More on the conservatism of doubt

Andrew Sullivan's essay "Crisis of Faith", which introduced the new conservatism of doubt to the blogosphere, has now developed enough attention and commentary to merit it's own exclusive "debate" page at the The Daily Dish.

I'm also not the only one to notice that the conservatism of doubt is indistinguishable from liberalism.

Another paragraph from "Crisis of Faith" that illustrates its essential phoniness is this one:

Let me be rash and describe the fundamental divide within conservatism as a battle between two rival forms. The two forms I'm referring to are ideal types. I know very few conservatives who fit completely into one camp or the other; and these camps do not easily comport with the categories we have become used to deploying--categories like "libertarian," "social conservative," "paleoconservative," "fiscal conservative and social liberal," and so on. There is, I think, a deeper rift, and a more fundamental one.

Sullivan's essay is, by his own admission, a discussion of ideal types (which really seem more like moods to me) that he treats like the ideologies of real people even though he admits that practically nobody is represented solely by one or the other. And the reason his ideological catagorization fits practically nobody is because even the most doctrinaire contemporary conservatives are not moral absolutists about everything with tolerance for nothing. Practically everyone is certain about some things and doubtful about others, or intolerant on some issues and completely tolerant about other issues. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the conservative of faith/conservative of doubt dichtomy is completely false.