{"id":5109,"date":"2006-10-22T00:36:47","date_gmt":"2006-10-22T00:36:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/that-conservative-soul.html"},"modified":"2006-10-22T00:36:47","modified_gmt":"2006-10-22T00:36:47","slug":"that-conservative-soul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/that-conservative-soul.html","title":{"rendered":"That Conservative Soul"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Brooks reviews Sullivan’s book:<\/a><\/p>\n

(Remember, Sullivan is all about a "conservatism of doubt")<\/p>\n

\n
\n

As for Sullivan\u2019s conservatism of doubt, I\u2019m sympathetic. I know only two self-confessed Oakeshottians in Washington \u2014 Sullivan and me. And yet Oakeshott\u2019s modesty can never be the main strain in one\u2019s thinking, though it should always be the warning voice in the back of your mind.<\/p>\n

Sullivan notes that Oakeshott \u201ccouldn\u2019t care less about politics as such, who wins and loses, what is now vulgarly called \u2018the battle of ideas.\u2019 \u201d His thought was poetic, not programmatic.<\/p>\n

Well, if you want to sit in a cottage and bet on horses, fine. But if you actually want to govern, such thinking is of limited use. It doesn\u2019t make sense to ask how an Oakeshottian would govern because an Oakeshottian could never get elected in a democracy and could never use the levers of power if somehow he did. Doubt is not a political platform. Hope is.<\/p>\n

Oakeshott was wise, but Oakeshottian conservatism can never prevail in America because the United States was not founded on the basis of custom, but by the assertion of a universal truth \u2014 that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain rights. The United States is a creedal nation, and almost every significant movement in American history has been led by people calling upon us to live up to our creed. In many cases, the people making those calls were religious leaders. From Jonathan Edwards to the abolitionists to the civil rights leaders to the people fighting AIDS<\/span><\/a> and genocide in Africa today, religiously motivated people have been active in public life. They have been, in their certainty and their willingness to apply divine truths, fundamentalists \u2014 if we want to use Sullivan\u2019s categories. You take those people out of American politics and you don\u2019t have a country left.<\/p>\n

<snip><\/em><\/p>\n

When Andrew Sullivan is most himself \u2014 on subjects like gay marriage and torture \u2014 he practices a politics that is the opposite of the politics of doubt. He is a fervent, passionate crusader. And when he crusades for gay marriage, for example, he is crusading for a radical change in the way we define the most fundamental unit of human society \u2014 a very un-Oakeshottian break from tradition.<\/p>\n

This is Sullivan at his wonderful best. The politics of principle. Not the politics of doubt.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Compare and contrast: the WaPo review, by someone I’d never heard of:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

The Conservative Soul<\/em> , 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.<\/p>\n

snip<\/em><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

snip<\/em><\/p>\n

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. \u00b7<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Let’s see….how does that go…with friends like these…<\/em> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Brooks reviews Sullivan’s book: (Remember, Sullivan is all about a "conservatism of doubt") As for Sullivan\u2019s conservatism of doubt, I\u2019m sympathetic. I know only two self-confessed Oakeshottians in Washington \u2014 Sullivan and me. And yet Oakeshott\u2019s modesty can never be the main strain in one\u2019s thinking, though it should always be the warning voice…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThat Conservative Soul - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/that-conservative-soul.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"That Conservative Soul - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"David Brooks reviews Sullivan’s book: (Remember, Sullivan is all about a "conservatism of doubt") As for Sullivan\u2019s conservatism of doubt, I\u2019m sympathetic. I know only two self-confessed Oakeshottians in Washington \u2014 Sullivan and me. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5109\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}