Writing in the Forward, Peter Beinart contends that conservative Jewish intellectuals are on the brink of extinction.

“Over the coming years, environmental scientists will probably chronicle the many species that Donald Trump’s presidency has brought to extinction,” Beinart wrote. “Political scientists may add another: the conservative Jewish intellectual.”

Beinart’s natural selection parable is charming but confusing. Does he not understand how survival of the fittest works? Or is it that, deep down, he has bought into Trumpism? If he believes that Trump has or will succeed in making America great and safe again, then to some degree he’s right: the conservative movement of yore and the Jewish intellectuals who populated it will be gone, condemned to die like all other species that failed to adapt to a new world order.

But for all of us who haven’t bought into Trumpism, who know that the arc of history will support those stubborn and brave conservatives who stuck to their guts and guns, who sacrificed access and clicks for integrity and intellectual honesty, Beinart’s interpretation of the laws of natural selection is laughable. What he doesn’t seem to recognize is that for “Never Trump” conservatives, their movement has been co-opted by a person and an ideology that is hostile to their deeply-held values. That doesn’t mean they abandon those values and accept a diminished and warped conservatism. It means they work diligently to expel the new species that is competing for the most coveted of political resources: votes, and the hearts and minds of the average American.

The entire piece is thus predicated on a ridiculous premise. It is made further ridiculous by Beinart’s clear misunderstanding of the role of public intellectuals. Beinart defines intellectual as “someone who traffics in ideas, not tribal or partisan loyalties.” What he forgets is that, very often, intellectuals are inherently elites—people who preach to a sometimes small and select choir. Beinart writes about Trump’s populism as if it were the antithesis of Jewish conservative intellectualism when it is, in fact, both the antithesis of conservatism and intellectualism in general. Beinart has only discovered that Trump and his ilk have gone against decades of established conservative policy and practice. Not exactly an earth-shattering scoop.

As for the hot takes on how this will affect conservative Jewish intellectuals, some advice I had to give myself in the wake of my own hysterical Trump-related GOP extinction piece in The Forward: let’s all hold off on grand pronouncements. 2016 was a year of political upheaval, and we won’t really know what the ramifications of that will be until they’re clear and apparent and too obvious even to say. We’re nowhere near that point. Extinction is immutable, but evolution ensures the fittest survive. To Beinart’s dismay, the conservative movement and the Jewish intellectuals within it will live to see another day.