They’ll Figure It All Out

I’ve received an interesting invitation to a discussion on The Future of Conservatism hosted by the National Interest, a magazine I tend to like (despite its somewhat elusive evolution). The invitation is not transferable, so if you weren’t invited, you probably can’t go. But what I find fascinating is that this still nominally conservative-leaning and/or realist magazine couldn’t scrounge up a single American conservative to discuss the future of American conservatism in a town brimming with such people. I’m telling you, there is a very weird groupthink bubble in this death of conservatism stuff:

Dear Colleague,

In light of what many argue is a crisis of the right-wing as the Republicans grapple with the intellectual foundations of the GOP and the tea-party movement rises, I am delighted to invite you to a National Interest magazine event on the future of conservatism with New York Times editor Sam Tanenhaus, acclaimed British author Geoffrey Wheatcroft and TNI senior editor Jacob Heilbrunn.

All three are prominent thinkers on this issue—Tanenhaus is the author of Death of Conservatism, Wheatcroft the writer of The Strange Death of Tory England and an astute chronicler of these movements on both sides of the Atlantic, and Heilbrunn a frequent commentator on neoconservative thinking as well as the author of They Knew They Were Right.