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Thursday, August 13, 2009
Is conservatism dead?
Sam Tanenhaus wonders if the conservative movement has expired? Tanenhaus considers the issue in a new book coming out in September, THE DEATH OF CONSERVATISM.
I interviewed Tanenhaus years ago on WYSO for his biography of Whittaker Chambers. We had a fascinating conversation about those long ago days of Alger Hiss, Tricky Dick Nixon, Roy Cohn, and a pumpkin filled with secrets.
Here’s a press release that gives the lowdown on this new book:
“Already discussed by George Will and George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week… and interviews confirmed for NPR’s All Things Considered MSNBC’s Morning Joe, and Charlie Rose, THE DEATH OF CONSERVATISM is going to provoke debate on both the right and left.
Sam Tanenhaus is the editor of the New York Times Book Review and Week in Review and the prize-winning biographer of Whittaker Chambers. He is presently writing a biography of William F. Buckley. He regularly appears on MSNBC/Morning Joe and has written extensively for the New Republic and Vanity Fair.
Drawing on 20 years of research on modern conservatism, Tanenhaus has written a manifesto on what has gone wrong with the party and how conservatives today need to rediscover the roots of their honorable political tradition. THE DEATH OF CONSERVATISM shows that conservatism today is in fact a counter-revolutionary movement which seeks not to “conserve” the traditions of “civil society” but rather to destroy them through a politics of ideological warfare. Tanenhaus asks “why does the contemporary Right define itself less by what it yearns to conserve than by what it longs to destroy?” For seventy-five years, Tanenhaus argues, conservatives have been split between two factions: consensus-driven “realists” who believe in the virtue of government and its power to adjust to changing conditions, and movement “revanchists” who distrust government and society-and often find themselves at war with America itself, seeking revenge and retribution.”
And some blurbs:
“Taut, eloquent, provocative and carefully-argued, Sam Tanenhaus uses his mastery of American intellectual and political history to bring us a consistently original interpretation of our recent politics—and to suggest a way forward for American conservatives. The Death of Conservatism will almost certainly prove to be one of those rare books in American history that have a signal impact both on a political movement as well as the public at large.”— Michael Beschloss
“Today’s conservatives resemble the exhumed figures of Pompeii, trapped in postures of frozen flight, clenched in the rigor mortis of a defunct ideology.” -from The Death of Conservatism
Tanenhaus discusses the following:
The differences between the GOP and the conservative movement. They are not one and the same-and shouldn’t be. No party should become captive to a movement. The GOP allowed this to happen in the Bush years and must make sure it doesn’t happen again. For the moment almost every public spokesperson for the GOP comes directly out of the movement—Rush, Newt, Cheney, Palin. The nation has rejected them and the hard-edged accusatory politics they represent. The GOP must make it clear it is listening to the majority of the people and not to a small entrenched constituency.
Health care needs to be fixed. A majority of Americans are open to a nationally administered system. There is no authentically conservative reason to oppose it. This is an opportunity for Republicans to demonstrate they can govern responsibly by joining the majority, precisely as they did in 1964 when they helped passed the landmark civil rights bill.
Gay marriage and/or civil unions. A huge, missed opportunity for the GOP. Gay marriage is proof that the country is getting MORE, not less, conservative. A generation ago gays personified “alternative life styles.” Now they want to join the mainstream and uphold family values—and be responsible parents. What serious-minded conservative would oppose this?
The function of the minority or “moon” party is to keep a close watch on the governing (“sun”) party. How can conservatives do this? One way is make sure Obama-age liberalism doesn’t abandon the center and veer off into “left-liberalism”—that is, become the party of LBJ instead of FDR.
Foreign policy. The unilateralist, American-centric foreign policy of the Bush years was a failure. Why are conservatives like Cheney, Wolfowitz, and McCain trying to reestablish it in Iran even as more temperate Republicans like Richard Lugar and Henry Kissinger have praised Obama’s restraint?
“Sam Tanenhaus’s fascinating intellectual autopsy of the conservative movement comes along at just the right time to explain and illuminate this epic moment in American political history.” -Jeffrey Toobin
“Sam Tanenhaus has written a brilliantly penetrating analysis of the conservative movement’s collapse. It’s elegant, provocative and intellectually dazzling.”-Jane Mayer
“The Death of Conservatism is not another book by another liberal with a pornographic fascination with the American right. This is a work of wise and erudite reflection-political and social criticism of a classical kind. Tanenhaus writes with calm authority about ideas and power; about movements and parties, and the momentous difference between them; about the glory, and the decay, of the other counterculture of our times. His book is a service to liberalism, and to conservatism, and to America.” -Leon Wieseltier
Vick Mickunas
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