What Is Conservatism Conserving, Anyway?

Two favorite guests and friends join us at the bar for this week's happy hour, to hash out bar fights they started in less reputable watering holes. Jeremy Carl argues in The American Conservative that there needs to be "A Republican Counter-Elite," while Glenn Ellmers continues to spark controversy with his article a year ago, "Conservatism Is No Longer Enough," and now, last week, a sequel (channeling his Lordship Kevin Bacon in Animal House)—"'Remain Calm, All Is Well'; How Not to Save the Republic."

What we're really after is a response to two great axioms from classic authors. The first is G.K. Chesterton, who wrote 100 years ago: "The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected." How is it that we've taken so long to catch up with his perception? The second is from Eric Hoffer, and bears on the dissatisfaction expressed today in the phrase "Conservatism, Inc"—"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket."

Last week Lucretia and Steve took note of the intra-mural controversy of the ideas of "equality" and "equity," and whether, as some conservatives have long argued, the first necessarily leads to the degeneration into the second. And can we really infiltrate or seduce America's elite institutions (the academic-media-Hollywood complex), or should we simply seek to destroy them if we can?

It's a wide-ranging and lively conversation with many twists and turns along the way. Meanwhile, the exit music this week is deliberately chosen as a not-so-esoteric rendering of Leo Strauss's controversial interpretation of John Locke. Maybe the band should have called itself "Down the Tubes" instead. What else can you Ask From Life?