NYT on conservative columnists
Monday, October 20th, 2008The conservative coalition has always been more interesting intellectually than the liberal one because it pulls together a much wider and more diffuse collection of interests and positions, many of whom are not natural or permanent partners. At the best of times, they minimize their differences. But at times like now, when disaffection has become public among the conservative commentariat, the differences become more apparent.
Personally, I wouldn’t be unhappy to see conservativism shed one wing of its coalition: the Ayn Rand economic libertarians, whom I call “market Utopians.” This is the group–exemplified by people like Newt Gingrich (with whom I agree on some things)–that rationalized things like derivatives as part of a brave new frontier of market activity that was miraculously freed from the laws of human nature.
Except that it wasn’t.