4 Responses to “Arriving at MIT”

1. 1.   Joseph Smidt Says:
   September 7th, 2009 at 3:41 pm

   Yeah, I would say so.

2. 2.   Brian D Says:
   September 7th, 2009 at 4:54 pm

   I always found student efforts to be a bit more telling, but the street sign’s nonetheless welcome.

3. 3.   NewEnglandBob Says:
   September 7th, 2009 at 5:09 pm

   “No Turn On Red” – this being a blue state, this signals Republicans to just sit there.

4. 4.   Jon Says:
   September 7th, 2009 at 11:13 pm

   Welcome to the chaos that is Boston driving.

   I think some members of the conservative movement are starting to piece things together. (Whether they can do anything about it is another matter.) Here’s Patrick Ruffini recently at Next Right:

   The automatic problem that arises when someone who is not a William F. Buckley (and none of us here pretend to be) is that you’re instantly tagged a RINO for calling out something that is objectively and demonstrably false. The space between fact and fiction is confused as a litmus test between right and left… What if the actual test of conservatism was not how fervently you oppose Obama, or where you went to school, or where you pray, but how firmly your conservatism is rooted in First Principles and not personalities or conspiracy?

   And here’s a New Majority contributor on Sam Tanenhaus’s new book:

   The problem with modern-day conservatism is that the realists have been vanquished by the ideologists, with dire results for the conservative movement and the Republican Party that is now wholly identified with the movement. As conservative idealists no longer feel any restraining Burkean influences, intellectuals have grown complacent while movement leaders have given free rein to what Tanenhaus calls “revanchists” – throwbacks to the Old Right of the 1930s and ‘40s who consider liberals to be traitors and oppose progressive change of any kind.

   “Revanchist” is a provocative term, and Tanenhaus could be clearer on the difference between unalterably partisan but rational conservatives on the one hand and outright crackpots on the other. The danger for modern conservatism, however, is that this distinction is becoming blurred. Buckley once observed that “I’ve spent my whole life separating the right from the kooks.” Who presently performs this function for conservatism?

   …The massive conservative infrastructure of think tanks and journals and pressure groups remains in place, but it has become a sort of Maginot Line locking conservatives into outdated positions rather than a source of fresh, contrarian thinking and positive solutions to current problems. Tanenhaus doesn’t tell how to revive the classical component of conservative thought, but it’s hard to find fault with his diagnosis of how badly the absence of such pragmatism has hurt the movement.