Kody Wayne Cooper

If the dueling manifestos of National Conservatism and Freedom Conservatism are any indication, the meaning of conservatism is contested as sharply now as any time in the modern conservative movement. Perhaps this is more of a feature than a bug of conservatism, since, as George H. Nash observed, the quest for self-definition was a central motif of post–World War II conservatism.

Setting the box office record for an October release, the new film Joker is a worldwide phenomenon. Before its release and since, discussion of the film has been obsessed with the debate over whether the portrayal of a disaffected white man violently lashing out at society might bleed over into real life by breeding copycats or if such suggestions are the overreach of woke culture.

In the preamble to his “Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge,” Thomas Jefferson argued that a healthy natural rights republic needed “to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large.” A “liberal education” provided “withoutregard to wealth, birth or other accidental condition or circumstance” would render Americans worthy of such a government and outfit them to be guardians of the “sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens.” As...