As I was reading the essay, I also thought of the famous, infamous Life of Julia cartoon. Back during the Obama administration, there was a cartoon and it showed a daughter of a single mother. Did we ever see the mother in this?

I don't think we ever saw any other human.

No, right. 

There was a child at some point. It's not exactly clear how that happened.

It showed this woman's progression of her life and government intervening and helping her along. There was a lot of mockery on the right for that -- that this is progressivism and the Obama administration's view of society. And there were conservative versions, "Life of Somebody Else," showing more of a self-starter, entrepreneurial person. But perhaps, the right, Trump voters, have accepted the Life of Julia cartoon. Instead of a single mom, is it a coal miner? A working class person, asking somewhat different things, but again, nothing between them and government. And of course, the president summed it up during the campaign when he said--and again, I'm paraphrasing--"Only I know how to fix this. I can fix this."

 Is this what people on the so-called right really want, the Life of Julia cartoon, but just a little different?

Well, I think a lot of the political debate we've had in recent years, to me, has seemed like evidence of the need for--what I at least think of as--conservatism. The debate over the Life of Julia stuff in 2012 was evidence for that too because the Republican response to that was "We don't need help. We did build that"--that whole argument.

That happens all the time.

It was really an argument between two kinds of radical individualism, one of which suggested that all you need is government to address material problems and then you're free. The other suggested that you don't need anything. I think conservatism emphasizes what happens in the space between the individual and the state. What happens in the space that's filled by families, communities, and society. Because of a certain understanding of the human person, there's an understanding that sees the human person as dependent on other human beings. The conservative argument against dependency has always seem to me as very misguided. Everyone is dependent, that's just a human reality. The question is: Can we address that dependency in a way that also encourages responsibility? And I think you do that by addressing it in that space in between the individual and the state rather than addressing it by a faceless provision of resources to people. And the argument for that is an argument from conservatism. It's an argument that starts by seeing the human person as fallen--let's say--as imperfect, as prone to vice and always in need for moral formation and correction. It's an argument that begins from looking at an imperfect society and being impressed by the institutions that function, by the institutions that help us become better rather than only being impressed by what's failing and standing in our way. That, in turn, leads to a kind of politics of gratitude, rather than a politics of outrage. And I think that's a genuine conservative politics. It says that moral progress really only happens in the lives of individuals, and that means that enduring progress has to consist in sustaining institutions that help us become better people.

I think that's conservatism.