Jonah Goldberg’s syndicated column takes on criticisms of the current Republican Party coming from me, Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Reynolds. His response in a word: Chill.

In a few more words:

Take a deep breath, everybody.

…

True, the conservative coalition has its share of contradictions, but that’s to be expected of any growing ideological movement or political party. Franklin Roosevelt’s coalition included racist southerners, progressive blacks and Jews, liberal reformers, grafters, and machine bosses. These people fought a lot. They fought over policy, and they debated who really had Roosevelt’s support. From the 1920s to the 1950s, a debate raged around the question, “Whither liberalism?” Was it over? When did it die? What does it mean now?

Something similar has been going on with conservatism ever since William F. Buckley launched National Review. From the 1950s onward, various conservatives — mostly, but not entirely, of a libertarian bent — have predicted the movement must come a cropper from its internal contradictions. Buckley was constantly fending off assaults from ideological brigands trying to commandeer the ship of conservatism and steer it toward purer waters of religious, libertarian or anti-Communist hues. Buckley stood firm and said, no! There be monsters there. Buckley was aided by the conservative theorist Frank Meyer, who fashioned the doctrine of “fusionism,” which held that freedom and virtue were inextricably entwined; virtue not freely chosen is not virtuous.

That’s all hunky dory, except that the old fusionism was held together by the fact that all of the fused parties believed in small government.

That’s simply not the case anymore in the Rove-Bush party.

I go into more detail in my next Tech Central Station column, which I’ll link when it becomes available.