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Comment by dredmorbius | Hacker News Reader

The Claremont Institute is a conservative think tank based in Upland, California. The institute was founded in 1979 by four students of Harry V. Jaffa. It produces the Claremont Review of Books, The American Mind, and other publications.

The institute was an early defender of Donald Trump. After Joe Biden won the 2020 United States presidential election and Trump refused to concede, Claremont Institute senior fellow John Eastman aided Trump in his failed attempts to overturn the election results. The institute publications in recent years have frequently published alt-right and far-right opinion pieces.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claremont_Institute>

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Yes, it’s good to know about the background and context of institutes.

Not so subtext: 'No need to read any more then'.

What's clear is that the site comes at events and history with a clear, extreme, and ideological framing.

Whether one chooses not to read, or to read with this in mind, is up to the individual.

An NY Times article about Claremont quoted one of Jaffa's sons as saying that the institute wanted to put a robe on Ayn Rand and call her Aristotle or a top hat on Jefferson Davis and call him Lincoln.

Would you have a link to that?

There's a long-form profile on Claremont posted about a year ago on 3 August 2022, "How the Claremont Institute Became a Nerve Center of the American Right"

<https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/03/magazine/claremont-instit...>

It mentions Aristotle, and quotes Jaffe's son, Philip, but there's no mention of Jefferson Davis or Ayn Rand.

I don't find anything including those elements in a broader search (beyond nytimes.com) either.

There's a tweet which combines several of the terms though: <https://nitter.net/_strate/status/1551418137576456192#m>

Wrong newspaper: https://twitter.com/mroth78/status/1556653036566618113

Thanks!

Direct link: <https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/24/claremont-j...>

And the context around that is helpful. Apparent Jaffa was #notafan of Claremont ultimately:

Jaffa would have been disappointed but unsurprised by the institute’s fealty to Trump, according to one of his sons, Philip Jaffa, who said his late father had grown disturbed by the institute’s teachings.

Philip Jaffa said his father had harsh words for the institute, which he “repeated endlessly those last few years.”

“They did not wait to bury the teaching with the teacher,” Jaffa recalled his father saying. “What they are trying to do is put a top hat on Jefferson Davis and call it Abraham Lincoln and the dust cover of the ‘Nicomachean Ethics’ on ‘Atlas Shrugged’ and call it Aristotle.”

I can look tonight.

Sad to say, but yes, about half way in the piece degenerates to standard right-wing rant:

> The present ruling class, by contrast, does not appear to wish to improve the people but apparently seeks to make them worse. ...

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