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Confessions of a gadfly conservative THE CONSERVATIVE SOUL: HOW WE LOST IT, HOW TO GET IT BACK By Andrew Sullivan HarperCollins, 294 pages. $25.95
Andrew Sullivan wants to pick a fight. I hope he gets one, even if I suppose most "theo-conservatives" will simply ignore his book. In any case, The Conservative Soul is an elegant account of one person's estrangement from the contemporary Republican Party and a step toward the reclamation of conservative politics for a more moderate crowd - a task made more urgent by the recent midterm elections.
Andrew Sullivan is a blogger and journalist, perhaps best known as a gay Catholic conservative. His heterodox background has led him to support gay marriage and social security privatization, George Bush and John Kerry. He has been a supporter of the Iraq war as well as a critic of it. What some might regard as "flip-flopping," Mr. Sullivan argues is a prudence-driven response to changing contexts.
Want certainty in politics? Join any one of the movements - communism, liberalism, all sorts of religious fundamentalisms - that Mr. Sullivan critiques. He'll stick with his own brand of conservatism: "Its essence is an acceptance of the unknowability of ultimate truth ... and an embrace of the discrepancy between theoretical and practical knowledge." Instead of trying to implement God's kingdom here on earth, the Sullivan-style conservative "takes society as it is and adjusts it from time to time as circumstances seem to require."
The Conservative Soul contrasts this conservatism...