Andrew Sullivan has become a litmus test to differentiate between true conservatives and the reactionaries of the religious right who have taken control of the GOP. Sullivan is a conservative on the issues which mattered in the past, but his opposition to the religious right results in many conservatives now mislabeling him a liberal. He may get the last laugh this November when there is the possibility the Republicans may lose the religious vote due to the immorality of their office holders, while simultaneously losing the support of socially moderate and liberal Republicans such as the Starbucks Republicans due to the Republican pandering to the religious right. Sullivan get his word in on the subject in The Conservative Soul, reviewed in The Washington Post.
Reviewer Byran Burrough is sympathetic to Sullivan’s position and echos several posts here on the loss of Republican support in the suburbs. He writes, “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.” Sullivan identifies religious fundamentalism as the problem:
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.
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.
And lemme tell ya, it has been my joy and privilage to live and work under the thumb of these people. I have no doubt they’d wear turbans and burkhas if Mel Gibson told them to. Well, maybe if Mel AND Rove told them too. 🙂
Okay, enough inane ramblings from me. Thanks again to Ron for the broadview(s) content which makes reading Liberal Values such a rich experience.