Justin Katz

Stick another feather in the cap of Justin Katz, the Portsmouth Tiverton carpenter-pundit who runs the blog Anchor Rising.

Katz is one of 22 writers whose essays are included in “Proud To Be Right: Voices of the Next Conservative Generation,” a new HarperCollins book put together by National Review columnist (and liberal bête noire) Jonah Goldberg. The book is described as an “informal manifesto of the future of conservatism,” and a reminder that not everyone under the age of 40 is an Obama supporter.

Justin was nice enough to send me over a review copy of the book, which came out last week. His contribution is a seven-page essay titled “A Nonconforming Reconstruction” that recounts his experience as a Gen X conservative and his belief that “the peculiarity of our time is that one must … be conservative to be contrarian.” It’s not a particularly political piece, though, at least in a narrowly partisan sense; it’s more philosophical.

Here’s an excerpt:

Nonconformity, if it is not to be synonymous with perpetual adolescence and social disengagement, depends on principles that are now to the right of center. Innovation requires an emphasis on merit-driven results, determined by the mechanisms of a free market. By contrast, direct authorities – central planners and experts – who allocate resources and determine individuals’ roles in the society inevitably mandate conformity, even if their banner recalls a rebel pose. Look only to the unbroken theme of the modern antihero – self-destructive habits – for evidence that a constitutional conformity, not individual self-realization, is the objective of the secular progressive movement.

So how does a blogger from Portsmouth Tiverton wind up in a high-profile book from a leading conservative writer?

Katz said he first heard about the project when Ocean State Policy Research Institute founder William Felkner forwarded him a general call for submissions from the Washington activist Grover Norquist. Katz signed up to Goldberg’s mailing list, and eventually got the opportunity to pitch an essay. The published essay is actually the second of two he submitted. (Editors, right?)

Goldberg was already familiar with Justin from his contributions to National Review a few years back. Anchor Rising itself dates to late 2004, although Katz began blogging on his own in 2001. A day job and a growing family has kept Katz from writing as much as he would like recently, he told me in an e-mail, but “[a]t the very least, though, ‘Proud to Be Right’ stands as evidence that I’m still managing to travel in a parallel route.”

Update: Blogger solidarity fail. Justin is, of course, from Tiverton, not Portsmouth (although his P.O. Box is in the latter town). Mea culpa. Justin is free to say I’m from anywhere he likes next time he references me.