Sam Tanenhaus says “yes” and proceeds to dance on the movement’s grave in his forthcoming book, The Death of Conservatism. I’ve been reading the galleys. Instead of commenting on them, I’ll simply refer you to Jim Piereson’s excellent analysis from The New Criterion. He says what I would say, only better.

A certain line from the book really struck me — Piereson must have felt the same way, because he cites it twice:

Today’s conservatives resemble the exhumed figures of Pompeii, trapped in postures of frozen flight, clenched in the rigor mortis of a defunct ideology.

It’s a gripping image, and Tanenhaus must be proud of it: His first chapter is called “Rigor Mortis” and this line serves as something of a thesis statement for the whole book. As a metaphor, however, I don’t really think the line works, at least not in the way Tanenhaus intends. If conservatives are the exhumed figures of Pompeii, then isn’t liberalism by extension Mount Vesuvius? In other words, isn’t liberalism a civilization-leveling force that flattens cities and kills thousands? (Shortly before the rigor mortis line, Tanenhaus observes that “movement conservatism” was “vanquished in the election of 2008.”) I’ve heard that Vesuvius is still considered one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world because it remains active and is so close to dense population centers. This is liberalism?

One of the fatal flaws of liberalism is its blindness to unintended consequences. Policies don’t always work in practice the way central planners think they will in theory. Neither do metaphors.

UPDATE: The Piereson link is now fixed.

UPDATE NUMERO DOS: Here are responses to the essay upon which the Tanenhaus book is an expansion. They appeared in the online version of the University Bookman.