Brazil conservatives

December 13, 2018

Conservatives get failing grade on education

An interesting perspective from which to study the history of the conservative movement is the relationship of conservatives to education. Every true conservative is, at some level, invested in tradition. Continue Reading...

November 07, 2018

An urgent agenda for Bolsonaro in Brazil

Once we get beyond the myths surrounding the long presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, we soon recognize that one of FDR’s successes was to establish a myriad of symbols that captured the imagination of world politics. Continue Reading...

November 01, 2018

Bolsonaro versus Brazil’s elites

In his book Sovereignty (1955), the French philosopher Bertrand de Jouvenel observed that one of the significant phenomena in the construction of the modern state was the concentration of the means of communication in the hands of a few. Continue Reading...

October 16, 2018

How a Protestant pastor defended Brazil’s Catholics

It was in Brazil’s 2010 elections that the majority of the voters first learned about Silas Malafaia. It was also the election in which the left-wing president Lula da Silva reached the height of his political power. Continue Reading...

October 15, 2018

Understanding Bolsonaro

When Jair Messias Bolsonaro walked into TV Cultura’s studio in July, no one had any idea of the political tsunami that would engulf Brazil 90 days later. The “Roda Viva” is the oldest talk show on Brazilian television; a group of eight journalists sit on a wheel-shaped bench and in the center lies the interviewee. Continue Reading...

October 12, 2018

YouTube powers Brazil’s conservative Catholic wave

Father Paulo Ricardo is a very sympathetic man. Always smiling, he is tall, thin, and balding. His austere appearance reminds us of priests portrayed in the films of the 1960s. Father Paulo could easily pretend to be Dom Camilo, the wise Italian priest created by Giovannino Guareschi and immortalized in the cinema by the brilliant French actor Fernandel. Continue Reading...