Demise of the Right?

The New York Times last Sunday had a big article on "The Right" and its possible demise. Has the paper ever run a piece on the possible demise of the left? I don't think so.

The terms left and right come from the arrangement of seats in the French parliament, so the presumption underlying the terms is that there will always be a continuum of political opinion, not that one or the other side will disappear. The article asserts that the right in America (with no attempt to distinguish among various schools like paleocon, crunchy con, neocon, etc.) is thought by some (the writer carefully dissociates himself from this happy prospect) to have suffered a fatal blow from the deposing of Paul Wolfowitz and the death of Jerry Falwell. That's like thinking liberalism was finished because some Democrat eminence grise like Averill Harriman died and Bill Clinton was impeached. Incidentally, the article says that Bill Clinton was not impeached; that is incorrect: he was impeached by the House, but not convicted by the Senate.

Never mind that Paul Wolfowitz was clearly set up by Europeans in the World Bank who did not care for his distasteful connection to the Iraq war or his emphasis on not conducting business as usual. Never mind that Falwell had not been a significant player in national politics for years.

The article also posits without evidence that the right arose in the 1950s, which as we all know was a terribly uptight period, filled with repressions that were released in the following decade. But if the right did not exist before the 50s, who opposed FDR? What about John Adams? Randolph? Calhoun? For that matter, what about Edmund Burke? I recommend the NYT reporter peruse The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk.