"This administration's actions are defensible for the large part from the perspective of the actual circumstances we face: a collapse of the extreme free market capitalism of the last twenty years and the implosion of a neo-imperial post-Cold War foreign policy in the mountains of Afghanistan and the deserts of Mesopotamia. To recognize this, and to defend it from ideological attacks, is, in my view, the real conservative position today. What should matter to conservatives is the empirical data, the specific circumstances, and the least worst practical way of grappling with social and economic and political problems. That's why I see the work of, say, Yuval Levin, Ross Douthat, David Brooks, Jim Manzi, Conor Friedersdorf, Fareed Zakaria, Bruce Bartlett, Jon Rauch, and on a good day, Ramesh Ponnuru (among others) as admirable and well within the contours of conservative discourse - and why I find Andy McCarthy, Powerline, Instapundit, Glenn Beck, Stephen Moore, Bill Kristol, Karl Rove, Sean Hannity and all the toujours l'audace reality-free fanatics to be the antithesis of conservatism as I have long understood it. (The deeper argument here is in The Conservative Soul.)"
I think Andrew Sullivan is pretty much the saving grace of contemporary conservatism. Though I'm a liberal, I certainly think a political landscape with only one party is a very bad thing.« The Conservative Case For A VAT | Main
"History Happened"
23 Apr 2010 12:07 pm
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