 | Price Comparisons: Rental | | Sorry, the textbook you were looking for is not available as Rental, at any of the stores we searched. | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com | Sam Tanenhaus’s essay “Conservatism Is Dead” prompted intense discussion and debate when it was published in The New Republic in the first days of Barack Obama’s presidency. Now Tanenhaus, a leading authority on modern politics, has expanded his argument into a sweeping history of the American conservative movement. For seventy-five years, he argues, the Right has 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.
Eventually, Tanenhaus writes, the revanchists prevailed, and the result is the decadent “movement conservatism” of today, a defunct ideology that is “profoundly and defiantly unconservative–in its arguments and ideas, its tactics and strategies, above all in its vision.”
But there is hope for conservatism. It resides in the examples of pragmatic leaders like Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan and thinkers like Whittaker Chambers and William F. Buckley, Jr. Each came to understand that the true role of conservatism is not to advance a narrow ideological agenda but to engage in a serious dialogue with liberalism and join with it in upholding “the politics of stability.”
Conservatives today need to rediscover the roots of this honorable tradition. It is their only route back to the center of American politics.
At once succinct and detailed, penetrating and nuanced, The Death of Conservatism is a must-read for Americans of any political persuasion. |
Average Customer Rating:    Seriously Flawed Book is Mis-titled for Publication This book is seriously flawed and I recommend against it. I believe that the author was working on a much longer book and he was rushed into publishing a short, half-finished book because Obama was swept into office. Even if I were sympathetic to his point of view (which I'm not), I would feel ripped off buying this book because it is not a whole work in my opinion. The only reason that I have it is because I received it as a gift. The book starts taking the reader on a slowly-moving look at the modern history of conservatism, gets to the '70s, touches briefly on Reagan and suddenly jumps to George W Bush. Then it's finished. Da-Da-da-dum, it's over. Feels very clipped. That is the genesis of my suspicion that he was rushed into publishing a half-finished work.
When I have more time I'll go into a more in-depth criticism of the arguments in the book, but I also feel that the author is so biased in his liberal view of the world, that he seriously mis-interprets facts and cannot always be trusted to give the truth. For example, he argues that Obama is a centrist, which we can see now is totally ridiculous. (We now know that Obama is a leftist who tries to portray himself as centrist in order to achieve his leftist agenda).
The author also likes to sprinkle a lot of intellectual-sounding words in his writing that 99.9% of the public probably never heard of. So I, who am certainly not illiterate, read it with a dictionary by my side, to learn some nice words that I'll never hear, read or use again. Once I get through his pompous writing style (contrasted, say, with Mark Levin's Tyranny and Liberty, a more readable and vastly superior book), I have to say that some things he writes are reasonable, and other things totally off-the-wall. As for his title "Death of Conservatism," the author makes almost no case for this drastic assertion. So I get the feeling that his publicist TOLD him to use that title, in order to capitalize on the panicked emotion of the time (Obama swept into office, Democrats own House/Senate, large recession caused by financial bubble bursting etc).
But by far the biggest criticism is that it feels like half of a book. The author should have maintained his integrity and finished it before rushing into publication.
Death of Conservatism is the epitome of what's wrong with modern politics Death of Conservatism is an embarrassingly immature discussion of American politics. The basic premise is that modern Conservatism doesn't follow Tanenhaus's interpretation of Edmund Burke, and so modern Conservatives aren't conservative at all. In fact, the real conservatives are Bill Clinton and even Barack Obama; Republicans are nothing more than revanchists. Tanenhaus's reasoning is juvenile and not even veiled partisanship. Modern Conservatives don't agree with bigger government, higher taxes, and restricting markets so they're completely detached from reality, only concerned with ideology, and have nothing to offer America. Tanenhaus then cherry picks and rewrites historical incidents so that Liberals are always being pragmatic, adapting to the times, and intelligent while Conservatives are being ideological, racist, and ignorant. He does offer some support for (his view of) conservatism, but this is almost always for doing something more liberal (aka "pragmatic") or as a brief transition before Tanenhaus ridicules modern Conservatives again.
This is really politics at its worst. The entire thing seeped with arrogance: Conservatives are just too stupid or stubborn to understand why I'm right. Tanenhaus offers absolutely nothing of substance to the political debate; he shows absolutely no understanding of economics, foreign affairs, or policy analysis. His only contribution is excessive quoting and name dropping in the hopes of propping up this straw man of a book. This type of writing is always suspect because it is not based on reasoning but various historical facts. In the hands of such a wild partisan, this type of writing becomes downright dangerous because you can't trust any of Tanenhaus's "facts".
I'm afraid this book will result in only more name calling and refusal to solve problems in a bipartisan manner. Tanenhaus repeatedly describes modern Conservatives as completely irrational and incapable of working with Liberals, so the only logical answer is for Liberals to stop working with Conservatives. This will not only result in an even more gridlocked government, but it will mean Liberals start doing exactly what Tanenhaus criticizes Conservatives for. Death of Conservatism also implies that Liberals have such common sense and obvious solutions to modern problems, but even a cursory glance at economic journals or policy magazines proves that Tanenhaus has no idea what he's talking about. The public debate between Conservatives and Liberals is a reflection of the fierce debate going on in academia over even seemingly simple policies.
There is certainly plenty to criticize both parties for, but this book completely misses the mark. If you are looking for good history, good policy analysis, or good reasoning, The Death of Conservatism will certainly disappoint. I am sorry I bought this book This is anything but what the title indicates. I kept waiting for some theses or summations or even criticisms,
but this book mostly concerns itself with the media figures of the Conservative movement in the last 20th
century, and superficially at that.
The last chapter is about the only criticism summation in the book where it says that Obama has a moderate
agenda because he has really been influenced by the right ... in essense the author seems to say that the
Democrats are like the moderate Republicans, so that the far right has a problem.
The book is about the death of Liberalism, but it exists entirely between the lines. I could have read a book
that was constructively and extremely critical of the left, there is a lot to criticise ... and there are about two
ideas that finger point at Liberals.
This is a muddied up volume of rambling history of the right, without good analysis, and any enlightening
about who is behind all these talking head ... ie. what agenda do they actually follow.
I have to rate this book low for misrepresenting itself, not having a clear central thesis and presenting
arguments to support it. Endless references to William F. Buckley and others, but dry and without insight.
There is some insight into Richard Nixon, where it attempts to rehabilitate Nixon's image by inferring that
Nixon was a moderate because he incurred the criticism of the far right ... as Reagan did as well. For
instance there is a part where they mention conservative talking head Charles Krauthammer railing
about how Reagan was not conservative enough and did not stand up against the Soviet Union - he
compromised ... it was compromise not a hardline that ended the cold war. Krauthammer and most
Republicans still say Reagan outspent and won the Cold War with his hard line.
If this book was about the death of Conservatism, why not at least touch on the disconnection in
what the Republican media says, the Orwellian nature of their policies and rhetoric?
An utter waste of time. I knew all the stuff about Buckley, Reagan and Nixon and did need to
hear the author's pet theories without any outer context or point. Nothing to take away from this
book, unless you might be a die hard Conservative and want to add a point or two to the matrix
if Conservative mythology.
1/5 stars, cannot recommend, sorry I bought it. A curious title I'm always suspicious of books that are titled, "The Death of...." or "The End of.....", but this book is a nicely outlined history of the conservative movement over the past sixty years or so. Author Sam Tanenhaus focuses on personalities such as William F. Buckley, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan to assess where conservatives are today. It's not that they're nowhere to be found, but are lurking in all sorts of shapes and forms. Tanenhaus is at his best when he reminds us that not one major spending program was done away with during the Reagan years and the spendthrift ways of Bush 43 have put remaining conservatives in a tailspin. It's no wonder there is no conservative alternative to Barack Obama and it's not hard to imagine why. "The Death of Conservatism" is worth a read.
My Review of The Death of Conservatism I had first seen this book being prmoted on PBS, espically "Bill Moyers Journal"
As I have a lot of respect for Moyers I purchased a copy.
It was not what I was led to believe based on the Moyers interview of Tannenhus.
What I expected was a book that delt with the right's current delima of wanting
to get right with Reagan on the one hand and the need to move past him on the
other.
This was indeed covered in the book, however so was such things as William F. Buckley's evoultion from a "movement conservative" to a pragmatist.
The title of the book is misleading as most of the book deals with the right in
the 40's 50's 60's & 70's rather than it's divisions today.
Nevertheless in spite of my misgivings this a readable book, just don't expect
to learn anything about where conservatism will be during next year's mid-terms
or in 2012. |  |
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