Yep. All of this. In just about every conversation about conservatives, it seems someone raises the spectre of what conservatism is really supposed to be about.
I’m not sure it’s all that useful to really delineate between what conservatives do and this theoretical version of conservative that largely seems to live in the minds of people like David Brooks.
Even in one of the most canonical examples of the “true” conservative - William F. Buckley, the conservative’s conservative - we quickly see how that kind of thing is deflated - he’s often thrown out there as some kind of standard-bearer who “stood up” to things like the Birchers (but then still had backchannels to them). He not only hurled a gay slur, but threatened physical violence on the air. And the book that put him on the map is the same kind of whining invective we see today from the right about how the universities are indoctrinating the children. And he wrote it 75 years ago.
Yep. All of this. In just about every conversation about conservatives, it seems someone raises the spectre of what conservatism is really supposed to be about.
I’m not sure it’s all that useful to really delineate between what conservatives do and this theoretical version of conservative that largely seems to live in the minds of people like David Brooks.
Even in one of the most canonical examples of the “true” conservative - William F. Buckley, the conservative’s conservative - we quickly see how that kind of thing is deflated - he’s often thrown out there as some kind of standard-bearer who “stood up” to things like the Birchers (but then still had backchannels to them). He not only hurled a gay slur, but threatened physical violence on the air. And the book that put him on the map is the same kind of whining invective we see today from the right about how the universities are indoctrinating the children. And he wrote it 75 years ago.