The Rational Nationalist

Moving Beyond Partisanship Toward Prosperity

In The Rational Nationalist, Lee Ellis offers a revolutionary approach to governance by confronting the realities of human nature. This book argues that true political effectiveness comes from understanding and strategically channeling our innate impulses, not suppressing them. Drawing from evolutionary psychology, anthropology, and political science, it explores how our evolutionary past shapes our present political realities.

The book introduces “rational nationalism,” a philosophy that blends patriotic drive with rigorous, evidence-based reasoning. It emphasizes data-driven policy, strategic thinking, national unity, and ethical leadership. Historical analysis, particularly of the rise of Anglo-American powers, illustrates these principles.

The Rational Nationalist applies this framework to contemporary issues like economic inequality, social division, and geopolitical challenges. This book is for policymakers, activists, scholars, and citizens seeking a more rational and effective approach to governance, one that acknowledges human complexity and strives for societal betterment.

Healing Middle-Class Democracy

Respecting Each Other, Cooperating Fairly, and Sharing Opportunity

American democracy rests on the strength and solidarity of its largest economic group: the middle class. Yet today that class is fractured from within, and the growing divide threatens the nation’s long-term stability. If these tensions continue to deepen, the result could be serious civil unrest, placing democratic institutions at risk.

Since the 1980s, economic growth has disproportionately benefited the upper middle class—the affluent tier just below the top one percent—while much of the broader middle class has struggled to advance. This imbalance has fueled resentment among those who see fewer pathways to upward mobility. Restoring unity would require expanding economic opportunity, backed by broad political will across the middle class. But intensifying internal conflict has stalled that effort.

In Healing Middle-Class Democracy, Paul Eckert contends that the central obstacle to expanding opportunity is the erosion of middle-class cohesion. He proposes that renewed commitment to respect and fairness can rebuild trust and enable cooperation. Reform, he argues, does not hinge on creating a new political party or aligning with a particular ideology; rather, it requires every party to champion policies that strengthen opportunity.

Eckert maintains that a unified middle class can simultaneously safeguard the prosperity of upper-income households and enhance mobility for those further down the income ladder. Strategic government investment, focused on equipping citizens to compete for higher-quality jobs and to launch new enterprises, would drive this renewal.

The possibility of unity and expanded opportunity remains within reach. Yet complacency is dangerous. Divisions are widening, and the window for meaningful reform may be closing. The moment for decisive action has arrived.

Rethinking Economic Growth

How Small Businesses Can Help Consistently Grow the Economy

SMALL BUSINESSES ARE THE CORNERSTONE OF AMERICAN ECONOMIC GROWTH.
So why are we failing them?

It seems that big-box stores and colossal business giants dominate our economic landscape. But what’s often overlooked is the vital role small businesses play, with maverick innovators, entrepreneurs, and risk-takers creating two out of every three new jobs and representing almost 45 percent of the economy.

Despite high praise from both political parties, small business owners often face insurmountable challenges. From tax and regulatory policies that are woefully ignorant of day-to-day reality, to the constant challenge of attracting and maintaining employee head counts, it’s crucial—now more than ever—that we empower small businesses and set them up for success.

Thoroughly researched with detailed data and twelve original case studies, Rethinking Economic Growth presents readers with the means to understand the real needs of small business owners. With detailed overviews of varying industries, from equipment manufacturing to energy handling to the fragrance industry and more, this book informs readers of the far-reaching implications economic policy can have across the full spectrum of American small businesses. Accessible and actionable, Daniel Varroney outlines a clear path to protecting and empowering small businesses, ensuring our country’s prosperity for generations to come.

Explaining Israel

The Jewish State, the Middle East, and America

In this collection of 40 columns written for RealClearPolitics between 2014 and 2024, Peter Berkowitz explains Israel by reporting events, examining ideas, and placing both in their larger geopolitical context.

The senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution draws on the great Israeli mosaic of people, opinions, and aspirations to illuminate the domestic politics, diplomatic and national security imperatives, and multivalent spirit of the Middle East’s only rights-protecting democracy.

The carefully curated collection of essays in Explaining Israel demonstrates that to understand the Jewish state, it is necessary to appreciate the nation’s accomplishments and setbacks, the sources of its political cohesiveness and the forces dividing it, and the splendid opportunities and grave threats that it confronts.

The essays commence with Israel in 2014 at the height of its prosperity and self-confidence. They explore intensifying schisms inside the country and gathering dangers on its borders and throughout the region. And they culminate in penetrating analyses of the two crises that struck Israel in 2023. In January, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s sweeping judicial-reform proposals set off bitter controversy and months of massive protests. Then on October 7, Iran-backed Hamas jihadists invaded Israel, massacred some 1,200 people and kidnapped around 250, enmeshing Israel in a seven-front war against Iran and its regional proxies.

Berkowitz’s essays clarify the breathtaking achievements, the heartbreak, and the remarkable resilience of a nation struggling valiantly to be Jewish, free, and democratic in a dangerous region crucial to America’s interests.

The Political Vise

How the Radical Left Controls America and the Path to Regaining Our Liberty

How does the Radical Left keep winning, even when it’s losing?

In The Political Vise, political strategist and policy leader John Tillman unmasks the hidden machinery driving America’s relentless leftward drift.

Drawing on decades of experience, including a landmark legal victory at the Supreme Court in Janus v. AFSCME, Tillman introduces a powerful framework for how political power has been used since the country’s founding: a three-sided vise of the media, elite influencers, and the American people that holds politicians accountable. But in recent years, the Radical Left has created its own version of the vise that instead applies constant pressure to the people. The result? Radical policies like gender-transitioning children, welcoming illegal immigrants by the millions, claiming every white person is a racist, appeasing China, and acceptance of Islamic extremism.

This book isn’t just a diagnosis—it’s a battle plan. With sharp analysis and behind-the-scenes stories from the front lines of politics, Tillman shows how conservatives can use the vise the way it was intended and put the American people back in control. From Capitol Hill to school boards, The Political Vise arms readers with the tools to fight back against cultural coercion, institutional decay, and the slow suffocation of the American spirit.

If you’ve ever wondered why conservatives veer left in office or why opposing the woke agenda seems so futile, this is the book you’ve been waiting for. Smart, bold, and grounded in constitutional ideals, this book is both an in-the-trenches look at how politics actually works and a call to action to take back our political system.

Vanishing Point

In Search of Our Constitutional Future

Scholars of the law frequently opine on “constitutional moments,” unprecedented occurrences when ideals clash and our governing bodies are confronted with decisions to make that will fundamentally alter the trajectory of the United States.

Is it possible that we are staring down our own moment? 

In Vanishing Point, Edwin Hagenstein interrogates our fractured times through his analysis of the oeuvres of a trio of renowned Constitutional theorists: Richard Epstein, Cass Sunstein, and Adrian Vermeule. By juxtaposing their viewpoints, Hagenstein shines a spotlight on the events that have led to our current predicament, and poses the ultimate query: where do we go next?

Finding the Third Way

Lessons in the Politics of Civility from My Journey through History

From befriending George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton at Yale to defending Bill Clinton and earning a reputation as “the da Vinci of spin,” a legendary political adviser takes readers behind the curtain of three decades of US history, the decline of civility in the Trump era, and how both parties can regain their faith in America by restoring it.

Beginning with his early days on the Yale campus with two future presidents, three future senators, and three future governors, few politicos have found themselves closer to the people who matter most in both American political parties in the past three decades than Lanny Davis.

Shortly after graduating from Yale Law School in the early 1970s, Davis first met Hillary Rodham—a promising law student he thought would be the first president of the baby boomer generation . . . until she introduced him to an up-and-coming political star named Bill Clinton. 

It was in their first conversations about the deep divisions brought on by the Vietnam War that Clinton said, “Back in Arkansas, to solve a problem, we learned you can’t just attack and label people. It’s not about ‘right’ versus ‘left’—it’s about finding a third way that solves a problem, with each side giving in a little.” At that moment, Davis began to reconsider whether Hillary would make it to the White House first.

The “Third Way” that Clinton described was not a mushy center where there were no principles, just compromise. It was a new brand of politics that started with principled liberalism and conservatism and ended on common ground such as wariness of government overreach and protection of individual liberty.

As both an FDR liberal Democrat and a friend of future Republican President George W. Bush, Davis found this Third Way philosophy to be a natural fit. After learning the ways of Washington from the likes of Edward Bennett Williams and Tommy Boggs while a partner at the landmark law firm Patton Boggs, he became the go-to crisis manager for the Clinton White House and a respected figure on all sides of the spectrum as the Third Way became the dominant political force of the 1990s and 2000s.

Finding the Third Way is a refreshingly candid insider journey through the highest levels of government, applying the lessons of the Clinton years to offer a fresh perspective on how liberals can reconnect with “Trump Democrats” and how both parties can regain their faith in the American political system.