Douthat pistol whips the paleocons:
From Ron and Rand Paul down to the contributors at LewRockwell.com, most of the intellectual bad habits that paleocons criticize in their foes are commonplace inside the “paleo” tent. There’s the extreme rhetoric, the enemies’ lists, the obsession with past defeats, the conspiratorial theories of how and why the cause of true conservatism has been betrayed. (Paleoconservatives tend to talk about neoconservatives exactly the way that Sarah Palin talks about liberal elites.) There’s the no-enemies-to-the-right instinct that tolerates race-baiters and “moderate” white nationalists, among other unfortunate characters and at the same time there’s the tendency toward factionalism and purity tests (it sometimes feels like there are more “paleo” publications and webzines than there are paleocons) that resembles the old intra-socialist battles of the early 20th century. And finally, there’s the impulse to take an admirable principle whether it’s Rand Paul’s staunch federalism or Pat Buchanan’s non-interventionism and push it so far that people begin to doubt your intellectual judgment and your moral soundness alike.
Larison asks Ross to open his eyes.