It’s not that tricky. Conservative intellectuals have always been, in one way or another, in agreement with overt white supremacists. They just had the good sense of understanding the social liability of being openly racist in Washington, where such “impolitic gestures” might cost them a fellowship or coveted inches in the legitimate press. Moreover, conservatives have been at least OK, one way or another, with state intervention as long as the beneficiaries were the right ones. Conservative Democrats greenlit the New Deal’s expansion provided it excluded black people.
—John Stoehr, in “The Folly of ‘National Conservatism’”
Published to write.house by Bix Frankonis. Comments and replies by email are welcome.