Conservatism: Dead or Alive?
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- March
- 19
Coming soon to your bookstore and library is a view of conservatism today from the Westchester shores of Hudson River. Is it a counter-revolutionary movement and a form of political warfare?
New York Times editor and book author Sam Tanenhaus tackles the topic in his book, “The Death of Conservatism,” to be published in September, the publisher Random House has just announced.
Tanenhaus is a Tarrytown resident and editor of The New York Times Book Review and Week in Review so I bet he will have a lot to say on this topic from his perspective. His publisher, Random House, says he is also working on a biography of William F. Buckley. He is also the author of “Literature Unbound: A Guide for the Common Reader.”
Here is how Random House describes the book:
“Tanenhaus argues 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 civil warfare. In this book, Tanenhaus expands on this argument in a narrative that describes a half-century-long conflict between consensus ‘realists’ and orthodox ‘revanchists’ who were locked in a struggle for the soul of the movement. He offers a panoramic view of modern politics as well as new interpretations of figures from Dwight Eisenhower and Joseph McCarthy through Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. At the same time he tells the history of the modern political thought, and reexamines thinkers from Whittaker Chambers and James Burnham, to William F. Buckley, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Irving Kristol. This book will offer a roadmap for a newly revitalized conservatism that can become a force again in our political life.”
This entry was posted
on Thursday, March 19th, 2009 at 1:26 pm by Barbara Nackman.
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I see conservatives as orthodox politics.
Instead of changing with the time and do what is right and fair they only wish to protect the letter of the law and not the spirit. Also most conservatives are rich , so my last statement merely means they wish to protect their own cash and forget everone else.