The Dish

The NRO-Politburo attempt to get various comrades back on message, despite some neocons blurting out the truth of what they actually believe, makes for fascinating reading. Some – Eliot Cohen – come off fine. Frum is just beyond incoherent. But Perle is making an argument that does indeed get to the heart of what neoconservatism has become. Here’s Perle:

Vanity Fair has rushed to publish a few sound bites from a lengthy discussion with David Rose. Concerned that anything I might say could be used to influence the public debate on Iraq just prior to Tuesday’s election, I had been promised that my remarks would not be published before the election.

I should have known better than to trust the editors at Vanity Fair who lied to me and to others who spoke with Mr. Rose. Moreover, in condensing and characterizing my views for their own partisan political purposes, they have distorted my opinion about the situation in Iraq and what I believe to be in the best interest of our country.

He says he now believes that the Great Leader is essential to the next Glorious Five Year Plan for Iraq. He sounds like that dude shot in the face by Cheney, who subsequently apologized for getting in the way.

There’s one thing to say here. Perle says he is

concerned that anything I might say could be used to influence the public debate on Iraq just prior to Tuesday’s election.

Say what again? Perle is supposed to be a thinker, and a patriot. Why on earth would an intellectually honest person not make sure that their real views are aired on a critical matter before an election? Isn’t that the point? They were more disciplined in 2004. Almost all the neocons I knew conceded privately that Iraq was FUBAR. But most decided to attack Kerry rather than tell the truth.

An intellectual movement that has become this intellectually dishonest deserves to die.

There is a third way: spiritual and religious humility. Here’s my case for it, an excerpt/abridgment from "The Conservative Soul" in Time magazine. If you’re interested in reading this case made at greater length and depth, it’s the core argument of my new book.

A reader writes:

I wanted to share two short stories about Hard Core Republicans who are in the same boat as you.

1) My Aunt and Uncle are Bill and Lois Shepard. They are best known as the husband and wife team that ran for Governor and LT Governor in Maryland in 1992. Yes they lost but they did run as Republicans and long have they espoused the Conservative positions. She was a Reagan apointeee as Director of Museum Affairs, he was in the Foreign Service in the 70’s and 80’s as diplomat. She was even Chairwomen of Republicans Abroad. They consider the Cheneys to be close personal friends. So I see them a month ago at a family function and they are both so disgusted with the Republicans and Bush they are actually voting against Steele in Maryland! He has written several editorials and letters to the Harvard Law Alumni lambasting them for not taking a position against Bush’s policies that are clearly unconstitutional. To listen to them go on and on you would think they were my San Francisco cousins not my Washington ones.

2) My Stepfather is very rich. He has thank you letters from every Republican Presidential candidate since Goldwater thanking him for his donations. Huge Reagan man, he even has one of those letters from George W from 2000. He now has one from John Kerry. I was shocked when he showed it to me. He said he is still a true Republican and when the true Republicans show up again, he will start sending them money again. So don’t worry. You are certainly not the only Republican that wonders what the heck happened to there party!

There’s a new poll from South Dakota, ground central for the Christianist attempt to criminalize all abortion. It’s another state constitutional amendment that would not just ban civil marriage rights for gay couples, but also domestic partnerships and civil unions, and any legal rights for gay couples. And the news is: it’s too close to call. In South Dakota. The extremism of the anti-gay measures is beginning to sink in with fair-minded people, who may balk at marriage but don’t want to see gay couples stripped of all legal rights. But that’s what most of these amendments do – and were designed to do. People may be finally waking up. Let’s hope it’s not too late in Virginia either.

My jaw is still on the floor after reading this, because it is not fom the Onion, it is from a blog by an evangelical pastor, Mark Driscoll, trying to draw some conclusions from the Haggard affair. One of his conclusions is this:

Most pastors I know do not have satisfying, free, sexual conversations and liberties with their wives. At the risk of being even more widely despised than I currently am, I will lean over the plate and take one for the team on this. It is not uncommon to meet pastors’ wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness. A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband’s sin, but she may not be helping him either.

Beyond belief. But this is the patriarchal voice of Christianism speaking. And now we are hearing what it says in private. If you like this kind of value system, you know how to empower them still further next Tuesday.

Here’s a typical email response:

Thank you so much for the link to Frum’s NRO piece. I think this editorial in the leading conservative political magazine in the country by one of the most influential Republican strategists, David Frum, speaks volumes about the conservative view on sexuality. I’m neither gay nor a man and reading this made me literally sick to my stomach. I can’t imagine what you must feel.

Well, he’s no Ben Cohen, but a reader vents:

Sexy? Doesn’t even come close. I’d do terrible, terrible things to him if he’d let me.

In fact, I often fantasize about buying some meth from him, throwing it away, then having a completely non-sexual, you know, just two guys hangin’ in a hotel room, naked, ‘just bein’ guys’ kind-a evening, during which we might occasionally give each other a hot-oil rubdown or two, in the most manly and hetero way, of course. In my fantasy, sometimes I mount his naked body and ride him around the hotel room, but not in a gay way ‚Äì in a ‘just two guys completely confident in their masculinity’ way. I have to admit, last weekend I actually bought some meth and threw it away while watching old Ali G episodes. Naked. Does that make me gay?

Nah: just a Republican staying the course.

Wally Olson writes:

If you went looking for some one to write a systematic or impartial account of the conflicts that are pushing America’s conservative movement toward breakup, just about the last author you’d pick for the job would be Andrew Sullivan.

The British-born commentator’s new book, like all his work, is engaged, quirky and personal, the view of a gifted outsider who can’t go for long without circling back to gay issues. Yet "The Conservative Soul" will still resonate as one of the year’s key political books, a free-associating literary polemic that well complements "The Elephant in the Room," the recent book by New York Post contributor Ryan Sager.

Olson goes on to complain about my conflation of many different strands of religious certainty into a monolithic bloc called "fundamentalism." I think his criticism is a fair one, and it is a refrain among several reviewers. Here’s all I’d say in response: you’re right. Two defenses. The book is really a series of essays, like my last two books. It’s not history as such, although it’s full of history. It’s not even political philosophy or theology as such although it is also saturated by both. It’s an essay, i.e. an objective argument informed by subjective experience. I think it’s the most honest way of writing, which is why I love Orwell’s and Montaigne’s and Oakeshott’s essays so much.

The central theme in the essay is a journey from the polarity of complete certainty to the polarity of total skepticism (and then a few steps backward). That’s what I believe is the deepest tension of our time: not right and left any more, but certainty versus doubt. And so I deal with different shades of fundamentalism – and different hues and idioms and expressions of fundamentalism – all under the rubric of the total certainty that is so prevalent in the world right now. I use the Bush administration (and some of my own mistakes and life-story) as a "crucible" for such certainty. And then I try to imagine a conservatism rooted in its opposite – and make a case for why doubt itself is the real key to traditional conservatism, a doubt that leads to individual liberty, especially of conscience and thought.

As I say in the prologue, this is a huge amount to deal with in around 300 pages.

I have bitten off a great deal – probably far too much… It is both alarming and humbling to try and state your beliefs so baldly in one place – and everywhere I look in the text I see further complications and nuances that I want to add or subtract. But there are times when it’s helpful to pull your thoughts together, set them down as clearly as you can, draw a line beneath it, and let the readers take the arguments where they want. Think of this book, then, as an opening bid in a conversation, rather than the final summation of a doctrine.

You can think of this as a lame excuse for not providing The Definitive Account of What To Do Now, or an inadequate description of as vast a subject as religious faith or political thought. I think that’s a fair critique. Or you can take it for what it is: just one argument – idiosyncratic, personal, but passionate and reasonable – about what conservatism can mean in the future. I am grateful to Wally for continuing the conversation. I have a feeling it’s just begun in earnest.

Yes, we’re that meta already. It’s the classic from the British TV series, "The Office," as former office manager David Brent spends his severance money on making a music video. The Buddha is a nice touch.

Morristown, New Jersey, 1 pm.