Who Will Be the Next Neoconservatives?

As the country going through a cycle of leftist madness last seen in the 1960s, we can recall that a number of liberals woke up to the defects of their creed, and became the founding generation of “neoconservatives,” that is, liberals who had been “mugged by reality.” That original generation were mostly academic social scientists of one stripe or another.

Will we see a new generation of “neoconservatives” arising out of the present madness? And if so where will they come from? Probably not from academia, but from journalism (think Glenn Greenwald, Matt Yglesias, and even Jonathan Chait to some extent), and—dare I say or hope for it—Hollywood?

Exhibit One is lefty comedian Bill Maher, who, as we’ve noted before, has delivered several ringing attacks on cancel culture and political correctness in general. Last Friday he went off on liberals, the media, and their treatment of COVID. And surprisingly for Maher, this rant has fewer of his crude f-bombs, so I can give this one a PG-13 rating.

If he keeps this up, he’ll be voting Republican sooner or later. Given how many comedians are seeing the humorlessness of the left, I suspect many of them are going to come around, if they haven’t already.

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