Crisis of Faith

A pretty perceptive piece by Andrew Sullivan about what I have been feeling as of late regarding the GOP. Sullivan creates a new dichotomoy for discussion- conservatives of faith and conservatives of doubt. The intro:

Conservatism isn’t over. But it has rarely been as confused. Today’s conservatives support limited government. But they believe the federal government can intervene in a state court’s decisions in a single family’s struggle over life and death. They believe in restraining government spending. But they have increased such spending by a mind-boggling 33 percent in a mere four years. They believe in self-reliance. But they have just passed the most expensive new entitlement since the heyday of Great Society liberalism: the Medicare prescription-drug benefit. They believe that foreign policy is about the pursuit of national interest and that the military should be used only to fight and win wars. Yet they have embarked on an extraordinarily ambitious program of military-led nation-building in the Middle East. They believe in states’ rights, but they want to amend the Constitution to forbid any state from allowing civil marriage or equivalent civil unions for gay couples. They believe in free trade. But they have imposed tariffs on a number of industries, most famously steel. They believe in balanced budgets. But they have abandoned fiscal discipline and added a cool trillion dollars to the national debt in one presidential term.

On Conservatives of faith:

This conservatism states conservative principles–and, indeed, eternal insights into the human condition–as a matter of truth. Because these conservatives believe that the individual is inseparable from her political community and civilization, there can be no government neutrality in promoting such truths. Either a government’s laws affirm virtue or they affirm vice. And the meaning of virtue and vice can be understood either by reflecting on the Judeo-Christian moral tradition or by inferring from philosophical understandings what human nature in its finest form should be. These truths are not culturally relative; they are universally valid.

The state, therefore, has a duty to protect, at a minimum, all human life, meaning it must regulate abortion and end-of-life decisions. The conservatism of faith sees nothing wrong with channeling $2 billion of public money to religious charities, as the Bush administration boasts; or with spending government money to promote sexual abstinence as a moral good; or with telling parents in government literature that a gay child may need therapy. Science must be hedged by faith, as the teaching of evolution is questioned and pharmacists are allowed to refuse prescriptions for contraception on religious grounds. And public education must have a moral component. As President Bush said in his first State of the Union, “Values are important, so we have tripled funding for character education to teach our children not only reading and writing, but right from wrong.” The “we” referred to here is the federal government. The alternative, in the eyes of faith-conservatives, would be to allow those with a different morality to promote a rival agenda. Since neutrality is impossible, conservative truths trump secular values.

Conservatives of Doubt:

The alternative philosophical tradition begins in precise opposition to the new conservatives’ confidence in faith and reason as direct, accessible routes to universal truth. The conservatism of doubt asks how anyone can be sure that his view of what is moral or good is actually true. Conservatives of doubt note that even the most dogmatic of institutions, such as the Catholic or Mormon churches, have changed their views over many centuries, and that, even within such institutions, there is considerable debate about difficult moral issues. They understand that significant critiques of human reason–Nietzsche, anyone?–have rendered the philosophical quest for self-evident truth even more precarious in the modern world. Such conservatives are not nihilists or devotees of what Pope Benedict XVI has called “the dictatorship of relativism.” They merely believe that the purported choice between moral absolutism and complete relativism, between God and moral anarchy, is a phony one. Their alternative is a skeptical, careful, prudential approach to all moral questions–and suspicion of anyone claiming to hold the absolute truth. Since such an approach rarely provides a simple answer persuasive to everyone within a democratic society, we live with moral and cultural pluralism.

For conservatives of faith, such pluralism can allow error to flourish–and immorality to become government policy–and therefore must be limited. A conservative of doubt, however, does not regard the existence of such pluralism as a problem. He sees it as an unavoidable fact of modernity, an invitation to lives that are more challenging and autonomous than in more traditional societies. Even when conservatives of doubt disagree with others’ moral convictions, they recognize that, in a free, pluralist society, those other views deserve a hearing. So a conservative who believes abortion is always immoral can reconcile herself to a polity in which abortion is still legal, if regulated. Putting government power unequivocally on the side of one view of morality–especially in extremely controversial areas–must always be balanced against the rights and views of citizens who dissent. And, precisely because complete government neutrality may be impossible on these issues, government should tread as lightly as possible. The key in areas of doubt is to do as little harm as possible. Which often means, with respect to government power, doing as little as possible.

Read the whole thing before you flame. I’ll let you figure out which one better describes me.