David Dennison wrote:
> There's No Such Thing As A Conservative Intellectual — Only Apologists For
> Right-wing Power
> From Burke To Buckley To Patrick Deneen, We've Seen A 200-year History Of
> Defending The Indefensible
>
> By Mike Lofgren
>
> In 1950, author and critic Lionel Trilling wrote:
>
> In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant
> but even the sole intellectual tradition. For it is the plain fact that
> nowadays there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general
> circulation. This does not mean, of course, that there is no impulse to
> conservatism or to reaction. Such impulses are certainly very strong,
> perhaps even stronger than most of us know. But the conservative impulse
> and the reactionary impulse do not, with some isolated and some
> ecclesiastical exceptions, express themselves in ideas but only in action
> or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.
>
> Three-quarters of a century later, Trilling's statement remains broadly
> true, as a glance at conservative books will attest. The hundreds of
> conservative book titles that have geysered out of Regnery, Broadside and
> other right-wing imprints in recent years are almost invariably
> distinguished by their numbing sameness: a shrill cry of victimhood, a hunt
> for scapegoats, a tone that alternates between hysteria and heavy sarcasm,
> and a recipe for salvation cribbed from Republican National Committee
> talking points and Heritage Foundation issue briefs. The fact that they
> sometimes hit the bestseller list is principally due to the well-funded
> conservative media-entertainment complex's bulk-purchase scam.

“A conservative is someone who stands athwart history,
yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do
so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.”
― William F. Buckley