Mark Lilla’s much-discussed review of Corey Robin’s much-discussed book, The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin, is truly awful. Not only is Lilla’s tone glib, unsurprisingly, but the review is really bad history, which might come as a surprise, since Lilla has gained renown as the New York Review of Book’s expert on conservatism. Lilla dismisses Robin’s thesis out of hand, without so much as examining it (a fault expertly dissected by Alex Gourevitch in his brilliant critique of Lilla at the Jacobin blog). Such is common practice in the NYRB, where books serve more as openings Read more