Barton Swaim, “Good Night, Liberalism”

Barton Swaim attended the University of South Carolina and earned a doctorate in English literature from the University of Edinburgh. From 2007 to 2010 he worked as a speechwriter for South Carolina’s governor. In 2015 he published a book about that experience, The Speechwriter. Swaim was a contributing columnist for the Washington Post for the 2016 election, and in 2017 became opinion editor of the Weekly Standard magazine; and in 2019 he became an editorial page writer at the Wall Street Journal. In addition to the Journal, Swaim has written frequently for the Times Literary Supplement, the New Criterion, the L.A. Times, Commentary, and First Things. Swaim lives in Columbia, S.C., with his wife and two daughters (the third daughter now being a student at Furman).