Patrick Deneen

Take a drive through Steubenville, Ohio, Patrick Deneen urged the crowd at the recent Restoring a Nation conference. In downtown Steubenville, he assured us, the “blessings of liberty” are on full display. I didn’t bother making the trip. I know what those blessings are. We have the same ones where I grew up, in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, less than an hour away: a population that’s dropped 50 percent since 1940, record fentanyl overdoses, crippling brain drain, hulking husks of abandoned steel mills, empty storefronts on main street, the steady decay of once-beautiful public spaces and everywhere the poisonous fallout of family breakdown. The people I grew up with are dying — and the best the libertarians can offer them is a U-Haul.

A few months ago, I saw an intelligent and fairly prominent conservative writer lionizing Marjorie Taylor Greene on Twitter. My reply was something along the lines of, “Come on. Do better. Marjorie Taylor Greene is a moron.” In response, this writer told me I was being elitist and engaging in snobbish respectability politics. MTG was a brave patriot who has done far more good than the establishment GOP, he said. I would just have to lower my standards. Maybe I am a snob. I want leaders who enjoy intellectual pursuits and conversations. Construction workers probably want a president they could have a beer with and who looks like he did a real day’s work at some point in his life. Businessmen respect a savvy dealmaker.