In this installment, Curt Mills and Phillip Blond debate the resolution: "Empire Is Bad for America." At stake is whether America's global power and network of alliances protect the country's prosperity and security or entangle Americans in costly wars, commitments, and institutions that no longer serve their interests.

Mills argues that America's imperial turn has weakened the country's republican traditions, drawn it into unnecessary conflicts, and diverted attention and resources away from the interests of ordinary Americans. Blond counters that empire is not an aberration but a recurring feature of political organization and argues that American power, properly ordered around shared Western values and alliances rather than liberal hegemony, can preserve peace and counter rival powers.

The debate ranges across American history, nationalism and liberalism, Iran and Ukraine, China and Taiwan, NATO and America's allies, Greenland, the postwar international order, and whether the United States can or should retreat from its role as a global hegemon.

About the Speakers

Curt Mills is the Executive Director of The American Conservative in Washington, D.C. He previously served as Senior Reporter and Contributing Editor, and his work has appeared in the New York Times, Politico, UnHerd, Newsweek, and The Critic. Mills specializes in foreign policy and campaign coverage and has previously worked at The National Interest, U.S. News & World Report, Washington Examiner, and The Spectator.

Phillip Blond is an internationally recognized political thinker and social and economic commentator and the founder and Director of ResPublica. An academic, journalist, and author, he previously taught theology and philosophy at the Universities of Exeter and Cumbria. He is the author of Red Tory, which sought to redefine the center ground of British politics around civil association, mutual ownership, and shared enterprise.

Moderated by Sarah Gustafson, Assistant Professor of Politics at The Catholic University of America. Her research interests include the history of political thought, Alexis de Tocqueville, Western political philosophy, the Catholic intellectual tradition, and normative political theory.

About "Fault Lines":
"Fault Lines" is an ISI debate series exploring the arguments and disagreements shaping the future of conservatism and American public life.

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Welcome to "Fault Lines," a debate series from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute bringing serious thinkers together to debate the political, cultural, and intellectual questions shaping our world.

In this installment, Dr. Zachary Porcu and Dean Ball debate the resolution: "AI Is a Deal With the Devil." At stake is whether artificial intelligence is just the next tool in humanity's technological progress or a type of idol that reshapes our relationship to knowledge, power, religion, and even what it means to be human.

Porcu draws on ancient mythology, Christian thought, and the history of technology to argue that AI echoes humanity's oldest stories about forbidden knowledge, spiritual power, and the temptation to transcend our natural limits. Ball counters that AI is better understood as a discovery about the nature of intelligence itself and that, despite its real risks, responsibly developed AI could expand human capacity while freeing us to focus on distinctly human questions.

The debate ranges across AI alignment and superintelligence, religious revival, human agency, technological dependence, the role of government and the Church, and whether humanity can keep control of increasingly powerful machines.

About "Fault Lines":
"Fault Lines" is an ISI debate series exploring the arguments and disagreements shaping the future of conservatism and American public life.

Go deeper with ISI:
https://isi.org/join/

Resolved: Trump Killed Trumpism

What is Trumpism, and can it survive Donald Trump?

In the first episode of Fault Lines, Christopher Caldwell and Dan McCarthy debate whether Trump has strengthened the political movement he created or undermined its defining principles. Moderated by Leah Libresco, the conversation explores immigration, foreign policy, corruption, the changing conservative coalition, the future of conservative institutions, and what a post-Trump Republican Party could look like in 2028 and beyond.

About the Speakers

Christopher Caldwell is a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute and contributing editor of the Claremont Review of Books. He is the author of The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties.

Dan McCarthy is Distinguished Fellow in Conservative Thought at The Heritage Foundation and editor-in-chief of ISI’s Modern Age. A longtime writer and editor, he previously served as editor of The American Conservative and ISI’s vice president of publications.

Leah Libresco-Sargeant is a writer and author whose work has appeared in The New York Times, First Things, The Dispatch, and The New Atlantis. She is the author of The Dignity of Dependence, Arriving at Amen, and Building the Benedict Option.

Watch on the podcast on YouTube

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