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The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back Hardcover – October 10, 2006

4.3 out of 5 stars 138

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"As engaging as it is provocative. . . . Sullivan’s book should be read closely by liberals as well as conservatives.” — Jonathan Raban, The New York Review of Books

One of the nation's leading political commentators makes an impassioned call to rescue conservatism from the excesses of the Republican far right, which has tried to make the GOP the first fundamentally religious party in American history.

Today's conservatives support the idea of limited government, but they have increased government's size and power to new heights. They believe in balanced budgets, but they have boosted government spending, debt, and pork to record levels. They believe in national security but launched a reckless, ideological occupation in Iraq that has made us tangibly less safe. They have substituted religion for politics and damaged both.

In this bold and powerful book, Andrew Sullivan makes a provocative, prescient, and heartfelt case for a revived conservatism at peace with the modern world, and dedicated to restraining government and empowering individuals to live rich and fulfilling lives.


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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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. (Oct. 3)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

“Andrew Sullivan has been more honest and open-minded than just about anybody else on the right. . . . His book is important, not only because he is willing to re-examine his own views relentlessly, but also because this is a moment when conservatism is in tumult. . . . The Conservative Soul is imbued with Sullivan’s characteristic passion and clarity. . . . This is Sullivan at his wonderful best.” — David Brooks, The New York Times Book Review

“A kind of bildungsroman of Sullivan in the 9/11 years. . . . His invective is scorching, and one is happy he has turned on his former big-tent mates. . . . There is the reflection of a memoir in this book, a lingering heat and passion that are the detritus of a personal struggle.” — New York magazine

“Intellectually challenging and thoroughly captivating. . . . Sullivan is blessed with an insatiable appetite for ideas and argument. . . . What he has to say about most things is interesting, elegantly expressed, and deeply thought through.” — The Economist

“Sullivan’s is at once an obvious yet much-needed siren. . . . The Conservative Soul calmly and rationally attempts to deduce the malady that in barely 15 years has rendered Reagan-era conservatism all but unrecognizable.” — Bryan Burrough, The Washington Post Book World

The Conservative Soul is as engaging as it is provocative. . . . Brilliantly exposes the contradictions of the Republican Party. . . . Sullivan’s alienated eye allows him to probe fundamentalist Christian theology with impressive clarity. . . . Sullivan’s book should be read closely by liberals as well as conservatives.” — Jonathan Raban, The New York Review of Books

“An adept social commentator, Sullivan skewers errant nonsense. . . . The Conservative Soul will be a success. Sullivan is a lucid, intelligent writer...a genuine pleasure to read.” — Commonweal

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper; First Edition (October 10, 2006)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0060188774
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0060188771
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.18 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.09 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 out of 5 stars 138

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Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
138 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2006
Andrew Sullivan was born in 1964 and grew up in Britain during the Thatcher years. The conservatism of this period meant low taxes, less government intrusion, more individual freedom, a robust market economy, and a strong anti-communism. Being gay and Catholic, this philosophy seemed to be agree with his outlook on life. After graduating from Oxford, he came to the United States where he picked up his doctorate at Harvard and became editor of the "The New Republic" at age 27. Sullivan has always been a conservative in principle but not always as a Republican; he voted for John Kerry in 2004. This book is about how far the current Republican party has drifted from conservative principles.

The conservatism that he remembers - this book is a philosophical memoir -from the Thatcher years is no longer recognizable in the policies of the present-day Republican Party, neither in Congress nor at the White House. The GOP is now the party of deficit spending, big government, bribery, corruption, sex scandals, foreign wars, nation building, and more federal involvement in healthcare and education. The direction of the Republican Party has alienated many of the traditional conservatives that I have previously reviewed in this space such as Kevin Phillips and Francis Fukuyama. Even though Sullivan supported the war in Iraq, he now feels that it has become something he can no longer support.

Sullivan argues that the conservative movement - if you can call it that - has been hijacked by religious fundamentalists. When I reviewed Kevin Phillips' "American Theocracy," I felt that Philips was overstating the threat of fundamentalism. I thought fundamentalists were pandered to during election years and forgotten in between. However, after reading this book, I can see how the fundamentalist mindset has taken hold and is leading this country in the wrong direction.

The category of fundamentalism, as Sullivan uses the term, is a very broad one. A fundamentalist is someone who sees only one truth - his or her own - and will not tolerate any dissent or political pluralism. With this definition he lumps together Communists, Nazis, Islamic jihadists as well as extremist Jews and Christians. Religious fundamentalists reject not only liberal democracy but the very notion that religion should be relegated to the private sphere. Admittedly there are many shades of extremism, but this is the virus that is now afflicting the Republican Party.

In this book Sullivan argues for a more modest and temperate brand of conservatism, one that is more open-minded, sceptical, and tolerant of political diversity. This conservatism of doubt borrows heavily from Michael Oakeshott, a British Philosopher who was the subject of Sullivan's doctoral dissertation at Harvard. According to Sullivan, "the defining characteristic of the conservative is that he knows what he doesn't know." (Not to be mistaken with Rumsfeld's known unknowns, they were empirical unknowns rather than metaphysical.) Think of the conservatism of William F Buckley or George F Will, both of whom feel very secure in what they don't know. Conservatives don't know what change or reform will bring so they are against it. (To "stand athwart history" as Buckley would say.) A conservatism of doubt believes that there are few things the government can correctly, therefore things are better left to the private sphere. Minding one's own business, is a very modest philosophy.

With the results of the midterm elections, I think the Republican Party will rediscover the modesty and the open-mindedness that Sullivan is arguing for. I hope that the Democrats also retain some of these values that they should have learned during their 12 years in the wilderness. So far they are not yet your parents' Democrats.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2020
I very much enjoyed this work of political philosophy despite not agreeing with all of Sullivan's analysis. He sets out to explain the core philosophy of a conservative's intellectual toolkit. He starts the book by explaining how the sense of loss and the pain it causes are at the heart of a conservative's world view. He goes on to examine and explain how the great conservative philosophers of the past - Hobbes, Montaigne, Burke, Oakeshott, Leo Strauss - have dealt with this ineluctable fact of existence and developed a coherent and powerful set of ideas that can be used as a starting point for facing the ceaselessly dynamic and contingent world in which we live.

Sullivan is at his best when explaining why these ideas have such power and vitality and specifically why they have found such a direct expression in the creation and historical development of the United States of America.

As readers of The Dish will know Sullivan is an expert rhetorician and a highly-skilled advocate of this view of conservatism. What they may not appreciate is the depth of the philosophical well from which he has drawn and the extent to which he has learned from conservative thinkers of the past before developing and applying their ideas to our current political situation. The strength of the position he outlines is that it is flexible and humble in the face of new policy questions and challenges, it does not pretend to have instant answers from either divine revelation or an ideological recipe book. Precisely because it is flexible it can free human creativity to find new solutions.

The passage with which I most heartily agreed was:
"The real leaders of a free society are not its politicians. They are its artists and laborers, scientists and teachers, bloggers and social workers, sportsmen and movie directors, day traders and research students, architects and farmers, waiters and comedians."

My only complaint about that statement was that he did not include writers, of which Mr Sullivan is himself a most worthy and shining example.
14 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on March 4, 2015
In The Conservative Soul, Andrew Sullivan lays out his definition of a conservative in the classic, almost old-fashioned sense of the word, and how it differs from the radical fundamentalism that passes for "conservatism" in American politics today.

He begins with an exploration of fundamentalism: its reliance on certainty of belief, rigid enforcement of rules, and the notion of the State as a force for pushing its citizens in an allegedly ideal direction. He then pivots to conservatism and its defining characteristics as he sees them: curiosity, doubt, skepticism, acceptance of human fallibility, and the notion of the State as minimalist guarantor of security and the individual citizen's ability to pursue his or her own happiness.

All of this is laid out understandably to the lay reader and convincingly to the skeptical reader (including this liberal). Sullivan takes what could be an esoteric exercise in definitions and terms and makes it enjoyable and down-to-earth, with the deeply-felt humanity that his longtime readers have come to expect.

Andrew Sullivan has long been one of my favorite writers, and since I began reading his blog in 2009, he has had an outsized influence on my political philosophy. The Conservative Soul represents the type of long-form expression he intends to return to after years of sharing his thoughts in bits and pieces. If his future books and articles are anything like this one, they will be worth waiting for.
13 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Joseph Myren
5.0 out of 5 stars AWESOME
Reviewed in Canada on July 1, 2023
AWESOME
Joseph Parkinson
5.0 out of 5 stars Must read.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 25, 2012
Excellent book, a must read for all conservatives. Sullivan brilliantly outlines how the conservative movement has gone wrong and how it can redefine itself in the 21st century.
rotney oshea
3.0 out of 5 stars Sensible
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 25, 2020
Great book. Arrived in time and no problems
dgyvon
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in Canada on February 10, 2018
Excellent