Allen C. Guelzo’s essay from the May 25 issue of NR has penetrated the firewall that normally separates our magazine and our website. Here’s an extract:

For many other conservatives, populism is a dance with the devil, and American mindlessness is precisely what makes us prey to demagogues and pundits. They argue that it was ideas, not personalities, that fueled the Reagan Revolution, and the future must lie in developing a new constellation of ideas to replace the used-up ones of the 1980s. But they are not optimistic. They are not NASCAR dads or hockey moms; they sit alone at the ballet, and listen guiltily and angrily to NPR. They are the party, not of Lincoln, but of Cassandra, convinced even before they speak that, in America, they probably won’t be listened to anyway.
They are also wrong. As are the populists. America has always been the nation of theory, not practice; it was built around ideas (even upon a “proposition”) from the moment the first idea-haunted Pilgrim stepped off onto Plymouth Rock. And it is the stupendous conceit of the Left, not of conservatism, to believe otherwise, or to despair otherwise.