The Christian Humanist Podcast, Episode 13: The Death of Conservatism

We’re back to our standard theme song this week: Neko Case’s “People Got a Lotta Nerve,” from Middle Cyclone (2009).

General Introduction
- What’s on the blog?
- Sam Mulberry wins a windbreaker

The Death of Conservatism
- Introduction to Sam Tanenhaus
- Our gut reactions to the book
- Three thumbs pointing various degrees of down

Could This Book Have Been Released in 2004?
- GOP on the ropes
- George W. Bush as ultimate movement conservative ideologue
- Why David feels like Abe Vigoda
- Things have changed
- Nathan uses a passive verb

Philosophical vs. Movement Conservatism
- Is this a fair distinction to make?
- The “kindred spirit” approach
- Philosophical vs. movement liberalism
- Openness vs. closedness

Conservatism vs. Radicalism
- Too broad a movement
- Tradition as status quo
- What do conservatives actually want to conserve?
- Why liberals like Leave It to Beaver now

Dialectical Politics
- “The dragging heels of the body politic”
- Theory vs. observations
- How Tanenhaus confuses effect with goal
- Is there an inevitable trajectory of history?
- Why attention to the particular matters
- Flattening historical moment

Orthodoxy vs. Compromise
- Blue dogs and rhinos
- Impotence vs. acquiescence
- Do liberals eat their own?
- Left-wing complaints about Obama

Republican Disinterest in Specifics
- A healthy disinterest, David argues
- Turning libertarian
- Are conservatives simplistic?
- Conservatism as keeping to yourself
- Polarization on both ends of the spectrum
- Nathan plugs his candidate

The Culture War™
- Is it a part of the past?
- Sarah Palin’s elite-baiting
- Who counts as an elite?
- Michial declares his Catonism; Nathan contends
- How democracy leads to tyranny
- A fourth ex-cathedra pronouncement: You’re the man now, dog

The Death of Social Conservatism?
- Mores, not populism
- Celibate vampires vs. prime-time television
- The libertarian uprising
- How big of a voice do social conservatives have now?
- Social conservatism as a consumer choice
- Michial’s socially conservative fatalism
- Nathan’s humorless, quasi-Anabaptist, lunatic sanguinity

Looking to the Future
- Making a new way
- Becoming more conscious
- Nathan is tired of being a wannabe Anabaptist. He wants to be an Anabaptist!
- Taking the best from all movements

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Augustine. City of God. Trans. Henry Bettenson. New York: Penguin, 2003.

Burke, Edmund. Reflections on the Revolution in France. New York: Penguin, 1976.

Hauerwas, Stanley. Resident Aliens. Nashville: Abingdon, 1989.

Kirk, Russell. The Essential Russell Kirk. Wilmington, Del.: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2006.

Plato. The Republic. Trans. Desmond Lee. New York: Penguin, 1987.

Postman, Neil. Building a Bridge to the 18^th Century: How the Past Can Improve Our Future. New York: Vintage, 2000.

Tanenhaus, Sam. The Death of Conservatism. New York: Random House, 2009.

Weaver, Richard M. Ideas Have Consequences. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1984.

Wood, Ralph C. The Comedy of Redemption: Christian Faith and Comic Vision in Four American Novelists. Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame P, 1988.

Podcast, Politics Podcast, Sam Tanenhaus