What remains of the Breitbart emporium is releasing snippets from Jonah Goldberg's new book. One of the recent ones takes aim at yours truly:
It’s all very well and good to decry certainty and extol empiricism, but it’s quite another to live by such values. The reality is that Sullivan is using the Trojan Horse of conservative empiricism to deliver an army of theoretical, theological, and ideological certainties fighting under the banner of humility and doubt. Boiled down, Sullivan’s crusade amounts to the exact same shtick I’ve been describing: Defend your own "way of looking at the world"—i.e., your Weltanschauung—as coolly pragmatic and empirical while describing your opponents’ as blindly and dangerously ideological. Those who disagree with the excitable Sullivan are immediately cast as ideologues, "Christianists," fundamentalists, bigots, and fools.
Sigh. I haven't read the book so cannot know what Goldberg means by my "theoretical, theological, and ideological certainties." I wish he'd name one. Just one. It would turn an insult into an argument. Maybe he can answer it on the Corner and help me out. Or would that mean a link to the Dish – not often allowed in that ideological fortress called NRO?
A response to the broad dismissal nonetheless. I wrote my dissertation on the primacy of practical wisdom in human conduct – in contradistinction to ideology. My stand on marriage equality has been elucidated by clear, reasoned argument (it was reviewed in Goldberg's own National Review by the political philosopher Kenneth Minogue thus: "Sullivan has done for homosexuality what John Stuart Mill did for liberty"), has long supported a 
federalist, gradualist approach to the subject, and compiled an anthology that included many articles against it.
Yes, my view that torture is illegal is simply a fact, as it is also a fact that the techniques used by Cheney and Bush were and are torture as defined under a plain reading of domestic and international law. I'm in favor of a small solvent government, as a general principle, one that runs routine surpluses in good times and helps mitigate recessions by short term stimulus – again pragmatic support for limited government.
I'm prepared to back Democrats and Republicans in a prudential conservative belief that a successful polity needs two healthy parties and that collectivism and individualism are both integral parts of the Western tradition which is stronger for both of them. But my heart remains with individualism, if possible, depending on the circumstances (war and depressions would be exceptions).
Dish readers can judge for themselves whether this blog is about imposing "theoretical, theological, and ideological certainties" or whether it is about taking positions but always subjecting them to scrutiny, re-evaluation, re-thinking. As I have always understood conservatism, this is its essence.
And the fact remains that Goldberg's GOP – no tax increases can ever be contemplated; the Iraq War remains a success; torture isn't torture; religious doctrine dictates social policy; tax cuts always lead to growth; an abortion regime in place for decades should be ended overnight; all gay relationships should be barred from any legal protections in the federal constitution; there can be no accommodation with illegal immigrants who have lived here for decades or with their US-born children – is as rigid an ideology as one can imagine. It has become, in fact, a theology that remains eternally true regardless of circumstance or context or moment.
The Dish 