America and the West are now in the penultimate stage of a revolution defined by "wokeness." What we call "partisanship" is essentially the effect of the late but growing realization of the revolution's opponents that they face a major threat to their interests, convictions, and ways of life. It is not the "wokerati," but their likely victims who are waking up. What they see is how a large number of social trends that may have posed little danger separately - mass migration made more divisive by multiculturalism; the rise of identity politics; the imposition of bureaucratic "diversity;" the collapse of Christianity and traditional religious restraints; the sexual revolution; the weakening of the family; radical gender theory and the rising hostility between the sexes; terrorism and its gradual accommodation by democratic governments and institutions; the smothering of national sovereignty by "global governance;" the rise of anti-national elites in Western societies; the post-communist crises of conservatism; the extraordinary recent resurrection of "socialism" as a social panacea among the young; the economic consequences of environmentalism - all have coalesced into a brewing social revolution that leaves most ordinary people feeling dispossessed in their countries and losing the future. In this series of essays written over the course of a storied career, John O'Sullivan, a former adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and editor of National Review shows how this revolution has emerged and how this revolution can be resisted.
John O'Sullivan CBE is President and founder of the Danube Institute in Budapest, Hungary; international editor of Quadrant Magazine in Sydney, Australia; associate editor of the Hungarian Review; a fellow of the National Review Institute; and editor at large of National Review. He is a co-founder and director of Twenty-First Century Initiatives as well as the International Reagan Thatcher Society. Mr. O'Sullivan served as a Special Adviser and speechwriter to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He was the founder and co-chairman of the New Atlantic Initiative, launched at the Congress of Prague in May 1996 by former Czech President Vaclav Havel and Lady Thatcher. It played a major role in bringing the countries of Central and Eastern Europe into NATO.
"A feast of a book, filled with sparkling prose, usable descriptive phrases, and sharp judgments" - Steven F. Hayward, Claremont Review of Books Conservative writers have always claimed to defend the high literary tradition, at once comic and wise, that runs from G. K. Chesterton through Evelyn Waugh to Kingsley Amis. But John O'Sullivan is probably the only one today who actually belongs to it.- Christopher Caldwell, journalist and author most recently of The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties John O'Sullivan is erudite without pedantry and limpid without oversimplifcation. He has a perfect eye for an amusing and enlightening anecdote. His judgment is sound and his moral outlook vigorous. His essays are what George Orwell thought political writing should be: an art form.- Theodore Dalrymple, cultural critic and author most recently of The Wheelchair and Other Essays John O'Sullivan, a fine historian as well as a brilliant journalist, has firm principles but an open mind, is exceptionally well-read yet curious about even the most upsetting and unexpected developments that influence social change, and his acute analyses of present and past bring to every subject a humane outlook and a keen sense of the ridiculous. They're all in this book. - Ruth Dudley Edwards, historian and journalist, author most recently of The Seven: The Lives and Legacies of the Founding Fathers of the Irish Republic Writers and journalists often relish the opportunity to defend unpopular causes, and John O'Sullivan has certainly been willing to do that when necessity has dictated. But he has also proved himself willing to do something far less venerated among writers and journalists but today increasingly necessary: which is to defend popular causes. Many of the ideas and people he has defended do not often find themselves with such sophisticated defenders on their side. But that is what they have often had in the form of John O'Sullivan.- Douglas Murray, journalist and author most recently of The War on the West
