Sullivan's Myopic "Conservative Soul"

As Andrew Sullivan opts to lever his suburban NJ residency and related experience in his Washington Post piece today, I believe my living and working in that very same environment qualifies me to comment on why I believe Sullivan's view is as limited and deeply flawed as the DC GOP insider view against which he appears to rail.

I don't spend much time in Washington; maybe it's different down there. But let me tell you, out here in the wilds of the New Jersey suburbs, it is pure hell being a Republican these days, or a conservative, which used to be the same thing. The party I grew up in, which stood for fiscal discipline and strong defense and avoided the sloppiness and stained dresses of so many good-hearted Democratic administrations, seems to have been conquered by people who think stem-cell research is murder, who want to ban unpopular sex acts and who have proven incapable of managing such basic government tasks as disaster relief and a war.

What genuine, and not self, or sexual preference obsessed NJ conservatives desire is a return to a Reagan conservatism - true, as I have stated before, Reagan carried over sixty percent of NJ when running for his second term. But Sullivan's complaints are so far off the main stream mark, they're simply wishful thinking.

Certainly Katrina and Iraq are troubling, but the conservatives I know were far more angry at New Orleans residents milling about the streets, sometimes with guns, as opposed to doing anything constructive to honestly fend for themselves. We had severe flooding here in the NJ suburbs along the Delaware last year, I'm unaware of any shocking camera footage of huddled masses resorting to cannibalism because FEMA had somehow let them down.

And while no one would argue that Iraq isn't an incredibly difficult dilemma, the conservatives I know are more upset with the likes of Sullivan, who in cahoots with his employer, Time, has done more to derail our efforts in Iraq than they have ever done to help them along.

In the book's second half, Sullivan switches from anger to nostalgia, reaching back to remind us of the things that made Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher's brand of conservatism so appealing and so successful as a mode of governance. He traces the influence of fundamentalists to Bill Clinton's various personal deficiencies, which triggered a moral counterattack from Christian leaders who felt they knew something about morality. It's a good story, but Sullivan doesn't tell it with any narrative grace. Instead, he gnashes his teeth in frustration at the changes this period brought to conservatism.

For starters, after 12 years of Republican leadership, I'm unaware of any legitimate grass roots NJ conservatives concerned about their favorite sexual act or position being outlawed by a theocratic Washington, DC. The conservatives I know are far more concerned with how to raise their children when local high school dances have had to opt for a lights on policy as a result of the latest dance craze, called grinding, which wasn't always being done fully clothed in some high school gymnasiums.

And most conservatives haven't seen and don't anticipate the federal government doing a thing. It's a local issue, if one is actually conservative and the federal government has done nothing to suggest otherwise, except perhaps attempting to highlight the issue as a legitimate social concern. We find that to be far more positive than a White house that attempts to justify oral sex as something other than a sexual act, a fact that may or may not be linked to an increase in teen STD's.

That Sullivan purports to spy something akin to mass rejection of classic conservative Republican fiscal policy because he's ensconced in some suburb in New Jersey is little more than a rhetorical flourish and a wholly disingenuous one, at that. I might remind Sullivan that were he to get out of his head and walk around he'd discover that he is living in one of the most corrupt and fiscally irresponsible Blue states in America going more and more down the drain as a result of liberal fiscal policies. Yet, Sullivan's neighbors show an alarming tendency to re-elect Democrats in droves.

Why Sullivan can't cut to the chase and simply write a paragraph instead of a book is the real question. It's impossible to conclude other than that Sullivan's entire problem with conservatism boils down to his inability as a man to marry another man.

Lost on Sullivan is the reality that the majority of conservatives, and a good number of the Christian variety, too, couldn't care less about what Sullivan does or doesn't do in his bedroom. And their opposition to Gay marriage has absolutely nothing to do with any desire to discriminate against Gays. Along with it being a matter of States rights, many conservatives who have watched Liberals tear down every shred of American tradition they can get their legislative or judicial arms around, are more interested in protecting a treasured institution, then they are of keeping homosexuals down.

It is biology that dictates a man and a woman are two vastly different things and the concept of legal marriage only ordains that biological truth as a means of supporting the, not only procreative, but family-based nurturing process, long seen and increasingly understood as a means for civilized societies to sustain themselves while avoiding huge increases in the need for a welfare state and the spread of juvenile crime.

As Sullivan's real bitch seems to boil down to being a man-lover born into a man's body - something most conservatives, even religious ones, certainly don't see as a crime, perhaps he should take up his issue with whatever God it is he believes created him, as I doubt placing blame on some legislator is going to have any real effect.

And if there is no room for a concept of a self-defined God or higher power in Sullivan's interpretation of Reagan conservatism, then perhaps it didn't really penetrate to whatever New Jersey suburban community in which Sullivan has chosen to reside. At best, it certainly never penetrated into Sullivan's all too elitist and myopic mind, the one he evidently probed to produce a silly introduction to a book likely to be every bit as irrelevant to conservatism of the functional variety as Sullivan's increasingly Liberal blog prose.

Everyone deserves to at least be Queen for a Day, unfortunately for Sullivan, it seems his days as a serious conservative voice have passed. The Queen is dead ... long live the Queen.

Comments

[Terrye]

I remember Ronald Reagan and despite what Sullivan may believe, Reagan was not a fiscal conservative and so far as I know he did not champion gay marriage. In fact back in those days it would have been considered sheer luncay to even discuss it.

[anonymous]

It is possible that Mr. Reagan intended to be fiscally conservative, but then just forgot. Not surprising though when you have trouble remembering your name.