Zach Wendling at In the Agora has an excellent post entitled The Pedigree of the Conservative Mongrel. (And I’m not recommending it merely because he gave me a hat tip on a related John Cole post.).
I fell off the GOP bandwagon somewhere between 1994 and 1998. I recall being pleased at the Republican sweep of Congress in ’94 and irate at the Clinton impeachment. So, I’m not sure how much I have in common with the erstwhile Republicans who are re-examining the Republican relationship to conservatism now. But still, some of the questions they are asking now are questions I’ve asked myself — albeit without the sort of intellectual rigor that would lead me to even know about the existence of Russell Kirk and Austin Bramwell, cited by Mr. Wendling.
So, anyway, worth a read.
My eye was particularly caught by a reference in the article to a Patrick Hynes, who was quoted as having written “let’s be clear, American conservatism has devolved from a movement into an identity group.” While I think he is spot on, you could cut “conservatism” out of the sentence and fill in the blank with any number of other “isms” and have it work as well.