This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, October 3rd, 2012.

I'm Caleb Brown. The standard bearers of conservative opinion effectively shut out skepticism about the Iraq War in 2002 and 2003 and that ill-fated decision helped

launch the American Conservative magazine.

John Utley is associate publisher of the American Conservative.

We spoke in Asheville, North Carolina this weekend.

If you had to offer a critical evaluation of conservatism as it exists today,

what would you say?

Well, it's taken over by its base, the Republican Party, if you will,

is taken over by its base, whereas the conservative movement is somewhat old and doesn't think very much of new ways or new things.

It's typified by the older conservatives.

And the big change coming, I think, is the Libertarian influence on conservatives.

This young Americans for Liberty is a

Libertarian group is replaced young Americans for freedom that was the old

kind of sort of dying. The conservatives, and the conservatives don't think that much, most of them.

It's still the sort of Cold War. They look at the rest of the world like it was the Soviets.

They all hate us. The third world all hates us because

we're good or because they're socialist or whatever. It's very disorganized and

we're seeing that in the in the election. It seems like you see an

intellectual ground swell at some point like in the 50s and and early 60s and

then that sort of washes over a party and you get benefits.

Well we've seen that with the Ron Paul campaign when half of the American youth under 30 generally support Ron Paul's positions, and they're totally ignored by the conservative

establishment, pretending they don't even exist.

...