And this year was even more special than usual. Our guy is in the White House, and that has a most direct effect on everyone there. To take an obvious example, Lynne Cheney, an AEI fellow, is married to the vice president -- you know, Dick (the 1993 Boyer award winner). Both were there, along with a retinue of Secret Service agents. But there were also many young politicos whom I knew from dollar-Bud happy hours, now doing things like setting up departments of the executive branch. Instead of a gathering of dissidents, this year's dinner and lecture was, suddenly, a party for the in-crowd

As such, it was the most exuberant expression of Washington right-wingery I have seen. The centerpiece of the evening was a lecture by this year's Boyer winner, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas -- a wild, high-speed pitch aimed at the heart of American political debate. It was truly something to behold. In a roomful of conservatives, Thomas proved more conservative than the vast majority. In a roomful of outspoken people, he seemed the boldest. Watching him, I felt my spine tingle and my head spin. This was not necessarily a good thing.

In his speech, Justice Thomas ran the bases of conservative thought. He described coming to Washington in 1979 and being on the incorrect side of debates over affirmative action, welfare and school busing. "When whites questioned the conventional wisdom on these issues, it was considered bad form," Thomas said. "When blacks did so, it was treason." Fighting words followed fighting words. "It takes no education and no great intellect to know that it is best for children to be raised in two-parent families." We Americans, he said, are embroiled in a culture war.

Even his words of praise carried the distinct echo of a man so firmly on the right side of the ideological scale that it would take an editor for the New York Review of Books (or two) to balance him out. He praised conservative intellectuals with the fervor of a conservative college student discovering them for the first time: "It is awe-inspiring to read the works of Gertrude Himmelfarb, Michael Novak, Michael Ledeen, Judge Bork and others in this audience." Thomas wasn't just playing the room. In September 1975, when the Wall Street Journal published a review of a book by Thomas Sowell (1990 Boyer recipient) by AEI scholar and Catholic intellectual Novak (1999 Boyer recipient), Thomas said, "The opening paragraph changed my life."

The beleaguered justice alluded to his own ugly confirmation hearings as a way of talking about the price one pays for showing political courage. He even seemed to take a shot at President Bush and his notion of "compassionate conservatism." He denigrated the importance of civility in politics, making use of Himmelfarb's distinction between caring and vigorous virtues. Compassion is among the former, he said, and serves only to "make daily life pleasant." Courage, however, is among the latter. Vigorous virtues, Thomas quoted Himmelfarb, "characterize great leaders, although not necessarily good friends."

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