'Never Trump' Conservatives Won't Save Us

It often seems as if conservatives have been fretting about the “decline of the West” for as long as there has been a West to fret about. From Edmund Burke panicking about the French Revolution to Allan Bloom worrying about the effect of Mick Jagger's hip gyrations on the morals of 1980s undergraduates, the right is often defined more by the cultural changes it opposes than the principles it supports. In a 2006 essay explaining his departure from the conservative movement, outgoing National Review director Austin Bramwell issued a plea against those who “carry on the Cold War obsession with the so-called ‘crisis of the West.' Convinced that history at some point took a wrong turn, they pore over ancient texts in search of some Hermetic insight into the fatal error.” In Suicide of the West, Jonah Goldberg believes he has finally found that fatal error.