The Conservative Intellectual Crisis

I feel very lucky to have entered the conservative movement when I did, back in the 1980s and
1990s. I was
editorial page. The role models in front of us were people like Bill Buckley, Irving Kristol, James
Q. Wilson, Russell Kirk and Midge Decter.

These people wrote about politics, but they also wrote about a lot of other things: history,
literature, sociology, theology and life in general. There was a sharp distinction then between
being conservative, which was admired, and being a Republican, which was considered sort of
cheesy.

These writers often lived in cities among liberals while being suspicious of liberal thought and
liberal parochialism. People like Buckley had friends of every ideological stripe and were sharper
for being in hostile waters. They were sort of inside and outside the establishment and could
speak both languages.

Many grew up poor, which cured them of the anti-

figures adopt, especially if they come from Princeton (Ted Cruz), Cornell (Ann Coulter) or
Dartmouth (Laur

cheap and sophisticated argument was free. The Buckley-era establishment self-confidently
enforced intellectual and moral standards. It rebuffed the nativists like the John Birch Society, the
apocalyptic polemicists who popped up with the New Right, and they exiled conspiracy-mongers
and anti-Semites, like Joe Sobran, an engaging man who was rightly fired from National Review.

The conservative intellectual landscape has changed in three important ways since then, paving
the way for the ruination of the Republican Party.

First, talk radio, cable TV and the internet have turned conservative opinion into a mass-market

in the mass media through perpetual hysteria and simple-minded polemics and by exploiting
social resentment. In search of that mass right-wing audience that, say, Coulter enjoys,
conservatism has done its best to make itself offensive to people who value education and
disdain made-for-TV rage.

commercialism, but that is the essential truth. Conservatism went down-market in search of
revenue. It got swallowed by its own anti-intellectual media-politico complex from Beck to
Palin to Trump. Hillary Clinton is therefore now winning among white college graduates by 52 to
36 percent. Second, conservative opinion-meisters began to value politics over everything else.
The very essence of conservatism is the belief that politics is a limited activity, and that the most
important realms are pre-political: conscience, faith, culture, family and community. But recently
conservatism has become more the talking arm of the Republican Party.

SAMPLE PRIVACY POLICY

Among social conservatives, for example, faith sometimes seems to come in second behind
politics, Scripture behind voting guides. Today, most white evangelicals are willing to put aside
the Christian virtues of humility, charity and grace for the sake of a Trump political victory.
According to a Public Religion Research Institute survey, 72 percent of white evangelicals believe
that a person who is immoral in private life can be an effective national leader, a belief that is
more Machiavelli than Matthew.

As conservatism has become a propagandistic, partisan movement it has become less vibrant,
less creative and less effective.

That leads to the third big change. Blin -government

rhetoric, conservatives were slow to acknowledge and even slower to address the central social
problems of our time.

For years, middle- and working-class Americans have been suffering from stagnant wages,
meager opportunity, social isolation and household fragmentation. Shrouded in obsolete ideas

in using government as a tool for social good. Trump demagogy filled the void.

because of an observation the writer Yuval Levin once made: That while most of the crazy
progressives are young, most of the crazy conservatives are old. Conservatism is now being led

who likes Donald Trump. Most young conservatives are comfortable with ethnic diversity and are
weary of the Fox News media-politico
youngish reformicons who have crafted an ambitious governing agenda (completely ignored by
Trump).

A Trump defeat could cleanse a lot of bad structures and open ground for new growth. It was
good to be a

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and sign
up for the Opinion Today newsletter.