A couple of readers wrote to ask me to comment on Derb’s very fine piece yesterday on “cosmopolitan conservatism.” They wonder about the similarities and differences with crunchy conservatism. I confess I haven’t had the time to think about it–I’m trying to learn the CCI computer system here at the Dallas Morning News, and if you work in a CCI newsroom, you know that it’s akin to being initiated into a mystery religion–but I have to tweak Jonah by posting this reader letter, hoping that he’ll sort this out for me:
While I very much enjoyed Derb’s column characterizing “metropolitan conservatism” (a category I think I very much fall into) and suggesting it as a viewpoint almost unanimously shared at NR, I was struck by Jonah’s silence over, or even affirmation of, this adjectival construction in contrast to his vehement denunciation of your positing the existence of “crunchy conservatism.” Certainly if it’s wrong to employ a phrase like compassionate conservative from the standpoint that it implies conservatism itself isn’t already inherently compassionate, it’s got to be just as wrong to suggest conservatism needs further distinguishing to prove it can be compatible with different cultural-geographical settings. Doing my best to stir internal Corner controversy.