Here's the relevant excerpt from the Federalist essay:
*Calling oneself a conservative in today’s political climate would be like saying one is a conservative because one wants to preserve the medieval European traditions of arranged marriage and trial by combat. Whatever the merits of those practices, you cannot preserve or defend someth…
Here's the relevant excerpt from the Federalist essay:
*Calling oneself a conservative in today’s political climate would be like saying one is a conservative because one wants to preserve the medieval European traditions of arranged marriage and trial by combat. Whatever the merits of those practices, you cannot preserve or defend something that is dead. Perhaps you can retain a memory of it or knowledge of it. But that is not what conservatism was purportedly about. It was about maintaining traditions and preserving Western civilization as a living and vibrant thing.
Well, too late.*
The essay is basically a rehash of Glenn Ellmers's recent Claremont screed disqualifying half the US population from being real Americans and advocating resort to government coercion as a solution to modern cultural conflicts and a means to "rebuilding" an acceptable society.
Though, by that logic, why brute government force couldn't similarly "rebuild" support for arranged marriages and trial by combat escapes me. Who's to say those quaint customs are truly "dead?"
But apparently it comes down to breaking up Big Tech, prosecuting all abortionists and outlawing gay marriage. Oh and treating Drag Queen Story Hour as child abuse. (Nothing about Kari Lake's past attendance with her child at such events.)
The underlying premise is that there is still a vestige of traditional mores and taboos to which most people allegedly adhere, but which it's fatuous to imagine an impotent classical liberalism or Goldwater conservatism can salvage.
Except that most people are not hard line Right to Lifers - not even Ron DeSantis - nor do they stridently oppose either gay marriage or, er, Drag Queen Story Hour. So that leave Big Tech. How will Elon Musk feel if the Antitrust Division goes after Twitter?
This is performative polemics by a mutual admiration society of wannabe Falangists. The danger is that an apathetic electorate and go-along-to-get-along politicians will tolerate mounting governmental incursions by self styled "counter-revolutionaries" who - rather like the hard Left - have persuaded themselves that they're saving America in spite of itself.
Here's the relevant excerpt from the Federalist essay:
*Calling oneself a conservative in today’s political climate would be like saying one is a conservative because one wants to preserve the medieval European traditions of arranged marriage and trial by combat. Whatever the merits of those practices, you cannot preserve or defend something that is dead. Perhaps you can retain a memory of it or knowledge of it. But that is not what conservatism was purportedly about. It was about maintaining traditions and preserving Western civilization as a living and vibrant thing.
Well, too late.*
The essay is basically a rehash of Glenn Ellmers's recent Claremont screed disqualifying half the US population from being real Americans and advocating resort to government coercion as a solution to modern cultural conflicts and a means to "rebuilding" an acceptable society.
Though, by that logic, why brute government force couldn't similarly "rebuild" support for arranged marriages and trial by combat escapes me. Who's to say those quaint customs are truly "dead?"
But apparently it comes down to breaking up Big Tech, prosecuting all abortionists and outlawing gay marriage. Oh and treating Drag Queen Story Hour as child abuse. (Nothing about Kari Lake's past attendance with her child at such events.)
The underlying premise is that there is still a vestige of traditional mores and taboos to which most people allegedly adhere, but which it's fatuous to imagine an impotent classical liberalism or Goldwater conservatism can salvage.
Except that most people are not hard line Right to Lifers - not even Ron DeSantis - nor do they stridently oppose either gay marriage or, er, Drag Queen Story Hour. So that leave Big Tech. How will Elon Musk feel if the Antitrust Division goes after Twitter?
This is performative polemics by a mutual admiration society of wannabe Falangists. The danger is that an apathetic electorate and go-along-to-get-along politicians will tolerate mounting governmental incursions by self styled "counter-revolutionaries" who - rather like the hard Left - have persuaded themselves that they're saving America in spite of itself.