Once upon a time, our conservatives liked to say that “ideas matter.” They attributed this pithy slogan to their idol Ayn Rand, venerated author of Atlas Shrugged and The Virtue of Selfishness, and they tried to live by it, generating books, papers, and legislative proposals by the dozen. Although many of their theories later proved flimsy, they at least appeared to address real problems with fresh thinking.

But ideas no longer matter – and in fact, they’re dangerous, according to the maximum leader of the right.