'Honest Conservatives': Oxymoron?

Rick Perlstein

June 15, 2007

Brad DeLong, the remarkably erudite and morally penetrating blogger and economics professor, has been writing some very useful things about the question of "honest conservatism"—the understandable, if problematic, quest of liberals to find a conservative worthy of intellectual respect.

Here, he quotes the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek who speaks of "a witty formula of life under a hard Communist regime: Of the three features—personal honesty, sincere support of the regime and intelligence—it was possible to combine only two, never all three. If one was honest and supportive, one was not very bright; if one was bright and supportive, one was not honest; if one was honest and bright, one was not supportive. The problem with Dreyman is that he does combine all three features."