October 20, 2006
Andrew Sullivan’s conservative soul
Are bloggers capable of coherent thought? Or does the pressure to keep gabbing work against sustaining a complex argument? For obvious reasons, this is a question that interests me quite a lot. And I must say that reading Andrew Sullivan’s newly-published "The Conservative Soul" (HarperCollins) is mildly encouraging.
Sullivan is one of America’s famous bloggers
. He keeps up a frenetic pace of publication - generally focusing on his particular obsessions: American politics, torture, gay rights, the Iraq war, the evils of Islamism, the evils of the Christian right.
In his new book he focuses on the nature of conservatism. A key part of the argument is that in the United States, the Reaganite conservative tradition which focused on liberty and small government has been subverted by the growing power of Christian fundamentalism over the Republican party. Sullivan calls George W. Bush "the most powerful Christian fundamentalist in the world." While traditional conservatism is a humble creed, based on an awareness of the imperfection of human knowledge, Christian fundamentalism is characterised by a dangerous certainty.
Sullivan sees considerable similarities between Islamic and Christian fundamentalism - in their claim to "know the truth"; in their disgust with modern western society, particularly over sexual issues; in their absolute distinction between the saved and the unsaved; in their belief in an impending apocalypse. He argues that 9/11 was particularly dangerous, because it provoked a confrontation between Islamist and Christian fundamentalism:
"The absolutism of one almost inescapably triggered the absolutist tendencies of the other. 9/11 became for the president, his second ‘born-again’ moment…the born-again presidency redefined itself entirely in terms of fighting an abstract enemy, easily conflated into a single entity, readily accessible to the fundamentalist psyche: evil."
Let’s be clear. This is not a great book - it’s too rambling and idiosyncratic for that. But it is a very interesting book, full of sharp insights. For me - a European reader, who would like to believe that the influence of fundamentalism on American politics has been over-stated - it is sobering to read a closely argued and well-documented account of the rising power of the religious right. Sullivan is particularly good on the alliance between foreign-policy hawks (neo-cons) and the religious social conservatives (theo-cons.) Interestingly, as defeat in the mid-term elections looms for the Republicans, an argument is breaking out within the party over whether fundamentalists have had too much influence on the GOP.
The conclusion of the book is an argument for humility as the core of the conservative creed. I have no problem with this as an argument. But it does sound slightly odd, coming from Sullivan - a polemicist, famous for his arrogance. The author George Packer points out that Sullivan used the capture of Saddam Hussein, to hand out mock "awards" to leftists, who he felt were insufficiently joyful in hailing the great news from Baghdad. In response to an Iraqi blogger who expressed thanks to the Americans, Sullivan responded: "You are welcome … The men and women in our armed forces did the hardest part…But we all played our part."
Maybe humility is OK as the basis for a political philosophy - just so long as one doesn’t go too far and adopt it as a character trait. Or - to be fair to Sullivan - maybe the Iraq war has been a chastening and educational experience. He has now frankly disavowed his previous views, and confesses in the book to being alarmed by his previous rock-hard certainties on Iraq.
Sullivan makes a persuasive case for his sort of conservatism. But, by the end of the book, I was coming to the conclusion that he is not a conservative but a classical liberal. Or rather that in the new fundamentalist world described in "The Conservative Soul", what unites Sullivan-style conservatives and liberals is now far more important than what divides them.
