Welcome to The Federalist, a new web magazine on politics, policy, and culture.
Why a new magazine? There are certainly a host of quality magazines out there today, and there’s plenty of smart writing on the web on all sorts of interesting topics… But generally, if today’s publications are interested in politics, they are primarily interested in the horserace or the personalities, not the philosophical underpinnings of the day’s debate. Or if they are interested in culture, they are essentially collections of reviews, often so dry and academic as to be very limited in reach.
We want to offer you something different. Consider the mission of the original Time, the original aggregator. Henry Luce’s magazine aimed to cover and distill the news of politics, economics, world affairs and culture for the nation’s rising middle class. It leaned to the political right, with a small-c conservatism equipped with a populist respect for the middle class reader outside of New York and Washington, and an abiding love for America at a time when snark and cynicism were not considered substitutes for smart analysis.
Luce’s 1920s prospectus for the magazine included this “list of prejudices”:
- A belief that the world is round and an admiration of the statesman’s view of all the world.
- A general distrust of the present tendency toward increasing interference by government.
- A prejudice against the rising cost of government.
- Faith in the things which money cannot buy.
- A respect for the old, particularly in manners.
- An interest in the new, particularly in ideas.
At The Federalist, you’ll read interesting essays informed by this general worldview, with writing on big subjects and small. If you are a subscriber to The Transom, you can expect more content along those lines, with the sharpest writers digging into the major issues of the day with a viewpoint that rejects the assumptions of the media establishment. You can also expect us to expand more into the cultural space, featuring longreads on a wide variety of interesting topics about a nation facing a period of historic transformation. And we may add another newsletter or three.
Our core team includes a trio of great writers and experienced editors:
- Mollie Hemingway, a brilliant journalist most recently of Ricochet and GetReligion
- David Harsanyi, author and syndicated columnist, most recently editor of Human Events
- Sean Davis, a veteran policy wonk currently of Media Trackers, former CFO of the Daily Caller
We expect to add to this team and grow in the months ahead. And in addition to these three, we’ll have a number of regular contributors on a number of important topics in the days to come. We intend to offer a unique perspective on the issues of the day, and publish smart writers who have stories to share of heroes, martyrs, and villains.
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Welcome to The Federalist. Be lovers of freedom, and anxious for the fray.
