“What Is Disturbing About the New Conservatism …”

This quote from Shadia Drury is complex enough and important enough to merit some special focus. So here I have added some outlining and emphasis. Enjoy! (not the right word, I know).

What is disturbing about the new conservatism, or neoconservatism, is not so much that it is elitist, but that it cultivates

• an elite that is self-righteous,
• an elite that deludes itself into thinking
  • that it is a natural aristocracy,
  • that all its privileges are deserved,
  • and that it has no obligation to the have-nots of society.

Doesn’t sound very Christlike to me.

[Shadia Drury is the author of Leo Strauss and the American Right, and Terror and Civilization: Christianity, Politics, and the Western Psyche. I think I got the quote from the one on Leo Strauss. (The one on Christianity is definitely not flattering to the way Christians tend to think and behave in this world. But she is right in some very important points – as the quote above demonstrates.)]

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