The Death of Conservatism
The Death of Conservatism is an elegant little book. The slender unadorned white cover fits as easily in the hand as it does on the bookshelf. It maintains an appropriately conservative aesthetic—what better way to illustrate that the values of true conservatism, devoted more to preserving the balance of power than advocating for the en vogue movement-of-the-minute?
The manifesto’s author, New York Times Book Review Editor Sam Tanenhaus ’77, recently came to campus as part of the Writers@Grinnell program, run by Carolyn Jacobson, English. More than just an average book tour stop, Tanenhaus—a member of the Grinnell class of 1977—was returning to a place he knows well. He is a delightful and rare anomaly—a Grinnell graduate and member of that most elitist of all liberal media institutions, he is also a nationally known conservative advocate. Yet he never oozes the kind of pretentious corporate capitalist sleaze associated with your stereotypical modern Republican. Instead, as he demonstrated this past Monday, he is affable, approachable and all other genres of adjectives that suggest the kind of good nature one hopes to see in the alumni of one’s school.
And, unsurprisingly enough, he’s smart and a good writer. No matter your political beliefs, he presents a convincing, easy-to-follow argument, free from overwhelming wonkiness and insider references that so often drag down political writing. Engaging the reader, he forces you to reconsider traditionally held opinions. You might not finish the book ready to go out and radically change your life—there’s not a huge chance that you will switch your party affiliation—but you will have a greater appreciation for the intersection of politics, history and personalities. The American political system is not all about ideology; it is the push-and-shove between leaders and movements, the elected and the electing.
Tanenhaus proposes that the contemporary practice of conservatism is far from what the philosophy’s founders—thinkers like Edmund Burke and Benjamin Disraeli—originally conceived. The current inception of the American Republican Party is more about movement politics and us-against-them argumentation than truly preserving the social order and the power relations that maintain it.
Once upon a time, “conservative arguments…spoke to the deepest issues of culture and society,” Tanenhaus writes. Now, in-fighting dominates, with “exhortations from the Right to the Right: to uphold ’basics’ and ‘principles,’ to stand tall against liberals—even if it means evading the most pressing issues of the movement.” And without a well-functioning right-wing party, we’re left without productive political opposition. Avoiding passing judgment and forcing values at the reader, he explains and convinces why the validity of American conservatism is on the wane and why, ultimately, this decline is not a good thing for the country.
In a September 2008 interview with the writer, Tanenhaus discussed how his twin passions—politics and literary criticism—converge at the Book Review. “We review books more directly that have to do with politics,” he said, explaining how the Review has evolved since his editorship there began in 2004. “We are more likely to find a reviewer who may actually quarrel with the book rather than simply state what’s in it and whether it works or not. We try to sound the full ideological range.”
Practicing what he preaches, the values that he espouses as truly conservative—like actually being fair and balanced—are on view whether you are picking up his new book or opening up the Sunday paper.