WASHINGTON — It has happened again. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the New York Times Book Review referred to by Paul Krugman the other day as “a long-time conservative,” has essayed in the New Republic the modern conservative movement, and traced us all back to John C. Calhoun. I suppose our point of origin could have been more sinister. Sam could have traced us back to Nathan Bedford Forrest, the former Confederate General who went on to be an early member of the Ku Klux Klan, but John C. Calhoun is bad enough.

Of course, Calhoun is no kind of modern conservative. He is not even a typical conservative of the 19th century, at least outside the South. He would have made heavy weather of it in the North in the company of such conservatives as the Adamses or even the Virginia founders such as George Washington.