Sullivan's Ethically Suspect Foundations

Andrew Sullivan put up a long post yesterday lamenting the personal disappointment he has suffered in several of the institutions and movements in which he had placed his faith. These include the Catholic Church, with its homophobia and widespread cover ups of the sex abuse of children, the Republican Party and it's embrace of radical religious fundamentalism, George Bush and his use of torture, and conservatism in general. He can't become a liberal though, because he has no faith in the positive role that government can play, and he is wary of liberalism's collectivist tendencies, he says.

Andrew suffers from an inability to see what his failed institutions and movements have in common: flawed ethical underpinnings. Conservatism ignores calls for justice, as does the Catholic church and the Republican Party. Had Andrew spent more time with Plato instead of Burke and Oakeshott, perhaps he would not find himself "clinging to the wreckage" of all that he had previously embraced.