Some of my conservative friends are worried that "the left" will use the Murdoch scandal in Britain to "shut down Fox News and the Wall Street Journal."  But I wouldn't worry.  Losing those media -- and the New York Post and the Weekly Standard, too -- might be the best thing to happen to the intellectual right in a generation.

We'd have to go back to playing tennis with the net up. That would be good for our game.

The hard-won climax of the legitimate intellectual right came in April 1987, when the New York Times Book Review devoted its front page to a glowing review of Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind. Leaving aside the merits of the book or of the review (by Roger Kimball), Bloom managed first true breakout from the "intellectual ghetto" into which the right had been confined since the Great Depression.

But on the same Sunday the Times feted Bloom, the Fox Channel began broadcasting.  Thus began a dynamic which led conservatives back to the ghetto.

Some re-gentrification may be overdue -- and it may be quick in coming.  I'd give even odds that Murdoch will sell some of his marquee properties to settle the lawsuits the hacking will spawn. The UK has some sensible limitations on tort damages (such as loser pays), but not so here, where the scandal seems about to burst.

Republican Rep. Peter King has persuaded the FBI to investigate whether News Corp. hacked 9/11 victims.  Accusations swirl that the FoxNews show "A Current Affair" used illegal hacking tactics as early as 1996. The proverbial fishing expedition is about to begin.

Since Murdoch is generally not known to have made media less trashy after buying them -- and with Page Six's blind items having become far saucier since he bought the New York Post -- News Corporation shareholders may have to buckle up.

One of my conservative contacts is already crying foul in defense of Murdoch, warning that "they [liberals] don't believe in the First Amendment where conservatives are concerned." I'm sorry, but I don't think that the First Amendment protects illegally hacking into the voice mails of murdered 13-year old girls.

I do think that conservatism, at least the kind I espouse, stands up for absolute moral standards -- and should do so in this case. We're talking here not about mere allegations, but about a long list of infelicities to which Murdoch employees have admitted.

At least when Clinton got caught with his pants down, Democrats fell all over themselves to say that they disapproved, even though they didn't really. Here we have just the reverse: Conservatives disapprove, but they can't bring themselves to say so.

The longer this silence continues, the more brows it should raise about Murdoch's influence on the institutional right. That influence extends beyond the media Murdoch owns. David Frum learned this when, self-servingly or not, he said right had become beholden to FoxNews. The American Enterprise Institute showed Frum the door the next day.