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We're not accustomed to think of rightbloggers as intellectuals. For one

thing -- as we have ample opportunity to observe here every week --

they sure don't act like intellectuals; in fact, they seem

allergic to logical argument, and sometimes even committed to a

backwards Bizarro World version of it.

Cases in point: Recently rightbloggers found in the revelation that SEC investigators had surfed for porn at work "proof

that the big government socialist model is ineffective"

-- notwithstanding that the surfing took place during the presumably

non-socialist Bush Administration. (Or maybe the Bush SEC was

socialist, but rightbloggers forgot to get mad about it until a Democrat

was President.)

Also, when the Obama Administration expressed justifiable displeasure that a famous rightwing plagiarist had reported, without

evidence, that a possible Supreme Court nominee was gay, rightbloggers

took their outrage to mean that "this White House unwittingly showed the liberal streak

of anti-gay feelings."

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• Stephen Hawking and the Simpsons

conservative contempt for pointy-heads in

general -- a historical hallmark of their movement, but

especially resonant in the blog world, where ALL-CAPS bellowing is

considered a valid form of argument -- as with Reliapundit's accusation of "KNEE-JERK LEFT-WING

IDIOCY" against Stephen Hawking -- yes, that's right, the

world-renowned

physicist. Hawking suggested that space aliens, if they came to earth,

might not come in peace. This seems unremarkable, but Hawking compared

such an encounter to Columbus' with Native Americans, which

apparently

fired Reliapundit's chauvinism; he summoned as contrary evidence "MEL

GIBSON'S APOCALYPTO" and "MICHAEL MANN'S THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS," then

presumably pointed up a finger-gun and blew across its tip.

But

as is shown by the examples of the jailhouse lawyer and the

backwoods attorney, even the bleakest wastelands will attract some sort

of intellectual class, and the conservative world is no exception.

Among

the better-known big thinkers of the online right is the National

Review's Jonah Goldberg, who first came to public notice as

an accessory

to his mother Lucianne Goldberg in her exploitation of Monica

Lewinski and Linda Tripp against Bill Clinton. He is

best known for Liberal

Fascism, a book basically about how Democrats are the

intellectual heirs of Adolf Hitler, which became understandably

popular

among rightbloggers and cemented his reputation as one of the movement's

great minds.

Perhaps because of his status within the movement,

Goldberg likes to

brag about the intellectual superiority of conservatives. While

"for mainstream Democratic Party liberals one gets the sense that the

history of their movement is all about action and emotion and very

little about ideas," he has written, "I can't think of a single editor

or contributing editor of National

Review who can't speak intelligently about the intellectual

titans of conservatism going back generations."

If this claim

that his colleagues have exhaustively studied conservative

philosophy as if it were Mao's Little Red Book does not convince you of

conservatism's intellectual cred, Goldberg also explains that conservatives, unlike liberals, have healthy debates:

"The history of the conservative movement's successes," he claimed in

2005, "has been the history of intellectual donnybrooks ... while the

conservatives defend different ideological philosophical schools --

neoconservatism, traditionalism, etc. -- the liberals argue almost

exclusively about which tactics Democrats should embrace to win the

White House."

Through years of rightwing blather about death panels, Obama's birth certificate, and, well, Liberal

Fascism, Goldberg has clung to this line. When young political

writers Julian Sanchez and Noah Millman recently suggested that instead

the

modern conservative movement was tending toward close-mindedness -- or,

as they rather grandly put it, "epistemic closure" -- Goldberg was

compelled to enter the debate. "I just don't know what these

people are talking about when it comes to the notion that the

conservative mind is closed," he said. "Where is the data to back this

up?"

came about a week later, when National

Review contributor Jim Manzi wrote an unfavorable review of Liberty

and Tyranny -- a book about the global warming "fraud" by one of National

Review's conservative Elect, Mark Levin.

Manzi

carefully explained that, while he "had a lot of sympathy for many

of its basic points" -- Manzi is also skeptical of AGW -- he

regretfully could not endorse Levin's slovenly reasoning and unsupported

assertions. Manzi was admittedly provocative -- he called the book

"wingnuttery," an insult favored by liberals -- but within the terms of

the current conservative intramural debate: He meaningfully put into the

title of his post the words "epistemic closure."

What ensued

might indeed be described as a "donnybrook," though not of

the sort Goldberg may have meant. A team of National Review writers quickly jumped Manzi, and did

not seek to disguise that their main objection was not the quality of

Manzi's review as a review, but

that he had betrayed the gang and its code of intellectual omerta.

"I

love debate, as people here know," asserted Kathryn J. Lopez, "but to treat Mark Levin as a

mere

'entertainer' who was just looking for a bestseller is to not know Mark

Levin or have taken his book seriously." Regrettably she did not link to

a biographical slideshow whereby readers could get to know Levin

better.

"No one minds a good debate," claimed Andy McCarthy, "but Jim's gratuitously nasty tone

...

is just breathtaking ... [Manzi] has always struck me as a model of

civility, especially in his disagreements with the Left [!]. Why pick

Mark for the Pearl Harbor treatment?"

That seems rather gentle,

if oddly personalized -- but later McCarthy,

perhaps fortified by a pep rally or a couple of drinks, returned to sputter more ferociously against Manzi.

The gist: McCarthy had found an article by a scientist named Lindzen,

who had been cited by Manzi; like Manzi, Lindzen is a global warming

skeptic, but much more full-throated about it and, more importantly, he

didn't insult Mark Levin.

"To me, Lindzen doesn't seem like a

kook who probably thinks the Queen

of England and the Trilateral Commission are in on a farcical global

science scam," snarled McCarthy. "But what do I know? I don't even have a

Ph.D."

Sounds like a direct warning to the apostate: We can

nuttier wingnut!

Afterward Manzi tried, rather touchingly, to address these objections. But we doubt mere reason

will do him much good now. Levin himself actually told (and was allowed by

editors, we assume, to tell) National

Review readers not to read Manzi's review ("Feel free to read my

book, and the chapter Manzi distorts and cherry-picks, yourself. You

don't need Manzi to interpret it. He's no true expert on the subject,

nor is he logical or coherent in his post"). Later he went on Facebook to declare that he "had to Smack

Down a Global Warming Zealot on Earth Day" -- referring to the skeptical

Manzi. (Also, McCarthy came back -- restrained, one likes to imagine,

by bouncers -- to shake his fist some more at Manzi.)

To be

charitable, there's probably something more than pique and

groupthink at work here. For example, self-preservation: In the

rightwing opinion game, foundation

and contribution dollars flow to the most reliable vendors of

received conservative opinion. The funders like their wingnuttery

straight up. Dissent's one thing coming from upmarket conservatives like

Ross Douthat, but at a magazine dependent upon donations, it might raise damaging

questions when they're pitching the Cruises.

And they have to act fast, because

word has been getting around that National

Review allows wrongthink

onto its pages: "Even a good product thus compromised isn't prepared to

lead anything, as it can't even make up it's mind what actual cause, or

position it should be leading on," cried Riehl World View from the throne of Robespierre.

"...If there is to be a new conservative awakening in America, it will

come from outside the beltway, not in. And it will be led by grassroots,

not establishment media."

None of that gloopy thinking in the

Tea Party era! Another nut, at RedState: "I am sorry there Jim ...

while you are sitting in your little circle with a bunch of other

self-indulgent asses ... Mark [Levin] is out on the front lines

inspiring

a generation of Americans to fight back against statism." Have you

forgotten 3/1 -- that is, the book's publication date? How dare you

treat a hero this way!

What did Goldberg think about all this?

Summoning all his intellectual

resources, he came in late to announce that the young folk just

don't know what it's like. "When I first came to Washington," he

reminisced, "I hung around in very similar circles of young

eager-beavers." And he didn't have an Internet on which to grumble,

either! "That's not the case for today's 20-somethings who have the

luxury of translating their frustration with 'the business' into long

cri de coeur blog posts ... so, forgive me if I don't take too seriously

the complaint that younger conservative intellectuals have been locked

out by the old guard..." (Goldberg is 41 years old.)

We have

absolutely no insight into the mind of young movement

conservatives, and so must admit the possibility that Goldberg's

ramblings may be convincing to them, or may at least confuse them

sufficiently to turn their attention back to fighting liberals. (In a

post on the Manzi affair, Megan McArdle seemed to side with Manzi, but

her

commenters quickly devolved to assertions that global warming is a fraud

and that Levin is useful in that "he energizes the base, which is

really important when it comes to voter turnout.")

As to what

anyone who is not a movement conservative, young or

less-young, might think of it, it's a safe bet that those lucky bastards

will have no call to notice -- at least, not at the moment. It will

only reach them, if it does, indirectly and in the next election cycle,

via the sort of messages that a movement of such great intellectual

diversity and self-confidence tends to deliver.

The

rightbloggers' current best hope seems to be to keep those Tea

Parties and pseudo-revolutionary videos going long enough to

convince voters that they're all about freedom. But that's a hard

thought to keep going when you don't believe it yourself.

Roy

appears courtesy of our sister paper in New York City, Village Voice.