The first thing Patrick McHenry did was

[Caliman73]

32. No such thing as "conservative intellectual"

The closest thing to "conservative intellectual" would be a religious apologist. They dress up their emotional arguments in "intellectual" sounding language, but it is all just, "I WANNA BELIEVE"

What we need to remember about Conservatism, the thing that needs to be said about the political ideology, is that it is the DIRECT descendant of the defense of Monarchy. It is a step down from absolute monarchy and aristocracy. The "fathers" of Conservative thought saw that Monarchs were being deposed (and beheaded) by common people and terrified, they scrambled to put together a system that recognized that monarchy was no longer sustainable, but which KEPT the pyramidal nature of the society they thought was best. Both Edmund Burke and Count Joseph De Maistre were aristocrats by the way. Relatively wealthy and wanting to hold on to their status.

What we have seen in terms of "Conservative Intellectual" thought since the mid to late 1700's is simply an ad hoc defense as to why Wealthy White people should still be in charge of everything. Nothing intellectual about it. It doesn't comport to the actual information present in the shared reality.

If people have resources sufficient to sustain life and have some leisure, they will develop the skills needed to live a decent life. There will always be people who are bigger, stronger, faster, smarter, etc... and those things should be recognized, but the recognition should be about how that serves the collective humanity, not how people can use their attributes to hoard wealth at the expense of other people suffering.