Conservatism Loses Its Head

From an intriguing Los Angeles Times op-ed this Monday:

In the early 1960s, writers at William F. Buckley Jr.'s National Review knew that conservatism, like all political movements, needs a head as well as a heart. In a confidential memo, Frank Meyer, the National Review's leading theorist, made distinctions between the "establishment of responsible leadership" and "instinctive" conservatives who followed the call of "know-nothing leaders." A responsible conservative leadership, Meyer said, needed to tame the "vital forces" of the hard-core populist right.

But nearly half a century later, that generation is gone or fading fast, and McCain's campaign choices should make us all wonder who is in charge of America's conservative party now: its heart or its head? It's not clear that anyone on the right has stepped up to become today's "responsible cop of the conservative beat," as one historian described Buckley.

In his 2005 book, "Democracy and Populism," conservative historian John Lukacs expressed his fear that democracy is degenerating into ersatz populism, which tends to unite people more on the basis of whom they despise rather than what they believe in. Contemporary conservatives, he wrote, have learned to muster majorities by evoking disdain not against foreign but domestic enemies. He suggested that the movement is in the hands of two contending factions: those whose "binding belief" is their contempt for their enemies, who hate them more than they love liberty, and those who love liberty more than they fear their enemies.

Sound familiar? Put that book on my Abebooks list...