Our guest this week on Politinerds is Charles C.W. Cooke of National Review. Charles falls into the category of those who are “Americans by choice” rather than by birth, having come over here from England as an adult. Doug and I get into that a bit in the beginning when our guest offers a rather inspiring story of falling in love with America at an early age. He offers some observations about the fundamental differences between Great Britain and the United States, particularly in terms of their ideas of conservatism and limited government. For example, when the government proposes doing something, the American conservative view first asks the question, “should the government do this and it it within their power?” By contrast, the Brits tend to simply ask, “will this work?”

We also get into the question of whether people in the United States should “speak English” or “speak American.” As a linguist, Charles has some interesting observations on that. The rest of the interview is spent on the recent GOP debate and how he sees things playing out from here as the field thins and the final contenders are identified.

We also touch on Charles’ excellent book, The Conservatarian Manifesto. (Take the quiz at the link to find out if you might be a conservatarian and not realize it.) It’s a great read which tends to spur a lot of debate on the Right.

Remember, the show is now available on iTunes so you can catch up with us as soon as new episodes air. And for you non-iTunes users, there’s still the archive of all our previous shows.