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Dear Friends,
In the fresh-off-the-press October issue of The New Criterion, editor Roger Kimball has assembled a symposium of authors writing about the “new conservative dilemma.” The dilemma these writers have in mind is by now familiar: the Left has won everything, the Marcusian “long march through the institutions” is complete, and unless conservatives change (ideologically and/or tactically) they are doomed to irrelevance and our country will be lost.
There is much to appreciate in the assembled essays. One can and should nod one’s head while reading the litany of just how radical the progressive left has become, the weaponization of the levers of government, and the patent injustices—political, legal, cultural—wrought on anyone who resists the elite party line on diversity, equity, and inclusion. All well and good as a half-diagnosis. What I cannot abide is the catastrophism and defeatism lurking just beneath the surface of these essays. They simply take for granted as an a priori axiom that—well, as I once heard a speaker put it at a conference, “It is OVER!” That is, we’ve lost. Classical liberalism is a failed project. Obvious, isn’t it?
I flatly refuse this diagnosis mainly because it isn’t a diagnosis at all. It is an ex cathedra pronouncement. One made by telling exactly half a story. Do you know how easy it is to prove something when you conveniently ignore any and all contrary evidence? Observe this paragraph from Manhattan Institute Fellow, James Pierson:
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