I’ve never understood why liberals thought of conservatives as religious fundamentalists.
Yes, there are some conservatives who are led to their views by their strong religious beliefs. Yet there are other conservatives who reject liberalism not because of their feelings about faith, but because conservatism simply makes more sense to them than liberalism. These conservatives believe that logic and reason will lead the average person to veto the Obama-Kennedy vision.
John Derbyshire, the fiercely brilliant
National Review writer, is a member of the latter group. He has started an already-outstanding blog,
www.SecularRight.org, that reflects the views of this faction of the right.
Derbyshire and his wise contributors, Manhattan Institute writers Heather Mac Donald and Walter Olson, are off to a tremendous start, taking a critical look at such issues as Kathleen Parker’s recent criticism of social conservatives, Dinesh D’Souza’s disagreements with atheists, the various ideological splits on the right and the so-called “Republican War on Science.”
Secular Right will surely become one of the most controversial websites of 2009: anyone familiar with Derbyshire’s history will know why his site will inevitably join
Power Line and
The Corner on National Review Online as one of the country’s most widely read political blogs. Derbyshire is a true independent spirit, a man who is not afraid to criticize the conservative movement when it veers off-track into non-logic. He attacked President Bush early and often when Bush deviated from conservative principles. He is seemingly allergic to Republican talking points: his rhetorical feuds with his more politically conventional compatriots at
The Corner are legendary.
Derbyshire is no milquetoast, and his most strident critics have accused him of bigotry, homophobia and other social sins. There are times when I radically disagree with Derbyshire. There are also times when he says things that pass a common-sense test with flying colors, and his posts on
Secular Right are a collection of such moments.
Mac Donald, a regular contributor to the
New York Post and
New York Daily News op-ed pages (among other venues), is the closest thing conservatives have to a national treasure. Mac Donald cuts through political correctness like a tornado through a Midwestern field, attacking left-wing shibboleths about immigration, crime, race relations and welfare with breathtaking force and skill. The left hates Mac Donald with an urgent passion: were I on the left, I’d hate her too, since she has been so effective at destroying the pretenses of progressives. (If you’ve never read her work, you’ve missed out on a lot. Imagine Thomas Sowell as a white woman, and you get a good idea of how great she is.)
Olson, the founder of
www.overlawyered.com and a frequent contributor to the
Wall Street Journal and
New York Times op-ed pages, is also an intellectual titan and one of the unsung heroes of the American right. The author of such books as
The Litigation Explosion and
The Excuse Factory, Olson has done America a true public service by casting the brightest spotlight possible upon the abuses and aberrations of the American legal system. Were it not for Olson’s fine work, the injustices that take place in the name of justice would remain undiscovered.
Derbyshire, Mac Donald and Olson are an intellectual stimulus package for the American conservative movement. As you can probably tell these days, the right is nearly comatose, desperately in need of a treatment that will restore it to consciousness. I trust these doctors to figure out what’s wrong with the patient.
Don’t be turned off by the website’s name. There are plenty of Americans who consider themselves secular conservatives; in fact, many prominent figures in the conservative movement would fall under this definition. Derbyshire, Mac Donald and Olson may not share all of the views held by social conservatives, but they agree with social conservatives that liberalism is far from the wisest direction for American politics to take.
I’ve placed
Secular Right in my list of favorites, and I look forward to reading the thoughts of Derbyshire, Mac Donald and Olson concerning the Obama Administration and the future of the American right. This terrific triumvirate has the talents necessary to steer the conservative movement through this very dark period. In fact, these three are so good, you might even say they’re blessed.
