Welcome. This is Anastasia Yuglova bringing you the Cato Daily Podcast.

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Yesterday, the Cato Institute hosted a forum on Andrew Sullivan's new book,

The Conservative Soul, How We Lost It, How to Get It Back.

The Book explores how the influence of the religious right has affected political discourse

and the conservative movement in America.

Here to discuss that book is New York Times Colonist David Brooks, a commentator at yesterday's book forum.

What did you think of Andrew Sullivan's book?

I guess I thought it was a strong book the way all of Andrew's stuff is.

I wake up every morning, he's the first human contact I have. I turn

onto his blog every morning, so I consider him a traveling companion as we've moved

from Iraq to the future. So I feel this emotional bond with Andrew and the book didn't

disappoint me in any way. I disagree with it though in a couple respects. The

first is he locates the central problem with the Republican Party and with

conservatism as fundamentalism.

And he describes sort of worldwide spread of fundamentalism, whether it's Islamic or Christian.

And I just don't think that's the essential problem.

I think he takes a few quotations from people like Jerry Falwell and

Pat Robertson and tries to use it to describe the Republican Party and I think those figures are

completely unrepresentative of religious conservatives and of the party as a whole.

To me the biggest problem we've had now has been the way the war has been

...