If Brooks’s piece is a plea for conservatism, I believe he hides it well. He is a gifted writer, so my guess is if he wanted to be clear on this point, he would have easily accomplished it. The word “reform” has many meanings, of course — Burke, Marx, TR, Reagan, et al, all believed in reform. Whatever one thinks of TR, who is invoked by Brooks as his American model for “conservative reform,” he is not a good example of a free-market proponent. Reagan is much better.