ESSAY | POLITICS
The Whole of Contemporary Republican Conservative Doctrine in 32 Little Words
The law protects but does not bind Republicans; it binds but does not protect everyone else
“The Conservative and The Murderer” is Sam Adler-Bell’s March 7th, 2022, New-Yorker review of “Scoundrel,” Sarah Weinman’s new book, that I read because the title and the feature image with William F. Buckley’s face in it grabbed me. With what murderer could archconservative Buckley, a staunch death-penalty advocate, have been associated? I wondered. The review is worth the time, and the book is a Los Angeles Times recommended read, but that’s not what prompted this note.
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. — Frank Wilhoit (2018)
In discussing how Buckley and the conservative establishment became intimate moving forces behind the campaign to free a death row inmate convicted of murder in 1957, Adler-Bell wrote
If the Edgar Smith case suggests anything…
