In his address to the Conservative Political Action Convention
this weekend, talk radio veteran Rush Limbaugh offered parents
advice. “Don’t be afraid to tell children that they’re wrong,” he
said. “They don’t know what you do. They simply haven’t lived
long enough.” True, the kids will “hate you for a while.” But
parents should press on because “you owe them the truth about
things.”
Limbaugh meant this as a criticism of the broader culture, but it
applied just as forcefully to CPAC itself. Early on the first
day, I picked up the book
Define Conservatism: For Past, Present, and Future
Generations, by Jonathan Krohn, one of the speakers at the
“two minute activist” panel. The cover is normal enough — a
silhouette with a picture of Congress in session in the
background. It looks like something that could be published by a
university press, perhaps.
Then, the trick. You turn it over and see the picture of a “13
year-old home schooled young man” who was named “Atlanta’s Most
Talented Child” by Inside Edition. He even “had 3
call-backs for the Broadway part of Michael Banks in Mary
Poppins.” The young Mr. Krohn “loves talk radio” and has “taken
up golf in hopes to play with his favorite politicians.”
This reviewer wishes him good luck with that and hopes that he
never, ever gets the itch to write another book. Define
Conservatism is terrible. It’s not simply that the book is
riddled with typos (though it is) or that it’s shallow and
awkwardly phrased that annoys so. There’s also anger at the
parents for allowing this book to be published at all. One of the
things that good parents ought to do is keep their charges from
embarrassing themselves this badly.
It would be cruel to quote this book at great length but here is
the first paragraph of Krohn’s second chapter: “Now that we have
finished our discussion of old school conservatism and the
constitution, let’s move on to the next major aspect of the
conservative belief system: the life issue. The life issue is
near and dear to all conservatives. Does not life keep all of us
alive? If it wasn’t for life would we not surely be dead?
Conservatives believe that life is something that everyone should
have.”
Yes, conservatives do generally believe in a right to life, and
also in Krohn’s other three pillars of conservatism: respect for
the Constitution, a smaller government, and personal
responsibility. But that specific answer is the sort of unrefined
thought that we expect young people to throw out there for adults
to respond, “Isn’t he cute?” or “Well that’s not quite right,
son. See…”
Let’s stipulate that prodigies do exist. Sometimes very young
people managed to do the great and the unexpected. Define
Conservatism is neither of those things. It’s a mix of
flawed history (Jefferson and Hamilton are said to be founders of
“the conservative movement”), partisan hackery (John McCain’s
plan to help bail out people with distressed mortgages is given
the small government Jeffersonian thumbs up), and sheer
goofiness. Krohn’s parents should have put their foot down and
said, “Sorry kid, but it’s for your own good.”
