Michael Brendan Dougherty is an editor at The American Conservative. His breakup letter to the conservative movement, which appears on highbrow hipster site The Awl, is addressed entirely to "you."

It's a shivers-down-the-spine display. See for yourself:

I will admit it. There was something I found seductive about you.

...But it doesn't take long for the nausea to set in. You start teaching us to embrace an inferiority complex, one that makes us feel like rebels, while making us more dependent your largesse.

You've tried to sweet-talk me ...

But, we're done. I tried to "improve you," from my associate editor perch at a dissenting conservative magazine. Now? I wish you would go away.

You're an obstacle, taking every civic impulse of your audience and turning it into rotten populism. You turn every bit of goodwill and honest anxiety into a sleazy direct-mail fundraiser.

Some of us just can't swallow our embarrassment anymore.

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