From Abraham Lincoln to Franklin D. Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan and beyond, Americans fought for freedom and human dignity and against tyranny; we promoted democracy, funded the Marshall Plan, and saved millions of people across Africa from HIV and AIDS. When we caused harm—Vietnam, Iraq—it was because of our overconfidence and naivete, not evil intentions.

Wow. This motherfucker thinks Reagan was actually good on the AIDS issue‽ No wonder he didn’t “see this coming;” he’s a genuine moron!

There were two kinds of people in our movement back then, the conservatives and the reactionaries.

No Mr. Brooks, you were all reactionaries. Just because MAGA doesn’t go around quoting Edmund Berk doesn’t mean that they don’t understand him, perhaps better than you. What did Burke advocate for if not for the French Revolutionaries to be brought low and for the kings to be restored?

You’re heroes resent extending political power to the bourgeoisie, so please stop talking about what conservatives thinkers want to do for the “working people”. Fuck off.

Where to even start? Is it good these people are coming out saying that Trump is bad? Yes. Are these people smart? Do these people care about anything or anyone other than their own limited interests? No. Nice of him to casually mention being against apartheid so we know he’s not “one of the bad ones”. But he is one of the bad ones, he just never thought it’d get THIS bad. He talks about being the party of incremental progress. Who does that actually help? If you think the direction you’re moving in is good, wouldn’t you want to get there as fast as possible? I’m not part of the “move fast and break things mindset”, but how does a slow acceptance of trans rights help anyone but the bigots who feel like any delay is a win? We had to send in the national guard to accompany students attending integrated schools. Should we have done that slower too? Honestly, glad he’s saying Trump is bad, but his inability to come to the conclusion that the problem is with conservatism itself makes me question whether he has ever had anything insightful to say about anything.

Eh, let’s not get to impressed:

Owning the libs became a lucrative strategy.

Of course, the left made it easy for them. The left really did purge conservatives from universities and other cultural power centers. The left really did valorize a “meritocratic” caste system that privileged the children of the affluent and screwed the working class. The left really did pontificate to their unenlightened moral inferiors on everything from gender to the environment. The left really did create a stifling orthodoxy that stamped out dissent. If you tell half the country that their voices don’t matter, then the voiceless are going to flip over the table.

But he almost stumbled onto class warfare:

This political moment isn’t populists versus elitists; it is, as I’ve written before, like a civil war in a prep school where the sleazy rich kids are taking on the pretentious rich kids.

My favorite quote from this:

"But conservative intellectuals didn’t take this seriously enough. In large part, I think this was because we looked down on the Dartmouth Review mafia, whose members had included Laura Ingraham and Dinesh D’Souza. Their intellectual standards were so obviously third-rate. I don’t know how to put this politely, but they just seemed creepy—nakedly ambitious in a way that I thought would destroy them in the end.

Instead, history has smiled on them. A prominent publisher of right-wing authors once told me that the way to sell conservative books is not to write a good book—it’s to write a book that will offend the left, thereby causing the reactionaries to rally to your side and buy it. That led to books with titles such as The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left, and to Ann Coulter’s entire career. Owning the libs became a lucrative strategy."

This dude has always been a total shitbag.

Excellent example of how liberalism supports fascism.

Fuck this clown.

A stunning piece of analysis, all the more so coming from a conservative. A nice reminder that not every one on the conservative side is a ruthless moron.