He writes:

… this seems to me to be a simple truth: that this reformist, philosophical conservatism is not even close to representing any kind of consensus within what we might conventionally call the American right. That’s not very troubling. But I also don’t see them making much headway, and that is troubling. Until they do, I find that there is something unfair about their tendency to hang liberals by the thumbs for so many of the failings of our imperfect but real agenda while ignoring the failings of the conservative movement as it exists– and I define those failings only insofar as the reformist conservatives define them, for the purposes of discussion.

But in what sense can I, of all people, be said to have “ignor[ed] the failings of the conservative movement as it exists”? (For the most recent installments in a constantly recurring series, see here and here and here.) Lest things should be unclear, though, let me remedy that: by my lights, the American conservative movement as it exists is a horrid mess, pure and simple, and it’s precisely for that reason that I’ve taken such steps to (1) dissociate myself from it and (2) make the motivations for that dissociation quite clear. Indeed, I imagine that many of my critics from the Right would wish that I spent less time fighting in-house battles, and devoted more of my energies to bashing the Left. It’s hard, however, to displease everyone just the right amount.

He also writes:

All of this takes me back again to my constant suspicion, that American conservatism, and especially reformist conservatism, is inherently reactive, that it still has crafted no purely positive vision, that for all of our failings conservatives are still fundamentally looking over their shoulders and critiquing us. I think that many of them want more for their movement, but expect more from ours, and someday, if reform is to come to the American conservative movement, it will have to come from an honest accounting of that fact. And with that accounting, it seems to me, must come credit, credit for liberalism, credit for liberals.

This strikes me as similarly mistaken but is going to take a more detailed response, and I hope to get to that later.

P.S. Will Wilkinson is not a “reformist conservative”.

     Filed under: conservatism