Conservatives, by contrast, are not serious. They have no
animating spirit. They don’t much talk about liberty or property or markets or
opportunity. They don’t mean what they say about the Constitution, they won’t
do a thing to limit government, they won’t touch entitlements or defense
spending, they won’t abolish the Department of Education or a single federal
agency, they won’t touch abortion laws, and they sure won’t give up their own
socialist impulses. Trumpism,
though not conservative and thoroughly non-intellectual, drove a final stake
through the barely beating heart of Right intellectualism, from the Weekly Standard to National Review.
Conservatism today is incoherent, both ideologically and tactically
incapable of countering the rising tide of socialism.
Generals always fight the last war, and politics is no
different. We all tend to see the current political climate in terms of
old and familiar divisions, long-faded alliances, and obsolete rhetoric. We all
cling to the comfortable ideology and influences that help us make sense of a
chaotic world. As one commenter recently put it, liberal Baby Boomers
still think it’s 1968 and conservative Baby Boomers still think it’s
1985. Generation X and Millennials will exhibit the same blinders. It may be
disheartening to keep fighting what should be a long-settled battle against socialism,
but today we have no other choice.
