From a reader re my recent piece about the eternal return of obits for conservatism:

I enjoyed your recent article as I enjoy viturally everything you write. I can’t help noting the resemblance between the conservatism-is-dead pronouncements you cite and the Objectivism-is-dead pronouncements that have been coming from the NR circle for just about as long (Buckley’s 1982 obituary for Rand and Getting It Right are cases in point, but neither the first nor the last). Both strains date from the 1950s; this was also the era when grownups said rock and roll was just a passing fad, a few months from disappearance. It was not a good era for prophecy.