Complex Conservatism Complex

Andrew Sullivan, who's blog was one of the first that I began reading on a regular basis (not only for his insights, but for his ability to gather lots and lots of interesting things from all over the internet), has put up a little reflection on the things conflicting him right now. Think what you may of him (I know that his post-9/11 and pre-Iraq writings rub a lot of people, myself included, the wrong way; and I know he now rubs a lot of conservatives the wrong way) but he is one of the more open and honest operators out there, always serious about the positions he holds, and willing to be persuaded, whether by argument or by the unfolding of events.

I just wanted to note that I found his discourse below to be inspiring: its nice to see people openly confronting themselves and their beliefs, and addressing their lives and surroundings and beliefs critically.

As a conservative, English, Catholic, gay, HIV-positive man, I can only imagine that life must often be trying for him in these times:

Maybe this is adulthood finally arriving a little late: the knowledge that everything is flawed and you just need to get on with it. But a church perpetrating the rape and abuse of children through the power of its moral authority is not a flaw; it's a self-refutation. A movement betraying its core principles in office and then parading as a parody of purists is a form of anti-conservatism as I understand it. And a democratic country using torture to procure intelligence it can use to justify more torture, and prosecuting a war that never ends against an enemy that can never surrender: this, whatever else it is, is not America as its founders saw it. Again, it is a kind of self-refutation.

Where to go? What to do? You read me flounder every day; and you can find many less conflicted bloggers to read. Maybe I should take a break and live a less examined life for a while. Or maybe I should do what I am still doing: trying to make sense of where I belong, stay praying in a church that has sealed itself off from modernity, cling to a conservatism that begins to feel like a form of solipsism, hang on in the hope that America can reform itself and repair the world a little. I think, in fact, that this is obviously the right and only serious choice. Life is always a temporary and losing battle, an engagement with the deadliness of doing. It just feels deadlier than usual in these past few years of brutally unsentimental education.

Or maybe I should laugh more.

Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still.