The flagship magazine of … libertarianism?

With the exception of three or four contributors, National Review has long since lost any serious conservative vocation and has become a refuge of minicons, teeny-cons, Animal House cons, intellectual flyweights, chestless wonders, stickers of wet fingers in the air, atheists, nihilists, and libertarians.

Thus at NRO’s Phi Beta Cons blog, where the Gates debate continues, the prevailing opinion seems to be represented by people such as Robert VerBruggen and David French, who have no discernible concept of public order and its importance. These are not conservatives, but libertarians, people who believe that everything is permitted short of causing actual physical harm.

Here is Carol Iannone, one of the few conservatives at PBC, countering David French:

If what David says below is true—that tolerating loud, freewheeling behavior on the streets is connected to our maintaining our freedom of speech in more significant matters—why is it that we seem to have the loud, freewheeling street behavior but politically correct prohibitions in many areas of our public life? There are many important things that can’t be discussed freely, while people cling to some cherished constitutional protection to mouth off at cops. This is of course true in the academy, but it is in other areas of the public sphere as well. So it seems we get the worst of both sides.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 02, 2009 01:15 AM | Send