Two Books on the Past and Future of Conservatism

The American right finds itself once again in the position of trying to remember what it wants. We have seen versions of this situation before: One sort of conservative blames another sort for what appears to be the unchecked advance of the left. Things are far more confusing this time. The present discord didn’t arise from a punishing electoral loss, as in 1964 or 2008, but from the Republican victory of 2016. Nor have today’s quarreling conservatives fallen out mainly over a discrete set of policy differences. Conservatives in the 2020s disagree about what it is they’re trying to conserve.