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05 Nov 2008 11:04 am

The Great Conservative Debate Begins Again

I really hope that my book, "The Conservative Soul", largely unread by most conservatives when it was published two years ago, gets a fair hearing. I've been warning of this looming GOP meltdown for quite a while, and while my book is not the first or last word on this, and while the word 'conservatism' includes many multitudes in which my esoteric Oakeshottianism is but one small current, I hope we can debate this with more openness and civility (on all sides) now. It matters. We need a healthy right to oppose Obama when necessary, and keep him honest, and challenge him intellectually. It would be good for him; and good for us. Even if this may well not happen at a popular or mass media level yet, the battle of ideas among those seriously committed to the conservative tradition (if not the oxymoronic conservative "movement" as it now is), is vital. Not since Buckley's pioneering work in the 1950s has the intellectual challenge been so formidable - and fascinating.

So let's try and be worthy of it. Starting now.

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