More has probably been said about Damon Linker’s bizarre reading of Andrew Bacevich’s approach to conservatism than the contents justify, but it is hard to avoid commenting on a blog entry that sees thrift, sacrifice, and refraining from abandoning one’s family obligations as some form of incipient authoritarianism. Suffice it to say that Bacevich and his allies in the blogosphere are more opposed to most state action than mainstream liberals or conservatives; since at least the 1990s, there have been people in the paleo coalition more libertarian than Bacevich or any of these bloggers.

But it is interesting that Linker, sworn enemy of theocons like his former employers at First Things, believes the liberal order is as threatened by a social conservatism that is primarily cultural as by a social conservatism that is primarily political. Even when the former is practiced by people who have almost no connection to practical or electoral politics. Linker’s response says more about his inability to make arguments without resorting to theocratic or authoritarian bogeymen than it does about Bacevich’s essay.