I finished the book yesterday. I was surprised at how similar our philosophies were; after living in Europe it's hard to imagine there might actually be people I could agree with :)

Andrew Sullivan's discussion of the fundamentalist mind-set was refreshing to read. It's helped me internalize how to better understand the viewpoint and that's not easy since it is very far from my own mental framework.

His viewpoint on Ronald Reagan was also fascinating. I was very young when Reagan was president, so I lacked the political engagement during that time that Andrew obviously had. Reagan to me was primarily of 'Iran-Contra' fame, which disturbed me greatly for the proceedings contempt of Congress, and by extension the people. Nixon and Reagan created the 'conservative' tendencies in myself not to trust the government by showing how it can fail us. I loved reading both Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand but always felt more comfortable around Democrats as the lesser evil; I'd rather have a government that taxes me and wastes it on unions than one that wastes it on war.

I think that's why I was wary of the weapons of mass destruction argument. I can't claim to have 'known' it to be false of course, but I was not surprised when the PowerPoint deck turned out to be a scam. BTW- Andrew states that no intelligence agency doubted the US's claims that Iraq had WMD. But I do remember a quote from an Eastern European intelligence officer (Czech maybe?) that pretty much said the claims were B.S. That's far from proving that an intelligence agency as a whole knew the evidence to be bogus, but my working theory is that some agencies did not believe the US story. It was not, however, in their best interest to oppose the US position, so they kept quiet. I tried to do some digging and find that quote on the net but was unable to do so.

I've always held high respect for the 'conservative' temperament, both because I considered myself to have one :) and because I strongly feel it's the 'conservative' temperament that has made America great. It's kept the growth of government in check, etc. Andrew does a much better job than I ever could of describing it's value in his discussion of the founding fathers. His writing has however raised my respect for 'Republicans'. Before, I never had a clear connection between 'Republican' and Andrew's use of the term 'conservative'. Republicanism has always had a Machiavellian angle to it in my mind. If the Republican soul was at some point in history a 'conservative' one, it is a great loss for the country if that is no longer the case. It's definitely worth fighting to gain back.

Which leads me to the last point that struck me about the book: I did not feel it was complete. Where will current trends likely lead? What political science drives conservatism? I expected a chapter showing how the forces of fundamentalism will always steadily increase until there is a breaking point. The increase is from the strength of faith and certainty that a 'conservatism of doubt' will of course never possess. The breaking point is when fundamentalism goes too far and causes collapse, i.e. USSR. Is the Iraq blunder enough to wake up and mobilize the country against the fundamentalist mind-set or must things get much worse before they can get any better? Perhaps the steady increase and breaking point theory is too naive; regardless I expected Andrew to propose his own political theory on this point.