I don’t read many of the more red-meat conservative bloggers. Very little of what they have to say is anything more than righteous anger about anything that isn’t “conservative.”

Rick Moran is one of the few conservative bloggers that stands apart. I might not always agree with him, but he always gives you something to think about.

That’s the case with today’s blog post at Moran’s blog, Right Wing Nuthouse. Entitled “Why Conservatism is Disconnected from Reality” he explains how conservatism in the United States has devolved into something it was never intended to be. The blog post reminds me of the episode from the original Star Trek series where Kirk and several crew members are transported to an alternative universe where they encounter a starship Enterprise that is similiar and yet savagely different from their home universe.

Moran comments that conservatism has become closed in on itself, cocooned with in the safety of a like-minded media and culture that prevents them from confronting the realities taking place outside of their ideological cul-de-sac:

Their worldview, shaped as it is by wallowing in the echo chamber of conservative media, and warped by a naive and ultimately uninformed ideological prism through which they spout nonsensical, paranoid conspiracies, may be relevant to the political health of the right but has little to do with the breakdown of conservatism as a governing philosophy itself.

In this case, it is conservatism losing its ability to question itself in a rigorous and punishing manner, preferring to maintain a comfort zone in which certain shibboleths of the past rest easily on the mind and prevent the kind of examination of underlying assumptions that any set of philosophical principles needs to maintain touch with the real world.

Using Sam Tannenhaus’ book The Death of Conservatism as backdrop, Moran paints a conservatism that is not able or even interested in tackling the problems America faces circa 2010:

Tannenhaus refers to these right wingers as “revanchists.” Indeed, there is a strong impulse even among so called “reasonable conservatives” that FDR’s New Deal and Johnson’s Great Society need to be repealed or drastically curtailed. In it’s place? There things get kind of fuzzy but what emerges from many conservatives is some kind of “super federalism” where a souped up 10th Amendment would give us 50 different EPA’s or worse, where “market forces” would solve the problems of clean air and clean water.

That’s just one example, of course. And I should hasten to add that any good conservative supports a reasonable brand of federalism, not to mention a prudent regard for liberty and the taxpayer’s money that would force us to question the efficacy of hundreds if not thousands of federal programs. But, what many of the revanchists seek is not a “return” to first principles in the Constitution but rather a form of government more akin to an Articles of Confederation on steroids.

Of course, conservatives should have a healthy skepticism about the expanse of the federal government. But that doesn’t mean that we should hunger for the days of the Articles of Confederation. Last I checked, that didn’t work out so well for us.

Read the whole thing. It’s a sad but true take of the state of American conservatism today as well as the Republican party today.

There are times that I do wonder if there is any hope for conservatism. But I don’t think the movement is ready to die. I tend to be a hopeful person (which is different from being optimistic) and so is Moran I think. He promises tomorrow to show the hope for American conservatism is found among the young.

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