South By North Strategies, Ltd.

John Cassidy of The New Yorker asks, “where are the real conservative intellectuals?”

Reaganism/Thatcherism, for all its faults, was a genuine intellectual movement, or counter-movement. These days, the right seems unable to rise above rabble-rousing. The end of the Cold War robbed it of an external enemy. The tensions between its social and economic wings robbed it of any internal cohesion. The financial crisis and Great Recession robbed it of a creed—laissez faire. It’s still got plenty of willing foot soldiers, and a lot of big money behind it, but where is the fresh thinking and intellectual direction? All that’s left is anti-government posturing, waving the flag, and Obama-bashing. And even in pursuing this limited agenda, it often gets its facts wrong.