Responding to my column on Rand Paul, and particularly my remark that Paul “was too proud to acknowledge the limits of ideology” in the case of the Civil Rights Act, Daniel Larison writes:

Most conservatives sympathetic to Rand Paul abhor ideology as such and not only recognize its limits, but are acutely aware of its distorting powers and flaws. Indeed, it has been the “paleo” right that has been relentless in criticizing the ideological mentality that dominates so much of conservative thought today. It has been one of our main themes for the last decade. If anyone has been aware of the limits of ideology, it has been people like Rand Paul. If anyone has been oblivious to those limits, it has been the people on the right who acknowledge Paul and his supporters only by way of belittling and dismissing them.

It’s true that paleoconservatism at its best represents a deeply anti-ideological approach to public affairs, and that the smartest “paleo” critiques of ideological hubris — the kind supplied on a daily basis by writers like Larison — deserve a wider audience among conservatives and liberals alike. But it’s also true that these critiques don’t enjoy a wider audience in part because paleoconservatism at its worst is ideological to a fault.

From Ron and Rand Paul down to the contributors at LewRockwell.com, most of the intellectual bad habits that paleocons criticize in their foes are commonplace inside the “paleo” tent. There’s the extreme rhetoric, the enemies’ lists, the obsession with past defeats, the conspiratorial theories of how and why the cause of true conservatism has been betrayed. (Paleoconservatives tend to talk about neoconservatives exactly the way that Sarah Palin talks about liberal elites.) There’s the no-enemies-to-the-right instinct that tolerates race-baiters and “moderate” white nationalists, among other unfortunate characters — and at the same time there’s the tendency toward factionalism and purity tests (it sometimes feels like there are more “paleo” publications and webzines than there are paleocons) that resembles the old intra-socialist battles of the early 20th century. And finally, there’s the impulse to take an admirable principle — whether it’s Rand Paul’s staunch federalism or Pat Buchanan’s non-interventionism — and push it so far that people begin to doubt your intellectual judgment and your moral soundness alike.

If the “old right” is ever going to be anything more than a sideshow in conservative politics, it needs to take its own beliefs about the limits of ideological thinking more seriously, and apply its criticisms of neoconservatives and liberals to its own leaders, writers, and institutions. Physician, heal thyself.