Sublime

William F. Buckley had spent the previous decades decreeing what conservatism meant—and purging entire classes of dissenters who argued to the contrary.

We are used to understanding the battle lines of American politics as cleaving liberals who believe in a strong, active government from conservatives who doubt it. The truth is far more complicated. Liberals speak as if they believe in government and then pass policy after policy hamstringing what it can actually do.

Looking at politics horizontally often misses the real story. Calling the Republican Fundamentalists the “far right” suggests that they were defined by their conservatism. But a bunch of their stances—their openness to nuclear war, their support for racial apartheid, their anti-democratic tactics at the convention—were a direct affront to