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Executive Times |
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2007 Book Reviews |
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The Conservative
Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back by Andrew Sullivan |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Doubt Andrew
Sullivan’s new book, The
Conservative Soul, provides a calm and reasoned exposition of how
fundamentalism has overtaken American conservatives, and the virtue of doubt
that was one the strength of conservatives has become anathema to the neo-cons.
Considering that the decibel level, especially in politics, has been at a
very high level, this reasoned and calm approach is likely to fall on deaf
ears. Sullivan proposes that faith and doubt can sit by side. It will be
interesting to see if anyone listens. Here’s an excerpt, from the beginning
of Chapter 4, “The Bush Crucible,” pp. 119-123: “We have a
responsibility that when somebody hurts, government has got to move.” —PRESIDENT GEORGE W.
BUSH, September2003 For the
true fundamentalist, political life is extremely simple. Fundamentalist
politics demands that the truths handed down by revelation or “nature” be applied consistently to govern all citizens. How could
they not be? For the fundamentalist, there is no secular truth independent
of religious truth; and there is no greater imperative than saving souls. If
there is an inevitable disjunction between the demands of Heaven and the
brokenness of Earth, the role of politics is to narrow that gap as far as
possible. It is to conjoin ultimate meaning with a monopoly of force. The
ultimate face of fundamentalist politics can be seen throughout history. From
the Catholic Spain of the Inquisition to the Puritan dictatorship of To equate
the astonishing rise of evangelical and Catholic fundamentalism in the
contemporary West with these monstrous regimes would be absurd. There are a
few fringe groups in But this
much can nevertheless be said of the new American fundamentalists: they deny
the possibility of a government that is neutral between differing views of
what the meaning of life truly is. They reject the whole idea of the law as a
way to create a neutral public space, to mediate between competing visions of
the good, to provide an umpire for a game between competing visions of what
is moral, right, or true. They reject, in short, the entire premise of
secular democracy: that religion should be restricted to the private sphere,
and the law should be as indifferent as possible to the substantive claims
of various impassioned groups of true believers. They are
extremely clear on this point. Robert George argues that “there can be no
legitimate claim for secularism to be a ‘neutral’ doctrine that deserves
privileged status as the national public philosophy.” It’s worth insisting
here on the proper meaning of secularism. It is not antireligious, as is now
often claimed. Definitionally secularism merely
argues that public institutions and public law be separated from religious
dogma or diktats. A secular society can be one in which large majorities of
people have deep religious faith, but in which politics deals with laws that
are, as far as possible, indifferent to the religious convictions of
citizens, and clearly separated from them. Some
evangelical Christians have thrived under secularism. Think of the
astonishing career of someone like Billy Graham, a man who sought to bring
millions to a fundamentalist faith but who didn’t construct a political movement
as such. Or think of the work of a group like the Salvation Army that, in a
secular society, channels fundamentalist faith into social action and helps
so many people in real need. It’s possible for evangelicalism to coexist with
secularism—and, indeed, for much of American history, that has been the case.
But it is no longer the predominant view on what we might call the
“religious right,” or within the Republican Party as a whole. In
fact the key premise of secular neutrality is precisely what the Christianist right now disagrees with. Senator Rick
Santorum affirms, “I don’t want a government that is neutral between virtue and vice.” Elsewhere Santorum writes that defenders
of secularism “are trying to instill a different moral vision—one that elevates
the self, the arbitrary individual good, above all else. And frankly, this
moral vision amounts to nothing less than a new religion, a polytheistic one
in which each individual is to be his own god to be
worshipped.” For Santorum, the alternative to a politics responsive to one
God is a politics responsive to many, with no mechanism to distinguish
between them. I
should mention in passing that, in this conviction, Santo-rum has
philosophical allies on the left. Left-fundamentalists also discount the whole
idea of government neutrality and want to use government power and the law to
insist on their own values: racial justice (by affirmative action), enforced
tolerance (through restrictions on free speech and hate crime laws), direct
public funding of deeply controversial areas like abortion, and the use of
public schools to inculcate the dogmas of multiculturalism in children. The
two overlap in some areas. Restricting pornography, for example, is a top
priority for the religious right and the fundamentalist left. The point here,
however, is their mutual disdain for the idea of public neutrality. For the
fundamentalist left, it’s a mask designed to obscure systematic oppression of
various kinds; for the fundamentalist right, it’s a sham created to obscure a
“secular humanist” agenda and even, as Santorum would have it, polytheism. Classical liberals and
secular conservatives differ. They cling to the notion that government can
try to be above the fray, that it can aspire to be the mediator for very
different people who have to live alongside one another with radically
divergent ideas of what is good or true. These limited-government liberals
and conservatives believe, as a critical part of this notion of politics,
that there is a clear distinction between what is public and what is private.
The law can allow for different moral choices, they argue, without
privileging one over the other. So a law that permits abortion merely allows
some women to choose it and others to refuse it, according to their own views
of what is right and wrong. And a law that allows for legal pornography
simply lets individuals make their own decisions, and takes no stand on the
underlying issue itself. A law that allows gay couples to marry does not
forbid straight couples from marrying. The law, in this sense, is indifferent
to what any couple or person might choose. It just grants them the right to
choose it, and provides the mechanisms to defend the choice. Fundamentalists reject this
idea. For them, neutrality is a sham. In any law, they argue, someone’s
values are asserted. A law that permits abortion is a law that says abortion
is morally permissible. It is de facto pro-abortion, not pro-choice. A law
that allows pornography or legal contraception is not neutral with regard to these
alleged moral evils. It abets them, approves them, legitimizes
them—and all the immoral behavior they imply. For those who
have become disillusioned during the past decade, reading The
Conservative Soul may bring some hope. For those interested in politics
from any point of view, The Conservative
Soul is a gem of philosophical reasoning. Steve Hopkins,
December 18, 2006 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the January 2007
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The
Conservative Soul.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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