I read that earlier today. I follow Elon Green on Twitter and tend to think we’re like-minded about stuff, but he lost me with this paragraph and a half:

Crucially, Dreher has (to employ a theologically inappropriate term from Law & Order) a rabbi in David Brooks. In late 2011, Brooks declared Dreher “one of the country’s most interesting bloggers” and “part of a communitarian conservative tradition that goes back to thinkers like Russell Kirk and Robert Nisbet.” And last year, Brooks placed Dreher among the conservatives of the future, who “tend to be suspicious of bigness: big corporations, big government, a big military, concentrated power and concentrated wealth.”

As it happens, I find most of this (“big government” crack excepted) thoroughly agreeable. It would be a wonderful thing indeed if Dreher were the type of level-headed conservative Brooks describes.

Brooks is nuts. Defense from him is not agreeable to me. Brooks invoking Russell Kirk as a positive side to conservatism is even more nuts. I can’t say for sure that Kirk was a racist, because I don’t have proof of it handy, but his followers and carriers of his torch sure are. I appreciate Mr. Green showing Dreher for what he is. Now maybe he should back up a few steps and look into Brooks and Kirk and the rest of the so-called ‘communitarian conservative tradition’. This is where it leads.