I haven't been following the controversy provoked by Sam Tanenhaus's "Conservatism Is Dead" article too closely until now. This is not because of its author. Tanenhaus's biography of Whittaker Chambers is one of the most enjoyable books that I have read in the last ten years. It's because I read this article when George Packer wrote it in The New Yorker last year. The conservative obituary is the favorite article for liberals writing about conservatives to write. The theme's staying power is its invalidation.

As is the case with the liberal-penned obits that preceded, Tanenhaus's advice to conservatives would be great for liberalism but bad for conservatism. If only conservatism were another version of liberalism.... is the translated gist. Tanenhaus's point about conservatives perversely embracing ideology barked up the right tree, until it became clear that he conflates acceptance of liberal policies with a rejection of ideology.

At times, the post-mortem is wholly askance from reality: "After George W. Bush's two terms, conservatives must reckon with the consequences of a presidency that failed, in large part, because of its fervent commitment to movement ideology: the aggressively unilateralist foreign policy; the blind faith in a deregulated, Wall Street-centric market; the harshly punitive 'culture war' waged against liberal 'elites.'" The irony here is that if only Bush had believed in deregulation or the market, rather than intervention and statism, conservatives wouldn't be in such a mess. One supposes that Napoleon spoke of the war waged against him too, so a New York Times Book Review editor speaking of conservatives waging a culture war against his kind is amusing. The foreign-policy criticism may be the most revealing. It's not an aggressive foreign policy that Tanenhaus decries. It's an "aggressively unilaterlist foreign policy." Hmmm. Should we have invaded Iraq alongside Swedes, Belgians, and Frenchmen, this muscular-foreign-policy-with-friends attitude seems to say, then Iraqis would now behave as Swedes, Belgians, and Frenchmen rather than as Iraqis.

My own take is that the conservative movement--Bricker Amendment, Young Americans for Freedom, Who Promoted Peress?, Impeach Earl Warren, In Your Heart You Know He's Right, Stop ERA, Stop the Panama Canal Treaty, Standing Athwart History Yelling Stop, and all that--is dead. What would Robert Taft think of the Bush Doctrine and Barry Goldwater make of big-government conservatism? The conservative movement is dead because some of the issues that initially motivated it, like the Cold War, are moot. It's also dead, in large part, because the institutions and people most closely associated with it have been corrupted and coopted by the Republican Party.

Conservatism, on the other hand, is alive and relevant. Limited government, low taxation, personal responsibility, and a strong national defense employed only for the furtherance of America's just interests--the ideas and principles that initially animated and motivated the conservative movement--are good medicine for a sick America. They may work as adrenaline for dead conservative movement, too. If conservatism really were dead, why would Tanenhaus write an article offering conservatives unsolicited advice? Conservatism is dead like Jason, Freddy, and Frankenstein. This is the nightmare of every reader of the New York Times Book Review.

There are some thoughtful takes on Tanenhaus's piece at the University Bookman. Jim Antle's response to Tannenhaus's piece on the American Spectator blog, methinks, is the best thus far. He identifies three areas that support Tanenhaus's general gripes about conservatives: 1. "Something valuable was lost in the transition from Russell Kirk and Robert Nisbet to Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity." 2. "As Republican politicians have done progressively less for various conservative groups, like social conservatives, they've gotten louder in their insistences that they are people just like them red state folks.... I like Sarah Palin, but the Republican establishment marketed her in a way that was intended to manipulate conservatives, not heed them." 3. "There are ideological conservatives who don't have a conservative temperament."

Strong national defense employed only for the furtherance of America's just interests

That one is dead. No one apart from a handful of conservatives believe it anymore. Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul aren't getting any younger.

Near the end you intimate, through Antle's piece, that one of the problems conservatism has is with their mouthpieces. I agree that conservatism needs to mount counter-responses to libelous liberal claims, but I don't think Hannity nor Coulter are the people to do it either. I find it quite funny that in my mind Rush is the least abrasive of the blowhards. Though I happen to agree more so with his politics, I am finding Hannity as abrasive and despicable as Maddow and Olberman. It's okay to shine, but don't cross the line.

Conservatism needs a polished, humble, smart, and dignified talking head who doesn't speak with a chip. Where/Who are they? Is it Michael Steele?

It could be Micheal Steele ... IF he were a conservative.

why do conservative have to be humble? i want a fighter. if the dummycrats get loud, we get louder. if a libbiephag throws a jab, beat the punk down. got to fight fire with fire.

After reading Tanenhaus's piece I wondered how useful the label "conservative" has become to those of us on the right who think of ourselves as conservative. After Bush the label really is confused, and what exactly are we trying to conserve in the present context? Classical liberal is I think a more accurate term, as I argue in a piece at The American Culture: http://stkarnick.com/blog2/2009/02/post_219.html. And it is likely much more marketable. We've let "liberals" steal the label and they are anything but.

Obi,

I'll put that down to the progressive delusion. Things can be believed and held again. The political side that was happy with funding left-leaning PBS and NPR haven't always harped on "rolling back the clock" (the words that they would use in such a case) to the 1930s to re-institute the Fairness Doctrine. But they've decided that they want that again.

It hardly makes any sense to abandon something simply because few agree with you anymore. That's assigning a sort of validity to the ad Populum argument.