Personally, I found Derb’s review to be elegantly written but rather poorly reasoned, at least in parts. Obviously, I’m a fan of both of them and, given my own willingess to tackle Crunchy Cons, as well as my oft-repeated praise for conservatism’s willingness to tackle first principles, I can hardly take exception to principled disagreements even among NR’s colleagues. But I thought Derb, who is above all things a graceful writer, could have shown more grace in his descriptions of Ramesh and prolifers generally.

A few other points:

As Ross Douthat noted yesterday, it is interesting to watch so many people who normally consider Derb to be a bogeyman suddenly rush to applaud his review of Party of Death (see here , here , here and here for some examples). Garance Franke-Ruta goes so far to declare that Derb is a “humanist.”

But there’s an irony here. Derb’s reliance on “feelings” and rejection of “Jesuitical” arguments certainly has a rich pedigree. As Ramesh has suggested, the exact same reasoning has long been used to defend racism, homophobia and all sorts of things Derb’s new fans count themselves against. Andrew Sullivan, who used to make noises about being a pro-lifer seems to enjoy Derb’s review because he does not like Ramesh — or what Ramesh stands for, or something. But Derb’s ick-factor approach to pro-lifers can be, and in Derb’s case is, employed against homosexuals as well. Sullivan has denounced such reasoning when applied to gays as indefensible bigotry. But when used to “filet” Ramesh, it’s a joy. On what grounds can he and others support Derb’s reasoning here? “My enemy’s enemy” is not an intellectually serious way to debate very important issues.

Another thing that bothers me is that Derb — and others — have constructed a heads-I-win-tails-Ramesh-loses argument. Ramesh’s book has been nigh-upon santized of any religious argumentation. So Derb castigates him for using too much logic and of “disingenuously” hiding his religious motives. In other words, the lack of religious argumentation is taken to be the proof of its importance. But if Ramesh openly wrote from religious principles, Derb would clearly claim “aha! This is the cult of unreason of which I speak.” Non-religious argument equals a dishonest ploy to conceal his illegitimate motives. And a religious argument is on its face illegitimate. So, on what grounds is one to argue the right to life case? For Derb, it seems there are none. And “seems” is precisely the right word given his emphasis on feelings. (Also, I could have sworn in the past that Derb took a dim view to arguments based on imagined motives rather than open debate about the facts. Isn’t that “realism”?)

Now, I think our “guts” are indeed a source of insight and Derb and I both see the subject of “hidden law” in much the same light. But instinct is important, not sufficient. Our guts are not our conscience, as history has proved time and again. Guts are not appealed to through reason. Conscience, ultimately, must be.

For example: Derb picks and ornaments his examples to call Ramesh’s a frigid and pitiless dogma. He writes:

I wonder again: Who, actually, is the Party of Death? Here I see a woman who, having missed her period and found herself pregnant, has an abortion, comes home, downs a stiff drink, and gets on with her life. With her life.

Now, in fairness to Derb, since Ramesh takes a very hardline on life issues Derb does have wide leeway here to pick convenient examples. Ramesh is opposed to the destruction of very, very small embryos. So, the woman who has an abortion at a very early stage “feels” to many of us like a sympathetic character. “Hey, I’d down a stiff drink and move on with my life too!” But what if the woman had an abortion in the 8th month? What if — to pick an extreme example — Peter Singer had his way and had the baby clubbed at six months of age for one “progressive” reason or another? Would Derb be able to hide behind the literary fluorish of repeating “with here life” like that? At what point does her radical autonomy end? I don’t pretend to have done all of the heavy thinking to answer that question. But I feel — and I gather Derb does too from reading his review — that at some point it does in fact end. At some point it “feels” right to talk about the baby as if it were, well, a baby. Derb studiously avoids giving us any arguments about when feelings-o-meter flips and it becomes right to act on the baby’s behalf and when it still feels right to cast it off like unfortunate garbage the memory of which can be erased by a shot of whiskey. Rather, he merely says that Ramesh has persuaded him that we need “arguments” against infanticide. But, taking back the concession, he then says Ramesh probably doesn’t have “the right ones.” Well, it seems to me that Ramesh had done a great service by actually trying to provide the “right ones.” He makes an argument. Derb doesn’t.