Due to widespread acclaim of Hillsdale College scholar Michael Anton’s new book, The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return, CSPAN’s Book TV recently aired an interview between Mr. Anton and Dr. Matthew Spalding, Vice President for Washington Operations and Dean of the Van Andel Graduate School of Government.
Mr. Anton is a lecturer and research fellow at Hillsdale College’s campus in Washington, D.C. He previously served in national security positions in the Trump and Bush (43) administrations, as well as in the administrations of California Governor Pete Wilson and New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
In his new book, Anton believes that America is at the point of no return and that the 2020 election is the most important one America has faced in more than a century.
In the interview, he believes America is divided as almost never before—with contesting political factions regarding themselves not as rivals but as enemies. He claims the Democrat Party has become the party of “identity politics”—and every one of those identities is defined against a unifying national heritage of patriotism, pride in America’s past, and hope for a shared future.
He believes that against the Democrats are a divided Republican Party. Gravely misunderstanding the opposition, old-style Republicans still seek bipartisanship and accommodation, wrongly assuming that Democrats care about playing by the tiresome old rules laid down in the Constitution and other fundamental charters of American liberty.
The new core of the Republican Party is the populists and nationalists, who are tired of losing. The party’s only hope of victory, they are all that stand between the United States as we have traditionally understood it and a revolution—less dramatic in appearance but just as consequential as the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.
You can watch the full discussion on CSPAN, where it has aired multiple times.