[neverdem]

I was under the impression that Sam Tanenhaus was a real conservative of some sort. When I woke up, what a dream! He comes off as a CINO or at least a David Brooks type.

[Doogle]

they wish it to be

[dirtboy]

He acknowledges that there is an important role for conservatism, but it must be a “genuine” conservatism that preserves but does not seek to overturn liberal gains.

Using that logic, Ronald Reagan should never have gained a single conservative vote. What a maroon - if you do not fight liberalism, it becomes a cancer that consumes liberty, industry and morality. And history shows that the response of liberals to the failure of liberal policies is not to reconsider those policies - instead, they believe that those policies were just not tried hard enough, and they will puruse those policies to the point of absurdity - and tyranny. So since liberals will not correct their failings, it is up to conservatives to point out those failings and force corrections.

[Steamburg]

A conservative would never waste this much space. If he were not in a total twist he could fit more than needs to be said in 2 paragraphs.

[Wolfie]

Social conservatism is alive and well. Fiscal and economic? Not so much.

[Reagan Man]

Conservatism isn't dead.

Those of us who adhere to conservative principles have found out in the last eight years that many of our fellow conservatives turned out to more centrist in their politics. Moderates and liberals in their core beliefs. They jumped on the rightwing bandwagon with Reagan in the 1980`s and with the GOP revolution in 1994 and went along for the ride. While success lasted, everything was just hunky-dory. Fact is, these promoters of political expediency never held firm convictions in support of the Constitution and never had any intention of furthering limited government, lower taxes and individual freedom.

>>>>>While the conservative case for order, tradition, and authority may be useful as a corrective for the excesses of democracy, it can never hope to supplant liberalism as the nation’s official governing philosophy.

Right. Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.

[Paperdoll]

Hell no!

[Cacique]

NO

[VRWC For Truth]

All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.

Conservatives are preparing for winter. Liberals are gorging themselves on other's fruit.

[NavyCanDo]

Being involved in politics since 1977, I have never seen a surge of conservatism as I see today.
It took Jimmy Carter to give us the Reagan revolution. It took Moveon.org taking the reigns of the Democratic Party to give us todays surge.

[theFIRMbss]

>Tanenhaus argues that conservatives failed because—well, because they did not act like conservatives at all but rather as extremists and radicals out to destroy everything associated with modern liberalism. The paradox of the modern right, he says, is that “Its drive for power has steered it onto a path that has become profoundly and defiantly un-conservative.” According to Tanenhaus, conservatives have been divided since the 1950s between their Burkean inclinations to preserve the constitutional order and their reactionary or “revanchist” impulses to tear up and destroy every liberal compromise with modern life. “On the one side,” he writes, “are those who have upheld the Burkean ideal of replenishing civil society by adjusting to changing conditions. On the other are those committed to a revanchist counterrevolution, whether the restoration of America’s pre-New Deal ancient regime, a return to Cold War-style Manichaeanism, or the revival of pre-modern family values.” In recent years, he concludes, the “revanchists” have gotten the upper hand over the Burkeans, and have thereby run the conservative juggernaut over a cliff and into irrelevance.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Ladies and gentlemen,
The golden age of rock and roll...

Everybody hazy, shell-shocked and crazy
Screaming for the face at the window
Jeans for the genies, dresses for the dreamies
Fighting for a place in the front row

Ohhh
It's good for your body, it's good for your soul
Ohhh, lets go
It's the golden age of rock and roll

Well you getta little buzz, send for the fuzz
Guitars getting higher and higher
The dude in the paint thinks he's gonna faint
Stoke more coke on the fire

Ohhh
You gotta stay young, you can never grow old
Ohhh
It's the golden age of rock and roll

The golden age of rock and roll will never die
As long as children feel the need to laugh and cry

Don't wanna smash - want a smash sensation
Don't wanna wreck - just recreation
Don't wanna fight - but if you turn us down
We're gonna turn you around don't f#ck with the sound

The show's gotta move, everybody groove
There ain't no trouble on the streets now
So if the going gets rough
Don't you blame us
Your ninety-six decible freaks

Ohhh
It's good for your body, it's good for your soul
Ohhh
It's the golden age of rock and roll

Ohhh,
You gotta stay young, you can never grow old
Ohhh
It's good for your body, it's good for your soul
Ohhh
It's the golden age of rock and roll

[BluesDuke]

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

"Thus, self-styled conservatives who attacked the New Deal were not acting
like conservatives because they were in effect attacking the established order—
and, of course, “real” conservatives would never do that."

This is part of that Clintonesque semantic game played by liberals.
The idea that the FDR regime or any other part of modern statism
is "the established order" to be venerated by conservatives is absurd.
You can play as many games with this as liberals and atheists do with
the "establishment" clause in the Constitution. Has it been properly "established"?
And is it an "order"?

When the Obama policies become the status quo, are conservatives supposed
to preserve them in the interests of the established order?
That kind of thinking would have conservatives supporting statist and socialist
violations of natural law, property rights , and morality. Not to mention tradition.
There has always been a debate about which areas of tradition, culture, and rights
conservatives should seek to defend. But they don't have to put their rubber
stamp on every new social engineering policy imposed by modern American
politicians as if it had claim to being "the established order."

Are we now to hear someone tell us that funding abortion, global population
control, and embryonic stem cell research with U.S. tax dollars, as Obama would
have us do, is "the established order" that conservatives must preserve? That's a
bit Orwellian.

[Dead Corpse]

The idea of Constitutional Conservativism is still very much alive.

A major Party that supports that ideal, that is what has died...

[Brad’s Gramma]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zhPA6XkCYE

Yep. Dead as a doorknob.

[x]

Thanks for posting this.

That Burkeans vs. dynamite-throwers opposition is overdone. You really don't find pure types like that in politics very often.

What I'd say is, there's Goldwaterism, which appeals to about a third of the electorate, and then there's a conservatism that can win elections, that involves more correcting liberal mistakes than wholesale ideological transformation of the country.

And the two elements, purists and pragmatists, alternate over time. It would be silly to characterize one side as mellow Burkean traditionalist wets and the other as destructive dries dismantling the compromises of the last century. Such portraits take the rhetoric more seriously than it deserves, rather it's a conflict between an idealist rhetoric and what real world politics demand.

Things got muddied up in the Bush years. Foreign policy, military, and security issues came to outweigh the Goldwater agenda, and what you had to do and say to be thought conservative changed.

Conservatism isn't dead. It's just waiting for people to get so sick of Obama liberalism that they turn to a conservative alternative. It might do to remember that when voters do make the shift they won't be turning to minimal government Goldwaterism. They'll just be asking for less government, less taxes, less interference than the Democrats offer.

After seeing what conservatism became in the last few years -- with Republicans controlling Congress and the Presidency and driving up deficits -- it would be foolish to think that when voters turn to Republicans or conservatives it will be for some whole-hog Goldwater conservatism, rather than for more modest corrections and adjustments.

[Albion Wilde]

Is conservatism dead?

They said that about God throughout the 60s and 70s... but He's not dead, either.

April 1966

[calex59]

He** NO it isn’t dead.

[mysterio]

Paleoconservatism isn’t dead.

[rlmorel]

If we allow the RNC in its current iteration to define conservatism, then...it is dead.

If we allow Colin Powell to define conservatism, it is dead.

If we allow John McCain, his daughter or any others like them to define conservatism, it is dead.

If we allow the media to define conservatism and allow it to stick, it is dead.

[neverdem]

The Get-Cheney Squad

How a Detainee Became An Asset - Sept. 11 Plotter Cooperated After Waterboarding

Bi-Polar Liberals?

Sun's Cycle Alters Earth's Climate

Some noteworthy articles about politics, foreign or military affairs, IMHO, FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.