my old piece on conservatism

In light of the success of Corey Robin's book, which I'm planning on reading soon, I thought I'd link to this piece I wrote about the death of certain desirable traits within conservatism awhile back. You'll note that my piece diverges from Robin's thesis, which is in partthat conservatism never had the kind of prelapsarian identity that my piece in part alludes to. To this I would just say that my major point was identifying two major strengths typically ascribed to conservative philosophy. If this stemmed from an unrealistically positive portrayal of the intellectual roots of conservatism, that's a failing, but I'd maintain that the argument for those two major insights is still germane.

Incidentally, the date on the piece is wrong; it was published right around when Scott Brown won his Senate seat, which is referenced in the piece.