Conservatism Loses Its Head

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.