The Conservative Soul: Fundamentalism, Freedom, and the Future of the Right

"What does it mean to be a conservative any more?" 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. In The Conservative Soul, Andrew Sullivan, one of the nation's leading political commentators, makes an impassioned call to rescue conservatism from the corruption of the Republican far right, which has become the first fundamentally religious political party in America. 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.