When things go sideways in this unhappy world, nobody cries out in the dead of night: “For the love of God, somebody call the Dutch!” - Kevin D. Williamson

What we can and should acknowledge is that there is a difference between moral confidence and moral certitude, and that in both moral and political matters there is always a place for prudence and humility, for the facts of the case and the particulars of the time. A conservatism that fails to account for these is no conservatism at all.

The idea that Ilhan Omar could — even as a matter of mass-dunderhead rhetoric — be treated as a non-citizen because the president and his admirers do not like her politics (which are quite unlikeable) does violence to the idea of citizenship per se. In that much, it is fundamentally and literally un-American.

Liars think everybody is lying, cheaters think everybody else is a cheat, and self-serving political hacks who misuse their offices think that that’s just how the game is played, that everybody does it.