Wailing, Gnashing of Teeth, Interrupted

Reports of the demise of conservative intellectualism greatly exaggerated

As one delves deeper and deeper into the depths of Canada's ideological extreme left, one thing becomes immediately clear: these people hate conservatives with the kind of passion that would seduce the most devout nun.

But perhaps even more than they hate conservatives, they hate conservatism.

These particular individuals despise conservatism and its every trace and vestige as an obstacle to their extreme left-wing agenda.

It's one of the reasons why they're so eager to declare intellectual conservatism to be dead. In stylings befitting of the typically vapid etchings posted at Enormous Thriving Plants, that blog's proprietor recently insisted that Jonah Goldberg somehow stands as evidence that conservatism, as an intellectual force, is dying:

"Living illustration of the death of conservative intellectualism...

...is 'unconcerned' about the death of conservative intellectualism.

Goldberg seems blissfully unaware of the history of the machiavellian employment of populism to 'smash through the gates'. How ironic, given the subject matter of his last populist-oriented work.It was nice, however, of Jonah to admit that the rejection of integrity and intellectual appeal in favour of an ends-justify-the-means pursuit of populism has been a deliberate and conscious choice amongst some on the US political right.

...Gotta love the conservative penchant for self-infliction of wounds. Not to fret,though Conservative intellectuals: there's always Meghan McCain and Sarah Palin to save the future of the ideology!"

Certainly, one imagines that Audrey would like to believe that intellectual conservatism is dead. And so long as Audrey is willing to take her insistence that Goldberg is the embodiment of its death on her own say-so, one may even accept this to be the case.

But Audrey -- who frequently insists that "reality has a liberal bias" (which basically shows us that she has yet to realize that reality, by its very nature, is unbiased) is moving much too quickly to gloat over the grave of intellectual conservatism. If she were to take off the blinders she has so eagerly donned -- and stop insisting that others wear them as well -- she would quickly realize this.

Audrey's announcement of the death of intellectual conservatism is one made by many denizens of the far left, and as Goldberg helps to point out, it stems from the left's refusal to acknowledge intellectual conservative thinkers until after their passing.

Barry Goldwater, William F Buckley Jr, Ronald Reagan and Irving Kristol were despised by the left during their lifetimes. Its only now that they're dead that they're given their intellectual due.

Likewise -- particularly north of the 49th parallel -- thinkers like Tom Flanagan, Preston Manning, Adam Daifallah and Tasha Kheiriddin, among others, are particularly despised by the political left.

David Frum is a Canadian conservative thinker particularly detested on both sides of the border.

At the end of the day it becomes entirely evident that the preening announcement of the death of intellectual conservatism made by people like Audrey are based on two things: waiting until after the death of a conservative thinker to recognize their prowess, and lowest-common-denominator denunciations of fringe movements like conservapedia and various right-wing bloggers who don't in any sense represent conservative intellectualism.

It's a pronouncement made of equal parts cherry-picking and self-fulfilling prophecy -- moreover, a prophecy that is self-fulfilling by design.

It's only someone deeply invested in their own artificial sense of intellectual superiority who could pretend that intellectual conservatism is dead even while Brian Lee Crowley's Fearful Symmetry emerges hot on the heels of Barry Cooper's It's the Regime, Stupid.

One shouldn't expect Audrey to forgive conservatives if they decline to wail and gnash their teeth over the alleged death of intellectual conservatism.

Intellectual conservatives know full well that it's alive and well -- even if one can fully expect Audrey to never, ever admit it.