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Entry: Ross Douthat's Chutes and Ladders Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/ross_douthats_chutes_and_ladders#32580 Post contents: Your article goes head-on against a long conservative tradition of tinkering with government policy in the (correct) belief that it affects such "metaphysically" grounded institutions as the family. Look at the Catholic (and also some non-Catholic) French conservatives, le Play for instance, who devoted so much attention to the law of primogeniture and its effect on the 19th-century family. Metaphysically-oriented conservatives need to take the tax code seriously. Your description of Machiavellianism has little to do with Machiavelli, of course. Machiavelli was not a technocrat. He was vitally concerned with the goods of politics--what you call the "why" as opposed to the "how"--in the <i>Discourses</i> and even in <i>The Prince</i>. And modern-day Machiavellians such as (boo, hiss) Michael Ledeen are just as concerned with the "why" as was their master. Your description of "individual rights or tribal groupthink" as "value-neutral" was sarcastic, right? I hope? If it was, then I was too bad a reader to pick up on the sarcasm. Sent at: 2008 12 01