talent, and we are eager to expand it as we establish the magazine as the home of the must-read ideas and debates on the Right. We have the luxury of not needing to churn out ten new things a day to fill a page and generate clicks. We will publish what we think is important—what matters in America, per our tagline—for an audience that wants to be challenged and inspired.

Moments of realignment in American politics often give birth to new magazines, because the process of realignment itself is so chaotic and those institutions which had previously maintained order have blown apart, collapsed in on themselves, or drifted off into the void. After a big bang, the dispersed matter must reassemble, condense, and cool before the oceans can form and life can emerge. Likewise, the contours, commitments, and culture of a coalition must slowly set.

Thus, one task we hope that Commonplace will perform is to form. The New Right’s political culture has emerged largely in reaction against progressive cultural insanity and the “American carnage” of Donald Trump’s first inaugural address. It has tended to privilege the negative: naming and shaming enemies, airing grievances, counterattacking in the culture war.

The enemies are real and should be ashamed, the grievances are legitimate and require airing, the culture war must be fought and won, but the sum-total of these efforts lacks the aspirational vision, inclusive culture, and happy-warrior ethos necessary to political success in a democracy. Commonplace will conduct and discuss an effective and positive conservative politics, making the case for constructive worldviews and encouraging the pursuit of useful endeavors and approaches. At the margin, in a world where such efforts are rare, even a modest new one can have dramatic effect.

A second task is to inform. Realignment has brought entirely new constituencies and concerns into the conservative coalition and is making many others accessible, but it has done nothing to equip conservative leaders to address them effectively. Commonplace will provide a bridge to connect various factions and a common language in which to establish facts and conduct debates. Our choice of focus will bring the most important issues to the fore and push distractions to the side, our content will educate readers about the realities of American life and the aspirations of American citizens, and in the fights we pick we will expose lazy thinking that has been blindly accepted only because it has gone unchallenged.

The third task is to reform. Through its work, Commonplace will become the central forum for shaping the new conservative coalition; developing its rationale, contours, and principles; convening its influential participants and helping to adjudicate vital disagreements; and ultimately charting the course for a durable and effective governing majority.

At Commonplace, you can read diagnoses of what ails America that provide not only the specifics of concrete problems amenable to solution, but also the broader frameworks for understanding what has gone wrong and why. You can find an aspirational account of the common good that draws upon a shared moral vision, set of values, and definition of virtue anchored in the national character, culture, and tradition. And you will be thrown headfirst into the debate over what conservatives should do.

We won’t spend much time on technical legislative proposals, head back over to American Compass for those. But beyond policy, or perhaps prior to policy, a political movement must have some notion of how it would get from the diagnosis of problems to the aspirational vision of the common good. What are the political obstacles and how can they be confronted? What role can various institutions play and what messages should they convey? Where should public policy play a role and what major tradeoffs will that entail?

The Commonplace mission, ultimately, is the same as American Compass’s: to restore an economic consensus that emphasizes the importance of family, community, and industry to the nation’s liberty and prosperity. The most important word there—perhaps by an order of magnitude—is consensus. Any functional political coalition, and more so any durable governing majority, must settle upon an understanding of the nation, its problems and priorities, and the roles for private action and public policy in response. American Compass gets called a think tank but more accurately it is an ideas factory, churning out new frameworks, arguments, and proposals for the conservative coalition’s consideration. Commonplace will provide a forum where those ideas and many others can be discussed and debated, refocused and refined, and assembled into the consensus upon which we can all build.