The Conservative Way

Found a delightful website you should check out: The New Pantagruel, an ecumenical journal run by some young old-school conservatives. A refreshing breather from breathless (and often senseless) neocons.

There is, I'm convinced, a way carefully to navigate between the Scylla of a stringent neocon social agenda and the Charybdis of liberal permissiveness and moral bankruptcy. Conservative policy needs to be informed by the traditional Christian moral standard, but when anti-homosexual or anti-abortion or pro-ten-commandments-in-the-courthouse policy becomes the sum total of our political agenda, we descend into strident moralism that repels, rather than persuades.

The many branches of conservatism--classic Reagan cons, southern conservatives, libertarians, Catholic traditionalists, neocons--were once united in an all-consuming struggle against Communism. That war is gone now, and the fissures inside the conservative movement are getting deeper. It remains to be seen whether the various factions will be able to unite on some sort of common set of goals and strategy, or whether they'll split permanently.