what does it mean to be a conservative anymore?

With the Iraq war, the rise of Christian fundamentalism, exploding government spending, soaring debt, insecure borders, and an executive branch with greater and greater power, Republicans and conservatives are debating this question with more and more urgency.

The contradictions keep mounting. Today's conservatives support the idea of limited government, but they have increased government's size, power, and reach to new heights. They believe in balanced budgets, but they have boosted government spending, debt, and pork to record levels. They believe in individual liberty and the rule of law, but they have condoned torture, ignored laws passed by Congress, and been indicted for bribery. They have substituted religion for politics, and damaged both.

In The Conservative Soul, Andrew Sullivan, one of the nation's leading political commentators, makes an impassioned call to rescue conservatism from the excesses of the Republican far right, which risks making the GOP the first fundamentally religious party in American history. Through an incisive look at the rise of Western fundamentalism, Sullivan argues that conservatives cannot in good conscience keep supporting a party that believes in its own God-given mission to change people's souls, instead of protecting their liberties. He carefully charts the arguments of the new conservatism, showing why they cannot work in today's America, why they fail the test of logic and pragmatism, and why they betray the conservative tradition from Edmund Burke to Ronald Reagan.

In this bold and powerful book, Andrew Sullivan criticizes our government for acting too often, too quickly, and too expensively. He champions a political philosophy based on skepticism and reason, rather than certainty and fundamentalism. He defends a Christianity that is sincere but not intolerant, and a politics that respects religion by keeping its distance. And he makes a provocative, heartfelt case for a revived conservatism at peace with the modern world, dedicated to restraining government and empowering individuals to live rich and fulfilling lives.

"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." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"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... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) 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 Fume 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 ketchup 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.

Bryan Burrough, a special correspondent at Vanity Fair, is the author of 'Public Enemies' and a co-author of 'Barbarians at the Gate.'" Reviewed by Bryan Burrough, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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Sullivan (senior editor, The New Republic), a self-described former teenage Thatcherite and supporter of Ronald Reagan, has become increasingly frustrated with the direction of the Republican Party in recent years, arguing that it has veered into fundamentalist supremacy. He charts the development of this fundamentalist movement within the Republican Party through a look at how a set of religious doctrines have been elevated as means to understand a chaotic world and the related construction of a theological "natural law" approach to cultural politics. He analyzes how these twin projects operate in the foreign and domestic policies of the George W. Bush administration and then offers his counter-vision of a conservatism ruled by philosophical modesty; practical restraint; a "radically random" notion of history; and an experiential, ritual, and sacramental approach to Christianity.
Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Sullivan (senior editor, The New Republic), a self-described former teenage Thatcherite and supporter of Ronald Reagan, has become increasingly frustrated with the direction of the Republican Party in recent years, arguing that it has veered into fundamentalist supremacy. He charts the development of this fundamentalist movement within the Republican Party through a look at how a set of religious doctrines have been elevated as means to understand a chaotic world and the related construction of a theological "natural law" approach to cultural politics. He analyzes how these twin projects operate in the foreign and domestic policies of the George W. Bush administration and then offers his counter-vision of a conservatism ruled by philosophical modesty; practical restraint; a "radically random" notion of history; and an experiential, ritual, and sacramental approach to Christianity. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

From the author of "The Daily Dish"--the most widely read political blog on the Web--comes an impassioned call to rescue conservatism from the corruption of the Republican right. Sullivan makes a provocative, heartfelt case for conservatives to return to their roots by dedicating themselves to limiting government and empowering individuals.

Andrew Sullivan is one of today's most provocative social and political commentators. An essayist for Time magazine, a columnist for The Sunday Times of London, and a senior editor at The New Republic, he is also the editor of "The Daily Dish," one of the most widely read political blogs on the Web. He lives in Washington, D.C.