Lunchtime Must-Read: Zack Beauchamp: Three Things Conservatives Wrote This Week That Are Really Good

Zack Beauchamp: Three Things Conservatives Wrote This Week That Are Really Good : “Today, we’re launching a new TP Ideas feature….

The goal is… to find the most interesting exemplars of a distinctively right-of-center worldview…. 1) ‘The End Of Sex’ — Kevin Williamson, National Review…. Williamson’s concern is that the pitiless market logic on display during the Adult Video News is having a corrosive effect on human sexuality…. Williamson’s dispatch is not a jeremiad…. Rather, in the best conservative spirit, Williamson offers evidence of progressive change’s unintended consequences and invites its champions to reckon with what they have wrought. 2) ‘Why Is Janet Yellen So Concerned And Disturbed About Income Inequality?’ — Jim Pethokoukis, AEI Ideas…. Janet Yellen believes inequality is ‘one of the most disturbing trends facing the nation at the present time’. Pethokoukis thinks that’s rubbish…. 3) ‘Everything Is Politics to the Right, Even Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Death’ — James Poulos, The Daily Beast…. Poulos’ piece is… an attempt to defend a distinctively conservative approach to mass culture…. Where conservative journalism once stood athwart the impulse to analyze everything first as politics, invoking the primacy of philosophy and religion, today we see analysts on the right confidently assaulting ‘liberal culture’ on reflexively ideological grounds—casting aside their most, and perhaps only, legitimate way of viewing the world. The results are not just ugly or incorrect; they lead conservatives astray from the kind of ennobling wisdom that once kept them, and humanity, afloat. The resulting argument — which also includes an extended discussion of The Lego Movie‘s ideology — is a very smart way of showing that the conservative veneration of tradition need not be a nostalgia for oppressive social orders lost, but a source of insight into our shared social present.