Turbo-Capitalism Will Wreck Us, Unless Hillary Moves Faster

Breaking the glass ceiling won't fix the walls and foundation.

By Jim Sleeper

In a prescient, darkly prophetic, lecture at the conservative American Enterprise Institute in 2007, the writer Sam Tanenhaus, biographer of Whittaker Chambers and, soon, of William F. Buckley, Jr., put his finger on American conservatism's original sin: It can’t or won’t reconcile its sincere yearnings for an ordered, republican liberty, rooted in civic virtues and national sovereignty, with its devotion to almost every whim and riptide of a new capitalism that's destroying the very virtues and sovereignty conservatives cherish.

"You can't build a clear conservatism out of capitalism, because capitalism disrupts culture," Tanenhaus said, adding that capitalism can invigorate a society only if it’s answerable to republican vigilance against excessive profit-maximizing as well against excessive government.