The Conservative Soul: Fundamentalism, Freedom, and the Future of the Right

In the first chapter Andrew Sullivan works to earn his Conservative credentials by launching a measured attack on liberalism but most of the rest of the book is one long critique of the current evolution of American Conservativism. The bread and butter of the modern Conservative movement are gays, guns and abortions. Ironically this `Conservative' author produces perhaps the best defense of pro-choice I have ever read as well as a wonderful defense of secularism. Combine that with the fact that the author is gay (and British) and you have a rather unique voice among Conservatives. The point where Mr. Sullivan lost me was in his distinction between true Conservatives and radicalized Conservatives. He writes, `It [conservativism] never seeks to return to a golden age or a distant past' Really? Returning to the past is generally one of, if not THE defining feature of Conservativism. The author might want to read `The Conservative Mind' by Russell Kirk or `The Conservative Intellectual Movement' by George H. Nash to see an endless parade of Conservative intellectuals pining for some bygone era. Later, the author states that, "...Conservativism's great philosophical advantage over liberalism [is that] it can be more flexible." William F. Buckley famously stated that Conservatives `stands athwart history, yelling Stop'. Conservatives have stood in the way of civil rights, woman's suffrage and now gay rights. To a Conservative the American family is mom, dad and 2.2 children. Understanding of right and wrong can only be derived from Judeo-Christians teachings and moral relativity is the bane of an ethical society. Sounds about as flexible as a brick. One final jaw dropper is Mr. Sullivan's claim that `Conservatives, after all, hate war.' Somehow I think that the modern Conservative movement has completely left Andrew Sullivan behind. He considers neither religious fundamentalist nor libertarians to be true Conservatives when in fact they are the base. Another argument that the author uses is that George W. Bush isn't a true Conservative but this leads back to the question of what a true Conservative is. John Dean and Bruce Bartlett both used this same tactic. My opinion is that George W. Bush is the reductio ad absurdum of Conservativism. Bush is anti-intellectual, pro defense spending and singularly obsessed with lowering taxes. He also shares the paleo-conservatives love of religion as a panacea for society's moral failings. No man could possibly meet all definitions of a Conservative because many are mutually exclusive. The problem with Bush is that he is a classic ideologue who surrounds himself with like minded ideologues. Even Reagan who was the prototypical Conservative was pragmatic enough to raise taxes when it needed to be done. Bush on the other hand would stick to his agenda until the world came crashing down in a smoldering heap. This doesn't make him non-Conservative it just makes him inflexible. Despite my criticisms this is a really t

PLEASE READ THIS BOOK. Andrew Sullivan travels the talk show circuit as an engaging political thinker with penetrating insights and the courage to openly debunk the leader of his party. But one cannot know the depths of this 40-something British immigrant without reading The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back. Sullivan is refreshingly honest, about his own life and his journey to today, and about what has happened to the Republican party and the American people. "I think of my own analytical errors in the past few years. Looking back, I can see that my outrage at the atrocity of September 11, however merited, may well have blinded me to the intricacies and dangers of a subsequent war in Iraq...We were all wrong." But this is far more than a confessional about a war gone wrong, or about "the ineptness and neoconservative recklessness I saw in the Bush administration." This book is an exploration of how the conservative movement was led into a "rival form" of religious, political fundamentalism and why the resultant loss of constitutional freedoms and America's moral high ground was the logical next step in the seizing of power by ideological fundamentalists. "The essential claim of the fundamentalist is that he knows the truth....It isn't an argument from which he could be dissuaded by something we call reason....The values of the fundamentalist are facts. God has revealed them in a book that is inerrant, whether that book is the Bible or the Koran; or he has entrusted them to hierarchy whose interpretation of scripture and tradition and history and nature is authoritative and even, in some cases, literally infallible." Sullivan revisits the founders of the American constitution and finds they were "well aware of the dangers of religious fundamentalism allied to government power, hence the First Amendment." "The Founders, [to the dismay of fundamentalists like former Senator Rick Santorum], did not write a Constitution dedicated to the inculcation of virtue. In fact what is stunning about the American Declaration of Independence and subsequent Constitution is how morality and virtue are all but absent as a primary concern. The tripartite goal of the American founding was "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." They did not write, "the pursuit of virtue or the pursuit of morality....Americans insisted on freedom first." In Sullivan's analysis, the lurch toward George W. Bush's theocracy violates the foundations of conservatism. "Tax cuts were simply a matter of faith," and accompanied a "staggering expansion of government power and spending [which] increased by an astonishing 38 percent since 2000" resulting in "a bankrupting of the American government" so that "by the end of one term, President Bush had more than doubled [the US Government's future spending commitments] to $43.3 trillion [with] absolutely no way to finance it." Sullivan details the Bush excesses in fiscal, social and foreign policy as "intransigen

This is a philosophical essay, not a political diatribe. This is a very educated, articulate, thoughtful, and practical book. It is so good it probably needs to be read more than once. As an estranged moderate Republican who believes in a balanced budget, smaller government, and minimalist interference in state, local, and individual rights not assigned to the federal government by the Constitution (and also the elimination of central banks that are NOT authorized by the Constitution), I found provocation, solace, and humor in this book (the discussion of the role of the penis and its eternal sperm, in relation to fundamentalist strictures and fears, is alone worth the price of the book). Gifted turns of phrases as well as erudite references to both ancient and modern philosopher-kings abound. I especially likes "Immoral decisions, in other words, are like environmental pollutants" (page 125), and on page 209, "In this nonfundamentalists understanding of faith, practice is more imporant than theory, love more important than law, and mystery is seen as an insight into truth rather than an obstacle." The author's real life as a gay man who has survived AIDS no doubt infuriates the fundamentalists and the less hypocritical evangelists, but this is part and parcel of his qualifications--he completely trashes both the incumbent President and the Christian extremist fundamentalists that have substituted dogma for dialog. This is a personal essay. It is neither a summary nor a substitute for the many other books I have reviewed on both the left and the right, and so I end by saying that the book gets five stars for its extra leavening of philosophical reasoning, but I urge those who find favor in this book to throw a wider net, or at least read my reviews of the last 25 books on ideology, religion, faith, Iraq, and the impeachable offenses of Bush-Cheney.

Sullivan does excellent work in showing how far from traditional conservatism George W. Bush is with his emphasis on heavy government spending without commensurate taxation, his unconscionable expansion of executive power at the expense of other branches of government and against the U.S. Constitution, as well as his putting religious ideas, themselves without rational basis, in the place of reasonable, skeptical inquiry. The only fault of the book is that it makes Reagan a more competent president than in fact he was: Reagan's fiscal profligacy in expanding defense spending while cutting taxes doubled the national debt in the eight years of his administration. Sullivan's book joins Bruce Bartlett's Impostor as a debunker of Bush's supposed conservatism.

Sullivan's writing is ultra-accessible, and transforms previously dry and boring academic philosophies into something anyone can understand. His critique on the state of conservatism in America is refreshing and much needed. He presents a viable argument for doubt and faith to exist side by side, soemthing I didn't think possible. His commentary on the current Republican party is insightful and brutally honest. A must read.