by Jonah Goldberg

About the author: Jonah Goldberg is the editor of the National Review Online,the online counterpart to the National Review, a weekly magazine of conservative political commentary.

In a famous episode of The Twilight Zone, advanced space aliens visit Planet Earth and promise a utopia for mankind. The jubilant humans are awed by the promised technological marvels—all diseases will be cured, all desires satisfied—and board spaceships in droves. A lone skeptical scientist discovers—too late—that the aliens’ how-to manual, To Serve Man, is not actually a guide to helping humanity, but “a cookbook! It’s a cookbook!”

This is not an inaccurate caricature for the occasional plight of conservatives. Every so often, a miraculous new technology comes along that requires...