Conservative oppressors

In the latest issue of the NYRB , Mark Lilla takes apart Corey Robin’s recent The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin . Lilla quotes this from Robin: “Conservatism is the theoretical voice of this animus against the agency of the subordinate classes. It provides the most consistent and profound argument as to why the lower orders should not be allowed to exercise their independent will, why they should not be allowed to govern themselves or the polity. Submission is their first duty, agency, the prerogative of the elite.”

Robin describes the collection of “conservatives” pursuing this agenda: “Hobbes next to Hayek, Burke across from Palin, Nietzsche between Ayn Rand and Antonin Scalia, with Adams, Calhoun, Oakeshott, Ronald Reagan, Tocqueville, Theodore Roosevelt, Margaret Thatcher, Ernst Junger, Carl Schmitt, Winston Churchill, Phyllis Schlafly, Richard Nixon, Irving Kristol, Francis Fukuhama and George W. Bush interspersed throughout.”

Lilla’s comeback is sweet: “Glenn Beck’s blackboard was never half this full.”