1/ Beyond the self-serving lies in Kavanaugh's testimony, what we saw yesterday—the operatic rage, contempt, tears, fury, hauteur, blinking anxiety—was the expression of an experience I identified in my book as being at the heart of conservatism: not just loss, but "felt loss." 
2/ And not just ambient sorrow over that loss but a militant avowal of recovery and restitution. When conservatism is in its ascendancy, it is able to connect that particular feeling of loss, the loss of one social class, to a more universal constituency.
3/ When it is in retreat, it has a much more difficult time making that sense of loss speak across the population, of making it travel far and wide. In the coming weeks and months, we'll see which of the two situations we're in.
