Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #338968 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-10
• Released on: 2006-10-10
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

From Publishers Weekly
As editor of the New Republic and on his blog The Daily Dish, Sullivan has been a major conservative voice in U.S. politics for 15 years. Now, he attempts "to account for what one individual person means by conservatism"—not repudiating his former political beliefs but trying to "rescue" modern U.S. political conservatism from "the current [Christian] fundamentalist supremacy" that now dominates it. Sullivan (Love Undetectable) has a breezy, readable style that allows him to address such diverse issues as religious fundamentalism's reliance on "the literal words of the Bible," the "excessive witch-hunt" surrounding Clinton, and the secular Enlightenment foundations of the Constitution. He's most approachable when he writes autobiographically through a critical lens—"Looking back I see this phase of my faith life as a temporary and neurotic reaction to a new and bewildering school environment." But that reflection is not as readily apparent when he makes sweeping pronouncements on politics ("post-modern discourse... opposed basic notions of Western freedom: of speech, of trade, of religion"). Much of the book is a meditation on his own evolving faith as a devout Catholic and will appeal most to readers interested in personal religious evolution. (Oct. 3)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
I don't spend much time in Washington; maybe it's different down there. But let me tell you, out here in the wilds of the New Jersey suburbs, it is pure hell being a Republican these days, or a conservative, which used to be the same thing. The party I grew up in, which stood for fiscal discipline and strong defense and avoided the sloppiness and stained dresses of so many good-hearted Democratic administrations, seems to have been conquered by people who think stem-cell research is murder, who want to ban unpopular sex acts and who have proven incapable of managing such basic government tasks as disaster relief and a war. A war! That used to be the one thing you knew the GOP could run efficiently. Now, well, now it's gotten to the point where I'm just too embarrassed to admit that I'm a Republican.

Conservatism is facing a crisis that won't be solved, one suspects, merely by switching presidents. To those of us far removed from Beltway philosophical battles, Andrew Sullivan -- a columnist for Time magazine, a prominent blogger and a senior editor at the New Republic -- might seem an unusual candidate to parse the problem. He's British. He's Catholic. He's gay. But Sullivan is also smart and well read, and in his new book, The Conservative Soul, he calmly and rationally attempts to deduce the malady that in barely 15 years has rendered Reagan-era conservatism all but unrecognizable.

The pathogen he identifies is Christian fundamentalism. The Conservative Soul, in fact, is one of several similar books issued this fall that collectively serve as a call to arms to American elites to put down their New York Times crossword puzzles and their glasses of Fumé Blanc and wake up to the idea that the fundamentalists most dangerous to our future are not Islamic and foreign but Christian and homegrown. Sullivan's is at once an obvious yet much-needed siren; his text calls to mind the book Mary Lefkowitz wrote several years back, Not Out of Africa, to rebut charges that the foundations of ancient Greek culture were built by black Africans. Afrocentrism was so nutty that most intellectuals couldn't be bothered to answer it. The same, I fear, is true for Christian fundamentalism. Its political tenets are so addlebrained and its leaders so difficult to take seriously that it's only now -- after the country has been run by a born-again Christian for six years -- that thinkers like Sullivan realize that it's time for reasonable people to do something about it.

The Conservative Soul, unfortunately, is not only too polite but too high-minded to galvanize anyone without a graduate degree in philosophy. This is not a bad thing, just a warning. If you belong to the Elks Club, apply catsup to your scrambled eggs or have ever read anything by Ann Coulter, this is not a book for you. It is written by a card-carrying intellectual and aimed at card-carrying intellectuals. Sullivan wades deep into the high grasses here; he is more interested in Hegel, Hobbes and Leo Strauss than anyone you've seen arguing on television, much less voted for. Further, the book doesn't really explain how conservatism lost its soul, just that it did, and it doesn't offer any real prescription for getting it back.

Instead, and this is the book's great value, Sullivan takes us back to basics -- we're talking Plato here -- to remind us of the bedrock differences in the two schools of belief that, like squabbling conjoined twins, inhabit the Republican Party's tortured body. The first half of The Conservative Soul, which explores the philosophical underpinnings of Christian fundamentalism and explains how they are anathema to a free society, made me as angry as anything I've read in months. That there are people in 21st-century America who believe the Bible is literally true, who believe the Earth was created 6,000 years ago, and who believe that our lives today should be dictated by codes of conduct written by people who lived 2,000 years before modern medicine, electricity or equal rights -- and that these same Americans have influence in national affairs -- should infuriate anyone with a functioning mind. Fundamentalism, Sullivan reminds us, is the antithesis of reason. Its adherents -- Christian, Muslim, Jewish or otherwise -- have been handed The Truth and cling to it, facts be damned. Quoting figures as varied as Pope Benedict XVI and Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), Sullivan repeatedly emphasizes how fundamentalism abhors the thinking mind, insisting that an individual's conscious choices -- whether to have an abortion or what to order at Burger King -- amount to moral anarchy.

In the book's second half, Sullivan switches from anger to nostalgia, reaching back to remind us of the things that made Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher's brand of conservatism so appealing and so successful as a mode of governance. He traces the influence of fundamentalists to Bill Clinton's various personal deficiencies, which triggered a moral counterattack from Christian leaders who felt they knew something about morality. It's a good story, but Sullivan doesn't tell it with any narrative grace. Instead, he gnashes his teeth in frustration at the changes this period brought to conservatism. It's the hallmark of his book -- a fine intellectual effort that, for all Sullivan's clear thinking and clear prose, probably won't change any minds that fundamentalist beliefs haven't already ossified.

Reviewed by Bryan Burrough
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Customer Reviews

Conservativism as Attitude to Life
Andrew Sullivan is one of our premier public intellectuals and a delight to read. Both facts are confirmed by this book. While at first glance you would think he will be making talking points for a political perspective, Sullivan quickly disabuses the reader of such a formulaic approach. Conservatism, while often thought of as a series of political positions, is much more than that. In fact, argues Sullivan, it is an attitude towards life that rejects simplistic, emotional or rationalistic arguments for everything that ails the planet. In constrast to fundamentalism which seems to answer complex questions with ABC answers, the conservative attitude rejects formulas and seems prepared to embrace the questions. Not convinced of the rationalist argument for man's knowing it all, conservatives are actually more comfortable with doubt.

There are critical differences also between conservatives and fundamentalists: one believes in human imperfection, the other in the need for perfection now and forever; one believes in human nature, the other in remaking human nature by an omnipotent God or State; one seeks to preseve the past, the other is about erasing it and starting over afresh (p.72). These differences should lead to parting of the ways, not in radical fundamentalists appropriating what it means to be a conservative.

Today's "conservatives" are all too ready to use the force of government to enforce their vision of virtue (see Iran and Rick Santorum.) This in no way fits the tradition of conservatives who believe freedom is the only condition in which humanity can come to approach virtue. This is not a political book per se, it is deeply philosophical and must be read by more that the politically inclined.

Sullivan argues, for example, that using religion "as a regulatory scheme to keep human beings in line, or as a unifying principle to herd people to the ballot box, is a profound blasphemy." For a person of faith such a denigration of faith-as-politics should be deeply distrubing, yet the radical fundamentalist finds no contradiction.

Sullivan is exceptionally well versed in the works of Hobbes, Montaigne, Leo Straus (who receives a reprieve from other interpreters) and the genius of Michael Oakeshott. His ease with these thinkers and his ability to relate and apply conservative principles to current events contributes a refreshingly candid and brilliant reappraisal of the soul of conservatism as an attitude towards life. Burke and Kirk would certainly appreciate this addition. Most of today's conservatives, and liberals, could learn alot from this book too.

Anti- Protestant Conservatism?
Though I'm in general agreement that Bush has screwed up the conservative movement, I can't help but think that Sullivan's screed is really about an age old conflict between protestants and Catholics, with Sullivan carrying the banner for Catholics.

Sullivan is Catholic who denounces "Religious Extremism" of the evangelical right as part of what's wrong with conservatism. Trouble is, his critiques of what he calls "religious extremism" aren't all that different than what Catholics have always said about protestants in general.

For example, one characteristic of what he calls "religious extremism" is a more "literal" interpretation of the bible. The greater emphasis on scripture is what defines protestants.



"Sola scriptura" was a foundational doctrinal principle of the Protestant Reformation held by the reformer Martin Luther and is a definitive principle of Protestants today.

Sola scriptura may be contrasted with Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox teaching, in which doctrine is taught by the teaching authority of the Church, drawing on the "Deposit of Faith", based on what they consider to be "Sacred Tradition", of which Scripture is a subset.

So when he bashes the "religious extremists" it's pretty obvious that he's talking about most Christians who don't happen to be Catholic.

Sullivan's recantation
Andrew Sullivan explains at some length, and with some digression, how
he became disenchanted with what he calls the fundamentalist wing of the
current Republican party. His brand of conservatism is Burkean; he considers that the prevailing ideology of the current administration is
not conservative at all, but springs from a tradition of literal evangelism. Some chapters are better than others. The chapter
on sexuality seems labored and occupies more of the book than it should. On the whole, it is an honest and thoughtful book and would be useful reading for people who shared Sullivan's early enthusiasms for the Rovian revolution.