Wide Right
1st February 2022
ZMan is not optimistic.
In January, The New Criterion organized a symposium around the topic of the changes in the conservative movement. They invited several writers to respond to the main essay written by Kim R. Holmes, the former Executive Vice President of The Heritage Foundation and former Assistant Secretary of State in the G. W. Bush Administration. The respondents are Ryan T. Anderson, Josh Hammer, Charles R. Kesler, Daniel J. Mahoney, James Piereson, Robert R. Reilly, and R. R. Reno.
Now, if this were a boxing match, it would have been called in the second response to Holmes, written by Josh Hammer, a member of Yoram Hazony’s National Conservatism movement. Hammer offers a lengthy critique of conservatism but the subtext is a bit of inescapable reality. The conservative movement, whatever its intensions, was a complete failure. It conserved nothing. In fact, it may be the biggest failure in the history of political movements.