We have nothing to offer but the best that is in us. That, a thousand Liberals who read this sentiment will say with relief, is clearly not enough! It isn't enough. But it is at this point that we steal the march. For we offer, besides ourselves, a position that has not grown old under the weight of a gigantic, parasitic bureaucracy, a position untempered by the doctoral dissertations of a generation of Ph.D's in social architecture, unattenuated by a thousand vulgar promises to a thousand different pressure groups, uncorroded by a cynical contempt for human freedom. And that, ladies and gentlemen, leaves us just about the hottest thing in town.

A few further thoughts after this editorial. Against assault of the left & drive-by denigration by Trump, I've thought it important to defend the modern GOP & American conservatism. They're a party and a movement of which I'm proud to have been part. But I am increasingly convinced that defense of the old and even the true aren't going to be enough. The failure to repel Trump and now the fact of the Trump presidency are likely to do real damage, perhaps irreparable damage, to the old party & the old movement. And it's also true the party and movement have become creaky & reactive. So I suspect we're in something of a 1955 moment (Buckley starts NR) or a mid-70s moment (birth of neoconservatism). And I wonder if the key isn't to reclaim the word "liberal." After all, what are we for? Liberal democracy, liberal education & I'd say (to be provocative) liberal empire. And what virtue is perhaps most threatened by left and right & most needed? Liberality.