When pondering the intellectual decline of political movements, it is hard not to call to mind the former flagship publication of the Buckleyite wing of conservatism called National Review. Where once learned men (and women) made their case from the heights of argumentation and erudition — a force to be reckoned with, like it or not — the publication has over the years accelerated to absurdity, devolved to inanity, shrunk into a whiny club of simpering sycophants screaming full force in an empty echo chamber. An exercise in intellectual onanism, today’s NRO has nothing to say about the future because it remembers nothing of the past. It is conservatism not only without a conscience, but without understanding of that which it purports to conserve.