Sundays were once held back for contemplation. Now anyone thinking too hard -- meaning at all -- or too long -- meaning five seconds -- is faced with a portrait of conservatism at a crossroads. "Conservatism" itself means nothing if we don't agree on what must be conserved -- if we don't even agree on who "we" are. And yet these are the public conversations, swirling wild-eyed around a world, a nation, a culture, that by all accounts is going wrong. Somehow.
Opening steps, then, in the quickening moves of this fall formal dance -- toward an understanding of what's required of the conservative in postmodern times.