As the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein reels from a New York Times exposé that describes years of abusive behavior towards women, many right-leaning pundits are seizing the opportunity to discuss predatory male behavior in the liberal tribe, much as lefty pundits used Bill O’Reilly’s downfall to discuss bad actors on the right.

Many of these efforts offer worthwhile insights. And two contributions are most illuminating when juxtaposed with one another. Their authors approach the subject with some of the same assumptions. Both are appropriately scathing toward awful behavior by prominent Democrats. Yet the first effort represents the best of what American conservatism has to offer the country. And the second reveals odious moral rot.

Comparing them is hugely instructive.

What Principled Conservatism Looks Like

In “The Pigs of Liberalism,” Ross Douthat, the principled social conservative, opines that progressive industries may finally be feminist enough to “put their old goats out to pasture,” but that there is a less optimistic way of viewing the present scandal.

It might just show...

...that a certain kind of powerful liberal creep only gets his comeuppance when he’s weakened or old or in the grave. The awfulness of Ted Kennedy, at Chappaquiddick and after hours in D.C., can be acknowledged only now that he’s no longer a liberal lion in the Senate. The possibility that Bill Clinton might be not just an adulterer but a rapist can be entertained now that he’s no longer protecting abortion from the White House.

He adds, “it would be nice to say that cultural conservatism offers an alternative, one that welcomes female advancement while retaining useful ideas about sexual difference and restraint,” but concedes that while he “might have argued as much once,” today’s right, “in the age of Donald Trump and Bill O’Reilly, ‘pro-life’ hypocrites in Congress and the alt-right online cesspool... is its own sort of cautionary tale.” Still, he offers, several conservative ideas might help liberals “to restrain the ogres in their midst.” The column concludes with three specific suggestions:

First: Some modest limits on how men and women interact professionally are useful checks on predation. Many liberals were horrified by the revelation that for a time Mike Pence avoided one-on-one meetings with women not his wife. But one can find the Pence rules too sweeping and still recognize that life is easier for women if their male bosses don’t feel entitled to see them anywhere, anytime. It would not usher in the Republic of Gilead if it were understood that inviting your female subordinate to your hotel room, Weinstein-style, crosses a line in a way that a restaurant lunch does not. Second: Consent alone is not a sufficient guide to ethics. Caddishness and predation can be a continuum. If you cheat on your wife you may be more likely to harass subordinates. Promiscuity can encourage predatory entitlement. Older rules of moral restraint were broader for a reason. If your culture’s code is libertine, don’t be surprised that worse things than libertinism flourish. Third: You can’t ignore moral character when you make decisions about whom to vote for or work with or support. This was something conservatives used to argue in the Clinton years; under Trump, many have conveniently forgotten it. But it remains true. Yes, sometimes you have to work with a bad person or vote for a bad person or hold a fund-raiser with a bad person for the greater good. But not nearly as often as you think.

Agree or disagree with those suggestions, they are constructive, coherently rooted in conservative insights, and offer plausible if contested courses for bringing about less abuse. They suggest a commentator who has thought carefully about the world, including his own coalition’s failings, and written with an earnest desire to make it better.