Not Your Father's Conservatism

John Derbyshire sums up the state of modern American conservatism:

The state of our republic today is pretty dire. Calls to rectify the situation by means of Kulturkampf seem to me misguided, however. The central problem of the United States today is not that the people’s brains are encrusted with filth, but that they have been scrubbed so clean by puritan-left ideology we have lost the ability to talk, even to think, about what ails us; and this is as true over large parts of the conservative movement as it is in the popular culture at large. We cannot discuss what needs discussing; and we have stripped away defenses that will protect us when the coming tsunami of new understandings in the human sciences makes landfall.

We have lost the will even to expel lawless intruders from our territory, or to smite our enemies with appropriate hatred and ruthlessness. We pretend to believe that one child’s abilities in any sphere of activity are just the same as another’s. We have persuaded ourselves that there is no deeper wickedness than to use our ordinary powers of discrimination in selecting those with whom we will associate, or live amongst, or trade with, or employ. While we have surrendered our individual judgments to schoolmarms and scolds, we have surrendered our collective judgments to legions of avaricious lawyers and mediocrities in black robes.

Derbyshire goes on to argue that "geezer conservatism" -- the God-fearing, church-going, suit wearing variety of political stoicism that was a staple of the 1950's -- is a thing of the past, and should remain there. Pining for it merely clouds the water, inhibiting rather than aiding modern conservative thought and action on both the political and social stages. I agree quite strongly, though many fellow conservatives will curl their lips and spit their "neo-con" epithet in my face.

So be it.