"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
UPDATE:
Slate Magazine tracked down the author of this quote. He is a now ~64 year old composer from Ohio whose real name is… Frank Wilhoit.
Slate: I guess this must have been around the time you became aware that there is a deceased political scientist who shares your name and could quite plausibly have been the author of such a statement
Wilhoit: Yes. And I was perfectly horrified by that because I had absolutely no right to create that kind of confusion, to pose that kind of insoluble problem for the custodians of his legacy. They will be playing whack-a-mole with that misattribution for all future time. I’m just disheartened to have been the cause of that. …He was somebody—and that’s what makes the coincidence all the more bizarre—who actually had standing to write what he wrote and to publish what he wrote. He had standing to say such things and I do not, I am a pure amateur…I am a creative artist myself. If Francis Wilhoit had been an amateur composer and his music was being attributed to me?
Frank Wilhoit’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgT0vSWjBh4gAtab6JZgVrA/videos
Frank Wilhoit’s webpage: Broadheath Music
ETA: Somehow this seems relevant: “Constructing ever more elaborate internally consistent systems of principles to justify the set of things you already think is a very low-value activity, and yet smart people seem consistently enthralled by this.” - Noah Smith https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1646986944168202240?s=20