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Comrade Gerson

Tackling Michael Gerson is usually Kara’s beat, but I’d like to draw @TAC readers to his astonishingly wrongheaded piece on today’s RealClearPolitics. It opens with a ghastly definition of conservatism, For all their talk about respecting the constraints of reality, conservatives generally hold to the great man theory of history. It is leftists who embrace […]

Tackling Michael Gerson is usually Kara’s beat, but I’d like to draw @TAC readers to his astonishingly wrongheaded piece on today’s RealClearPolitics.

It opens with a ghastly definition of conservatism,

For all their talk about respecting the constraints of reality, conservatives generally hold to the great man theory of history. It is leftists who embrace economic determinism. Conservatives read biographies of Winston Churchill and wait in constant expectation for the second coming of Ronald Reagan. Charisma and truth, in this view, can always overwhelm material conditions.

Well, no and no. Proper conservatives reject the “great man theory of history”–that’s why they rightly trashed your book, Heroic Conservatism. And, while absolute economic determinism is for Marxian purists, it is absurd to suggest that conservatives underrate the influence of money in history.

Later, he throws in another very, very peculiar sentence:

While America remains a center-right country, this may well be a Marxist election in which economic realities are determining the political superstructure.

Poof! It’s a Marxist election! How did that happen? Perhaps all elections are Marxist, but some elections are more Marxist than others.

Actually, it’s worth reading the whole thing, if you want a good laugh.

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