I’m here at Reagan National about to head down to Hotlanta. Email is firing on all cylinders this morning. Some interesting queries which maybe folks wanna noodle on their own for a while:

Dear Mr. Goldberg,
To my eyes, there is always a ground-level unclarity, or perhaps lack of forthrightness, with regard to what exactly this new group of conservatives, with whom you are often in debate on the Corner, are defending. I.e., the new Republicans who self-describe as”elite,” “pro-intellectual,” pro-gov’t intervention, etc. (Douhat, Brooks, Ponnuru…)
My premise for thought these past few days is: McCain is quite right (but very, very late) to describe Obama’s pollcies as “socialist.” And thank dear God for it, because at least the American people get a little warning before the “transformation”.
But Douhat et al. are arguing, I suppose, that this is a false, populist categorization by Palin and McCain, given that most conservatives in some way support government redistribution of funds. This group particularly favors a pragmatic governmental assistance program for the middle class, in order to garner votes for Republicans.
This is confused reasoning, though. True, I don’t think any serious libertarian or conservative favors slashing welfare and government programs entirely. However, to include this limited form of redistribution as a moral necessity in government does not mean that one cannot consistently reject a political philosophy that is at its center redistributionist. Ok, “socialism” in its purest form may not excactly be what Obama proposes, yet the underlying chracterization is generally coroect. Yes,, I see this was your point in your post, but still the whole discussion seems mired in murky analysis and lack of directness, doesn’t it? Further, there is much wisdom that conservatives tend to love, which are non-populist and yet anti-government, that seems lacking from Brooks and company’s accounts. For example, anti-scoialist critiques by Charen, Sowell, or Levin place a strong intellectual emphasis on the element of individual choice and economic opportunity in a limited-government, mininal redistributionist system.
Thus, I think there may be a need for more serious critique of the new school of conservatives who favor government redistibution. They may be undermining (though I personally respect their views) one of the core theoretical beliefs of American conservatism, which is its emphasis on the libertarian economic side and its connection to America’s unique prosperity. How can we distinguish the GOP from the high-powered big-government redistibutionist Democrats when our party is arguing for a kind of redistribution of its own?

And:

I’m going to be at your Emory “lecture” tonight. I’m going to jump to the front of the line by sending the question I want to ask if there is a Q&A.
Because it refers to a new piece in Claremont Review that www.Powerlineblog.com picked up on today and you may, or may not have read, here is the link to “Reforming Big Government” to which I refer in the question: http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1570/article_detail.asp
In your book you cover a history from Woodrow Wilson’s Presidency to the present of steady aggrandizement of the Liberal Fascist state. Arguably Calvin Coolidge and Ronald Reagan interrupted that growth. In the current issue of Claremont Review, William Voegeli discusses the growth of the welfare state and suggests that the only argument for Conservatives in the future is how to pay for it. In the next 40 years what do you see happening? Can Conservatives restore constitutional, limited government?
I won’t have a chance to read the Voegeli piece in detail until lunchtime. From the discussion at Powerline he seems to say that welfare spending has steadily increased since the New Deal, even during Republican administrations. (He has the tables to prove it). So I thought I would try to avoid ambushing you with a question about an essay you haven’t read yet.
Hope there’s a chance for a gathering of Cornerites afterwards. I’m also bringing my copy of Liberal Fascism just in case there is any signing.
Looking forward to it.