Andrew Sullivan and The Conservative Soul

There are days when I want to bury myself in escapist television and watch adventure movies or cops and robbers. This Sunday past would have been such a day except I looked at what my husband was watching. He, geek that he is (I am a nerd, and proud of it) watches Book TV C-SPAN each weekend. Now I have to add the book The Conservative Soul by Andrew Sullivan to my Read This Now list.

On this day I found myself listening to the words of Andrew Sullivan as he spoke about the need for doubt in religion and in government. What I heard was an excellent statement of the use of doubt (a meme) in fostering a personal examination of faith; in guarding the limits on governmental power so important to a democracy; and in the necessity of not blindly accepting someone’s claim to know THE ANSWER or THE TRUTH, since –he seemed to implying or at least I think that--these are unknowable and each must seek the knowledge in his own way and thereby guard the honesty of the search. He did not use these words. His message was much more eloquent and meaningful. But now, the meme of necessary doubt is richer for me.

I tried to access the show for links or for viewing. These are the links to C-SPAN and information about the show that you can use to discover this talk for yourself.

http://www.booktv.org Basic link for the Book TV shows. Here you can get schedules and view the archives.
http://www.booktv.org/Feature/index.asp?segID=7124&schedID=422 Show featuring Anderson. The show: 2006 Book Expo America-Saturday Coverage originally broadcast at 8:00 am EST on May 20, 2006. This show presented a panel discussion after the talks by Anderson with Pat Buchanan, Frank Rich, Arianna Huffington and Lynn Shearr (spelling? I was not quick enough to catch her name!) The discussion was thought provoking and ranged from the War in Iraq to the artificiality of the Red vs. Blue States dichotomy to the culture wars of America as understood by the Babyboomers and by the newer generations.
http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish The blog of Andrew Sullivan. In a visit to this blog I found at least two postings that were part of a dialogue related to the talk on Book TV mentioned in this posting
o http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/05/islamists_chris.html
o http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/05/email_of_the_da_8.html

I emailed Mr. Sullivan and asked for a link to a copy of his talk that I could post. When I get it, I will add it to this blog. Watch for it. He will make you think as much as William Raspberry of Gannet News does.

Watch for his articles in Time Magazine, too. I will from now on. (At home, we get The Week; guess I will need to start a subscription to Time.)

Tags: religion, Andrew Sullivan, The Conservative Soul, religion and government