Yesterday I went to the library looking for good primers on basic political philosophies. Among others, I brought home an interesting-sounding book called The Conservative Soul. The name of the author, Andrew Sullivan, sounded sorta familiar but I couldn’t place it. After looking him up I realized I had read a few of his articles on The Daily Dish and elsewhere. I had always kinda thought he was a liberal, and judging by reviews of his book on Amazon.com, apparently so do many conservatives. After reading the first couple of chapters, he’s certainly drawing a clear distinction between what he calls “fundamentalist” conservatism — which is the variety that prevails in the U.S. today — and a more classical conservatism that is independent of the religious right and cares more about limited government, strong national defense, and states rights than ensuring that fetuses have rights but gays don’t.
Sullivan is British, Catholic, married to another man, and endorsed Barack Obama in 2008, so he’s clearly not espousing the sort of WASP-y conservatism I would have expected from a book with this title. I can tell that this treatment of right-wing politics will appeal to me far more than, say, Sarah Palin’s. To that end, I’m glad I picked up this book, because I am trying to find sympathetic expositions of any given political ideology. There’s no shortage of books with titles like “LIBERAL FASCIST NAZI MURDERERS: WHY THE LEFT WANTS TO BLIGHT AMERICA’S SOUL AND TEACH YOUR CAT TO BE GAY” — which certainly have their place — but I’d like to at least start with people who can thoughtfully express their own deeply held beliefs and explain why (and how) I should share them.
More thoughts on this book to follow.
Scott
