As most of my readers are aware I have been a longtime reader of Andrew Sullivan’s blog which I consider to be one of the best blogs around, consistently over a period of almost seven years. There have been very awkward moments for sure. I recall the discovery of some rusty gas grenades in a cave in Iraq which Sullivan considered sufficient enough evidence to invade and depose Saddam and, at the opposite end of the spectrum, his endorsement of John Kerry, a man who under normal circumstances would not be worthy of even the fainted praise from Sully’s corner. Yet, Sullivan has always been prone to indulge in over-excitement, something no doubt exacerbated by a medium - the blogosphere – that thrives on extremes, taking unusual positions or bringing spectacular news. Looking at my own stat counters believe me I know that measured analysis doesn’t drive big traffic numbers.

Having read The Conservative Soul it occurs to me that Sullivan had set himself the task of vindicating some of these opinion swings while casting them in a very worthwhile analysis of how fundamentalism – especially the Christian variety – is a resurgent and deeply dangerous force in times of rapid change. From that perspective I think he has succeeded, not only does the reader get an instructive crash course in fundamentalism and the inherent dangers of any form of dogmatic thinking, Sullivan convincingly argues how we can change, alter and nuance our positions over time if we manage to keep dogma at bay. It is something he has admirably done so at a time when most commentators on the right – Sullivan’s ideological home - persisted in ignoring some of the more disastrous aspects of George Bush’s tenure in the White House. And the book therefore should be required reading for those conservatives who have taken their political faith to mean relentless advocacy of a cause that deserved constructive criticism rather than mindless hyperbole in support.

The reader should also note that the rejection of science in favor of dogma is not strictly limited to religion. Only last night at the Academy Award ceremonies a jubilant Al Gore declared global warming to be a “moral issue” and thus put it outside the realm of debate, discussion and further inquiry. Remember that not too long ago we loooked at how environmentalism can be seen as a new form of religion.

The problem with the book is that however well crafted, it does not answer the basic questions raised in the subtitle about how to get back that conservative soul we seem to have lost. Sullivan is great at diagnosing the problems created by the current conservative movement – going to Mars while failing to protect US borders - and more specifically in highlighting how divided America has become in a time of war. Yet it remains unclear who will recapture that conservative soul (Democrats or Republicans?) and, more importantly, how to go about it:

“ When such a country was unexpectedly thrown into war, it could find no stable center over which to unite,. Hence the acidic nature of our current politics – and the poisonous divisions in a country that desperately needs to remain united ”

If indeed social and economic change fuels fundamentalist thinking than it is tempting to put a blue label on those that accelerate change and a red one on those that opt for dogma. That is probably an exaggeration, the reality is more fluid as we see in the case of ‘blue’ environmentalists, but we are definitely in divergent territory and the first installments of the 2008 election are far from encouraging here. If you’re Republican you will have no option but to please the socially conservative base, while any centrist tendencies on the Democratic side are it seems punishable by the hand of David Geffen. As such, I fear that the conservative soul will remain an orphan for some time to come and the book offers no real roadmap for finding it a suitable home.

What also remained somewhat murky - one of my favorite items - is how the West’s spine in dealing with external threats can be salvaged by a mentality that - for Christians and seculars alike – is more driven by the pursuit of happiness than fighting off the barbarians at the door. Sullivan is ambiguous here I think. On the one hand he enthusiastically exclaims that the ‘pursuit’ is one of the most radical political statements ever, true, but at the same time he laments (on page 224-225) how the inevitable excess of that pursuit leads to a worldliness that finds its religious rival in fundamentalism. In other words: we are either fundamentalist zealots or hedonist pleasure seekers, and both attitudes divide us and somehow make us unfit to face outside challenges. Yet the middle road, the spiritually anchored conservative doubter remains an elusive point. And with that we are in troubled waters, both in facing outside threats and in maintaining a viable, stable and free western world.

Sullivan has succeeded in revealing the fundamentalist mindset and anyone doubting that the Christian version is more benevolent than the Muslim one - a recurring theme on many right-wing blogs - should be forced to read this book. At the same time he has handed us a few building blocks to retrieve a philosophy that should help us recapture the conservatism as espoused by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. It is a sad state of affairs that in a time when the legacy of these two great politicians has relegated the old left to the sidelines and we are better than ever positioned to build truly free societies, we may risk losing it all to dark and powerful forces at home and abroad. The conservative soul needs a home and Sullivan needs to write a sequel to further explore these crucial themes.

One of the core themes in all my writings about the Theo van Gogh murder has been that the mainstream media in most of the world was not well equipped to understand the complexities of Dutch society and the peculiar dynamics that led up to Theo’s murder two years ago this week. It requires knowledge and context and only now are journalistic efforts about the Dutch and their immigration woes starting to acknowledge that. The boilerplate “the Dutch were tolerant, immigrants Muslims moved in, a murder happened, and now tolerance is over and the Dutch have turned right” is not an adequate way to analyze the deep social and political rifts that have captured the small nation. For that you need someone with a deeper understanding of the situation and in Ian Buruma, a Dutch-English writer who spent most of his adult life away from The Netherlands, have we found someone who could probably be trusted with the task to write a book about the Van Gogh murder. His Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance is the result, and it is an excellent and riveting read.

Buruma doesn’t disappoint, putting even a mixture of shame and recognition on my face when he writes that the Dutch are a little too complacent, too smug, something that turns into absolute panic and manifest surprise when that feeling of smugness is challenged by the outside world. The best example of which is their national sport, soccer, where the Dutch have an ingrained sense that they’re the best but when they lose they scream out, “How come? We were the best!”. And this of course applies equally to the unfolding immigration farce and the ensuing murder which ended the much vaunted Dutch idyll. "Did we really deserve this? How come, we tried to be so nice, can anyone possibly explain this?" It is this lack of understanding and failure to accept basic realities as they are, which constitute a terrible default in the Dutch character and Buruma addresses it head on.

And not only that. He digs deep into the Dutch psyche, most notably the contentious relationship the present Dutch have with their chequered past role during World War II, which is a recurring theme around which much of the narrative is built. It is vital in understanding why immigrants have been treated the way they have and it is equally forceful in revealing how references to those years can have a devastating impact on the present day political debate. Buruma no doubt delves into his own vault of youthful experiences, but updates them with interviews, meetings and site visits during his stay in The Netherlands and so turns his book into a fairly comprehensive socio-political case study. From that perspective it would have been nice to have a thicker volume than the 265 pages that we eventually got, but in the end the book needs to be pumped into a mass marketing channel too I guess.

There has been a fair bit of criticism for Buruma, most notably that he failed to take a clear moral stance and was not sufficiently judgmental in taking sides in the conflict between free societies and nascent Islamism. To be frank, I was relieved to for once have a book in my hands that did not do that. Buruma is clear enough in what he thinks about jihadism, and instead gives us equal access to the Dutch and Moroccan cultures, and more specifically to Theo van Gogh’s life and Mohammed Bouyeri’s life. The only point where I do part ways with Buruma is his less than generous description of Pim Fortuyn whom he describes as 'pandering in nostalgia', even going as far as comparing the murdered professor-politician to the late Princess Diana. It’s a criticism often heard from those that do not entirely accept the intellectual underpinnings of Fortuyn’s political platform. The back to basics part is often mistakenly interpreted as a desperate “please take us back to the 1950s” call.

But the events that triggered Van Gogh’s murder are well-described. The total religious-cultural separation and potential for disaster, become very clear when Van Gogh and friends had organized a debate with the European-Arab League, led by Abou Jahjah. The latter refused to debate when he learned that Van Gogh was to be the moderator and walked out of the studio with his bodyguards. A debate followed outside the studio where young Moroccans shouted insults to Van Gogh who brushed them off with the usual crass Dutch humor along the lines of “if Allah protects you, why do you need bodyguards?”. It prompted one of his friends to say “It was then, that I realized how deeply they hated him. For us, it was just a game, a debating game. For them it was deadly serious”

That in a nutshell describes the incredible distance that even Theo van Gogh never fully understood. In a way he made exactly the same mistake as his fellow countrymen that were diametrically opposed to him when it came to dealing with immigrants. They advocated respect, political correctness and a far different approach to the issue, but they also failed to see that the mechanics of the debate were never about economics or culture. It was religion and a pretty stern and narrow approach to that, something the increasingly secular Dutch had long forgotten.

In the end of the book Buruma tries to explore ways where tolerance could neutralize the perils of radical Islam and hopes that religion can ultimately become the subject of reasoned debate, even for Muslims. This quote from the writer makes it clear where the boundaries between the Koran and fundamentalism are:

“Revolutionary Islam is linked to the Koran, to be sure, just as Stalinism and Maoism were linked to Das Kapital, but to explain the horrors of China’s man made famines or the Soviet Gulag solely by inviting the writings of Karl Marx would be to miss the main point”

Yes, correct, but this conclusion can also be explained in another direction by arguing that however well-meaning the basic tenets of Islam are, they have the potential to be turned around into a deadly totalitarian ideology. Theo van Gogh in his own distinctive way was not given to this type of socio-political analysis, but instinctively understood the dangers of history in the making. Yet at the heart he remained a Dutchman, a little too complacent and somewhat oblivious of the immediate perils. One can only imagine the panic he must have felt when he was butchered to death on an Amsterdam street.

Others Reviewing
Claire Berlinski - Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world in the Globe and Mail
Bruce Bawer – When Worlds Collide in The Boston Globe
Eric Weinberger – The Perils of Going Dutch for the Wilson Quarterly
Theodore Dalrymple - The Avant-Garde of the Apocalypse in City Journal
Brendan Kiley - Bicycle Drive-Bys in The Stranger
Matt Steinglass - Murder in Amsterdam in Salon
And our friend Tigerhawk, who is still reading the book