There are also some flaws in the case you’ve made. For example, you say “he came out in opposition to stupid wars,” when he has, in fact, come out in opposition to exactly one stupid war since entering public life. One of the stupid wars he endorsed, or at least acquiesced in supporting, was the Israeli campaign against Lebanon, which most everyone, especially the Israelis, now sees to have been a fairly stupid, counterproductive war. So at best he’s batting .500, and the direction of his Pakistan policy is not reassuring. I’m not going to say that he’s more belligerent than McCain, because I don’t think that’s humanly possible, but I would say that things are a bit more complicated than the phrase “he came out in opposition to stupid wars” suggests.

Those positions would all have been recognized as conservative by Eisenhower, and maybe even by Reagan, but as NickM points out, the Central Committee of the Party may have decreed them to be politically incorrect. They might come back into vogue among tribal Republicans if there’s a Democratic president, though.

Pointing, I think, to the fact that what is foremost to the movement is loyalty to the tribe or “family,” which at its core stays largely the same, and not to its ideological trappings, which are apparently subject to rapid change.

Pray tell, who is the Buckley chap and what is this thing called the National Review? Should I care about either?

Yours,

Lord Peter

To answer Mr. Copold, I think we would agree that there has been no brave dissent here. It takes little courage to endorse someone who is about to win a landslide, and it is not much of a dissent when your endorsement says, “I agree with nothing he stands for, but goodness he writes well.” Of course he’s getting off the sinking ship.

I have something of the same feeling about the conservative movement. Who would have thought that I would live to see CB drummed out of his Dad’s magazine? But that doesn’t shock me half as much as reading Rich Lowry assert, all evidence to the contrary, that the bank bailout “isn’t socialism”. Well, I don’t know if it’s “according-to-Hoyle” socialism or not, but I do know that within the last 20 years or so anyone who supported it would have been run out the movement with a quickness. Lowry further asserts that it’s “temporary emergency measure” – at what point did National Review start believing that government was even capable of “temporary” measures? And when did their faith in capitalism start to falter? Had Obama had the bad judgment to go first on this grab (not that I think he would have had the audacity to suggest a $700 billion figure, in any event), the RNC would be running commercial morphing him into Chairman Mao.

In years past, while you might not know what a Republican would do, you could be pretty sure what a conservative of either party would say on a whole host of issues. Goodbye to all that, I guess.

Most people can’t, and prefer to say “I’m a conservative,” or “I vote Republican”), thus avoiding having to explain why. The alternative, to be a political rara avis is like being the only Zoroastrian at an interfaith dinner, a bit lonely and obliged to handle more than one’s share of double-takes and questioning.

Anyone who dares to abandon the protection of the conventional and convenient labels is, therefore, more than a bit threatening.

And where was Mr. Brave Dissent back in 2002, or even 2004, when it might have done some good–you know, when the rest of us dissenters were being labeled “Unpatriotic Conservatives” by peripatetic Canadians. Maybe he was the voice of reason, arguing for open debate, but I don’t remember it.