OUR WILSONIANS:

This point was drawn out during the conference by the ultraconservative Notre Dame political scientist Patrick Deneen, the only person I heard voice any unease with the national conservative project. In American history, he noted, "the emphasis of [nationalism] was the explicit and desired and in many ways successful aim to weaken the more local, regional, neighborhood, and particular forms of identity within the nation--those identifications that had been the hallmark of the American political/cultural experience." According to Deneen, nationalism was the progressive idea that we should put "the national need before the sectional or personal advantage" and "that local government should cede its activities to the national government." In this moment, he said, "it seems natural for conservative to rally around the idea of the nation. But we should always be wary of simply occupying the ground recently vacated by progressives."

Alas, Deneen went on to support virtually all the same policy prescriptions as everyone else at the conference. Anti-individualism seems to be the unifying theory of the ascendant political right. If government infringements on personal liberty are the price of achieving good outcomes, conservatives are more than happy to pay it.

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