My column on Hollywood has gotten a lot of interesting and thoughtful responses. Some of the criticisms are well-taken, but I think many are aimed at things I didn’t say or should have said. For starters, The headline on the column doesn’t actually reflect my own view. I don’t think we should “leave Hollywood to the liberals.” I am very much in favor of conservatives taking the fight to existing institutions. I’d like more conservatives to get leadership positions in Hollywood, higher education, publishing, journalism and pretty much any other institutions that hold the commanding heights of the culture. There’s a tendency on the right to want our own institutions. Sometimes this makes sense. It’d be crazy for someone who works for National Review to argue otherwise. But ultimately, the purpose of conservatism can’t simply be to create our enclaves and ghettos. I love Hillsdale college and I wish nothing but further success. But rather than create another Hillsdale college, I’d rather conservatives fight to get more conservatives on the faculty of Harvard. You cannot create new old institutions. And Harvad’s brand (for want of a less ridiculous word) will remain extremely powerful in our culture for generations to come. Why should we cede that brand entirely to liberals and leftwingers? The role of the conservative movement is to move the country and the culture in the right direction, and at best conservatives will be taking the long way around if they only use brand new conservative institutions to get there. You may disagree with Ross Douthat and David Brooks on this or that, but they have an audience that is more in need of hearing even moderate conservative arguments than almost any other. Is it worse for the cause that they are there? Would our task be easier if all of the columnists were Krugman clones? I don’t think so.

To me, the argument for a conservative Hollywood studio is like an argument for another conservative newspaper. It wouldn’t necessarily hurt, but it wouldn’t be worth the investment. There are conservatives in Hollywood. I wish there were more. I wish they had more power and influence. But the desire to create Rightwing Studios Inc. works on the assumption that making successful movies with conservative political messages is as easy as trying.