Late last week, I interviewed James Piereson of the Manhattan Institute for my newest Silicon Graffiti video blog. (With a little help from the crew at PJTV, who made the transcontinental Internet HD video connection possible.) Piereson has an article in the latest edition of the New Criterion that’s a rebuttal to Sam Tanenhaus’ new book, The Death of Conservatism. As James wrote in his essay:
Sam Tanenhaus has now reprised the old arguments about conservatism and tried to bring them up to date in his newly published jeremiad, The Death of Conservatism. Tanenhaus, the editor of the New York Times Book Review and author of a justly acclaimed biography of Whittaker Chambers, argues that the conservative movement collapsed under the presidency of George W. Bush, and that Barack Obama’s victory in 2008 marked the beginning of a new liberal era in American politics. Tanenhaus is not altogether certain as to the causes of this collapse, at times suggesting that conservatives undid themselves because they were corrupt and unprincipled in their pursuit of power and at others suggesting that they lost the support of the American people because of their devotion to right-wing “orthodoxy.” The one thing about which he is certain is that he dislikes conservatives—intensely and unremittingly so, judging by the rhetoric deployed in this book. Tanenhaus says at various points that conservatives are out to destroy the country, that they are driven by revenge and resentment, that they dislike America, and that they behave more like extremists and revolutionaries (“Jacobins”) than as genuine conservatives. In this sense, he has resurrected the liberal literature about Sen. McCarthy and “the radical right,” and sought to apply it to contemporary conservatism as if nothing of importance had happened in the meantime. All of this is nonsense, of course, and given some of the author’s previous writings, particularly his biography of Chambers, one had reason to hope that he would have produced something more elevated than the partisan assault against conservatives that he has packaged in this book.
And during our interview, I asked James about this quote from the book, discovered by a staffer at the Weekly Standard and linked to by Brent Baker of Newsbusters:
Catching up with a great catch in last week’s Weekly Standard “Scrapbook” section, the September 7 issue highlighted an example of how it takes a worldview that sees liberals like Barack Obama as “consensus”-oriented/“explicitly nonideological” centrists — and Republicans as “ideologically committed” conservatives — to work at the New York Times. Sam Tanenhaus, editor of the newspaper’s Book Review and Week in Review sections, in his new book, The Death of Conservatism, proposes on page 23:
The primary dynamic of American politics, normally described as a continual friction between the two major parties, is equally in our time a competition between the liberal idea of consensus and the conservative idea of orthodoxy. We see it in the Democratic Party’s recent history of choosing centrist, explicitly nonideological presidential candidates (Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama), as contrasted with the Republicans’ preference for ideologically committed ones (Goldwater, Reagan, George W. Bush).
The unnamed Weekly Standard writer scoffed: “The sophistry here is breathtaking. Tanenhaus not only conflates his own political preferences with the American ‘center.’ In order to prove that only the Democratic party nominates ‘centrist, explicitly nonideological’ men for the presidency, Tanenhaus (1) puts Obama – Barack Obama! – in the ‘centrist’ camp, and (2) totally ignores Democrats Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, and Al Gore, as well as Republicans Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, and John McCain.”
President Obama is centrist and “explicitly nonideological”? That would be news to those who participated in the 9/12 Tea Parties in DC and elsewhere. Speaking of which, as Rick Moran wrote, “What makes Saturday’s massive turnout around the country so significant is that it is the first truly conservative mass movement in American history.” This could have significant impact in 2010. But in the meantime, for a look at how a journalist with the New York Times can spectacularly misread an ideology, tune in to the video below:
And to catch up with previous editions of Silicon Graffiti you might have missed, click here and keep scrolling.
What’s dead is the public option.
You should consider the source. I know you are a PC sort of guy and it isn’t PC to take into consideration the source when spurious claims are flying like snowflakes in a Montana blizzard, but really. The NEW YORK TIMES!?!?!?!
If their headline says “Sun raising in East today” you need to run to the window and look.
The New York Slimes has creditability issues, in case you haven’t noticed.
“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”
Thomas Jefferson
3rd president of US (1743 – 1826)
I noticed yesterday that Obama said in his finance speech that government’s role was to expand the reach of wealth. At least one major conservative website author agreed with this statement. Draw your own conclusions.
Is Sam Tanenhaus Brain Dead?
Apparently so.
“I know you are a PC sort of guy”
Ed Driscoll is a “PC sort of guy”? Wow. In whose alternate universe would that be?
I mean, who knew?
I don’t think “PC” means what this mutt think’s it means.
Well, I did the video on a Windows PC. We all have our Vistas to bear.
“Pun City, Ned”!
– quote from The Russia House.
Name the actor who played the character who delivered that line and you win …
12 trolls in a pear tree.
It’s an old meme the left has been pushing for some time… that they’re just pragmatic, realistic, and based on social science while their opponents are ideologues… or worse nonthinking reactionaries (racists, sexists, et cetera).
It’s really important to their internal worldview and [self] justification for their actions. To this end, they often really believe it (i.e., if it were not true, then what good are lefties really doing fighting their fight).
It’s also important to their external movement in order to hide all the nuts on the left / maintain the no enemies to the left status quo. If they’re all pragmatic realists and such, then all those socialist ideologues they work with are just boogie men of the right wing imagination. On this level, unless they deploy a lot of doublethink, I doubt even they totally buy it. I imagine they just avoid thinking about it. But, because of their cultural hegemony in certain sectors, they can just laugh off people who bring up lefty ideological issues (example: “pragmatic centrist” Obama is ruining his political career in favor of pushing for the socialist goal of forced equality in health care… once you tear down the various healthcare talking points, leftists fall back on ‘fairness and equality’ as their goals in healthcare reform… but if you bring this up in the wrong place… ahem… you get the picture…).
“Is Conservatism Dead?”
Push through this godawful health care plan and you’ll see how dead it is.
Half the damn producers in the country will go on strike, firing Obama supporters first if they have any sense.
Whenever I read some liberal describing conservatives, I always wish I could ask “Is that ridiculous and unrecognizable description coming from a composite of conservatives you know personally, or conservatives you have read about on left leaning web sites?”
It’s like they have this entire army of straw conservatives at their disposal that they can drag out to prove any point about “conservatives” that they wish. The problem with bringing them out of it is that their self esteem is so dependent on the little frissons of superiority they get from indulging in their hateful bigotry, that they can’t give it up.
The Left is obviously in panic mode. They KNOW that they are being shown for the shallow, sad examples of human failure that they are. Their only option now is to LIE and to engage in the ad hominem attack since their argument has totally collapsed. This is why they call anyone who opposes their agenda as “racist,” “reactionary,” etc. The Left has very much in common with the totalitarian regimes that have littered history (N Korea, China, Nazi Germany, USSR, Cuba). They have zero credibility so they lash out with ad hominem attacks (in Latin “attack the man”).
I teach rhetoric and argumentation at a college, by the way, so I have a little knowledge in this area. I would mark the Left’s “paper” with a “NG” or an “F” for not following proper argumentation. The ad hominem attack is defined as a logical fallacy. Essentially it shows that you HAVE LOST YOUR ARGUMENT and are flinging whatever rhetorical feces you can extrude at your opponent who (typically) is kicking your ass.
The video is brilliant, and I think the term “obsequious bohemian” is one of the funniest things I have ever heard spoken.