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.@daschloz and my op-ed (nytimes.com/2019/01/15/opi…) appeared in the NYT along w/ this incisive @DouthatNYT piece (nytimes.com/2019/01/16/opi…). Both concern drawing cordons sanitaires. Douthat (avoiding false equivalences) tackles both left & right, while we only discuss the latter.
That prompts me to offer a claim about a deep asymmetry in democratic politics: Though the dangers of extremism and the value of parties as temporizers are common to all political persuasions, they are not shared equally among them.
Since con parties tend to both represent dominant social groups AND ally w/ econ elites who may have reason to fear majoritarian politics, their susceptibility to extremist influence shld usually pose more potent, system-destabilizing threats (ethnonationalism, authoritarianism).
Conservative parties's pivotal position is the key insight of @dziblatt's book (amazon.com/Conservative-D…). When they've bought in to the system & marginalized radicals, they've consolidated democracy itself. When they've let the fever swamps in, they've hastened its demise. /end
