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Another huge mistake Sullivan makes - a mistake that, if avoided, would have negated most of this book's negative reviews - is his omission of a chapter tying his conservative vision with that of other prominent past conservatives. Having written his doctoral dissertation on the famed British conservative Michael Oakeshott, this book is an attempt to articulate a vision of Oakeshottian conservatism. The problem, as I've already said, is that Sullivan doesn't really make that case very cogently or well. He quotes congressman Rick Santorum at length, and several editors/talking heads for cosnervative politics quite a bit. (I am embarassed to say that I've read many liberal writers like Cris Hedges make this case way more convincingly and directly than Sullivan). This is because conservatives, as distinct from liberals, see human knowledge as constrained and, thus, human attempts at large-scale planning to be frought with pomposity and difficulty. What Sullivan wanted to say, as I understand him, was this: his vision of conservatism - the 'conservatism of doubt' - has it that government should intrude and plan as little as necessary to preserve order.
Conservatism should be about letting individuals control their own lives as much as possible becuase they will know better how to do so than politicians. Unfortunately, as Sullivan sees it, conservatism has gotten away from such principles and become a 'conservatism of faith,' that holds values to be absolute and knowable and, thus, the politician's job as legislating the good. Andrew Sullivan is a conservative after my own heart. Here, Sullivan attempts to tie the Bush administration to a plethora of "theoconservative" beliefs. While his take is hard to disagree with, Sullivan's argument is weak precisely because he hardly quotes or cites many of the Bush administration's players. But to make a case that the Bush administration is agressively pushing theoconservative policies, he needs to make direct connections with the Bush administration. I admire Sullivan and share many of his conservative sympathies (and antipathies to what currently passes as conservatism). That way, it would be hard indeed for critics to dismiss Sullivan as simply "not a conservative."All in all, I wanted to give more stars to this book.
That said, this book fails at the task. Had he made more of his similarities with such conservative legendaries as Burke, Oakeshott, Reagan, and Thatcher, people would be much more hesistant to grumble that Sullivan is simply not a conservative. He is abstruse, repetitive, and not very organized in his case. As such, this book comes off as unclear and unimpressive.Take the chapter on the Bush administration's alleged adherence to the "conservatism of faith" (The Bush Crucible). While Sullivan alludes a few times to his having been a young Reaganite and Thatcherite but might have been wise to devote a chapter to explaining how his vision of conservatism - small government, fiscal responsibility, skepticism of government planning - was once the dominant strand of conservatism. But in the end, this book was too abstruse, disorganized, and poorly argued for me.
To quote from Andrew Sullivan's blog "I belong in that archaic camp that believes it is the job of a liberal president to expand such coverage and the job of a conservative opposition to propose ways to afford it." There is at least one principle that conservatives and libertarians agree on, and that is governments taking money from people who earned it and giving it to those that didn't earn it is a cancer on civilization. But Andrew is disingenuous in pretending to argue these positions from a conservative perspective. Andrew's thinking is, in fact, very modern. Andrew is fond of quoting Orwell "The point of torture, is torture." That's a fine quote and it has inspired an analagous quote from myself, "The point of stealing people's money, is stealing people's money." It's all well and good to write about how George W Bush is not a conservative (he was a populist) and how Darth Cheney is evil. Andrew Sullivan has no understanding or empathy for the conservative mindset. From Andrew's point of view, when someone opposes bailouts, it is not a rational, principled position but pandering to the Republican base, which is the symbol of all that is evil and irrational.If you want criticism of the Bush administration from a conservative perspective, try The American Conservative, a magazine which accused the Bush administration of rewarding defense contracts to people who lied about the state of the Iraq War on Fox News.If you want a book with genuine insight into the conservative point of view on economics, try "Atlas, Shrugged" or even Ron Paul's new book "End the Fed."
For him to even pretend to be remotely conservative is a joke. After 911, I was addicted to Andrew Sullivan.com He was, like me, a former liberal waking up to the reality of terrorism and how the Democratic party was a joke at defending America. As the anti-war, unpatriotic left began to slowly reappear, Sullivan slowly switched back with them. His main concern is to be accepted on the Sunday morning talk shows (watch him on Chris Matthews and see if there are any conservative thoughts in his body) and to be popular in the gay crowd. Don't waste your money.
On a business trip last week, I finally had the chance to finish The Conservative Soul. While some details of his account are anchored in the specifics of American politics in a particular time, some of his philosophical work, particularly in the chapter about natural law and in his latter positive chapters, are quite profound and less tied to this moment in history. His presentation of his preferred understanding of conservatism, as articulated in Montaigne and Oakshott, leading to his political philosophy manifesto, extrapolating from Hobbes, is compelling. Even though it's a couple years old now, his analysis is still very relevant and astute (in some ways even more so, as we watch the crack up of the right in the wake of their 2008 losses). In his classic style, Sullivan writes eloquently, deftly weaving deep philosophical argument with crackling contemporary examples and personal experiences and insights. Though he touches on many particular hot-button issues by way of example, his focus is more on philosophical underpinnings and the motivations for broad political trends and alignments. It's Andrew Sullivan's political analysis of the last couple of decades, on where he thinks the "right wing" has gone off the rails, and what he thinks true conservatism ought to be. His dissection of natural law (as it is wielded today) versus the implications of Darwin and "nature" is keenly argued and very insightful.
Starting from an assessment of the particular vacuums after the collapse of the "old left" that enabled the rise of the "new right", he diagnoses the "fundamentalist psyche" (a need for absolute truth arbitrated by central authorities and authoritative texts), the "theoconservative project" (to "recapture" the public square from the "false neutrality" of secular liberalism), and its ascendancy in the "Bush crucible". He then sets out to propose an alternative "conservatism of doubt" and a "politics of freedom". (Makes me want to work through his bibliography of those classic philosophers). Full of thought-provoking ideas from his distinctive perspective, lucidly expressed, this book was a pleasure to read.
Sullivan makes a nice argument for the small-c conservative cause. He spends the first half of the book trashing the existing Republican establishment and especially the religious right. It is well worth the read, especially if you are a moderate liberal and hoping to "understand" the conservative perspective.
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