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I'm lucky to have among my friends a bunch of really interesting people, and one common thread I find is that they are *interested* in things: the arts, politics, science, religion, society — the world of ideas. These people remind me again and again that everything is important, and that to take every aspect of life seriously (without taking oneself too seriously) is part of what it means to be fully engaged.
For the longest time, I carried on wonderful, wide-ranging discussions with various ones of them, the whole time wishing we could somehow all do this together. So I set up this mailing list, and there you have it. A very low-volume but high-content set discussion about everything under the sun.
And the nicest thing about it is that so far it's been completely free of any of the pitfalls of newsgroups: the haggling, the easily-insulted insulters, the devolution into pointless rants. One of the few cases in which I hope it's true that one is known by the company one keeps.
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GOD AND GOVERNMENT
a discussion ignited by a David Horowitz article discussing incendiary remarks about homosexuals Trent Lott made on a talk show.
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SHAWN F WRITES:
Horowitz seems to think that religious language is inherently combative. Throughout the article he juxtaposes religiously neutral policymaking with the "language of religious warfare." A bit simplistic for a "thoughtful conservative." Religious convictions play a constitutive role not only in our public life, but in our political ethos. Even liberals employ religious language when it suits them (ever watch sessions of Congress?). So what if it's for rhetorical purposes? It's persuasive, and it appeals to many of their constituents.
At any rate, the most egregious blunders appear in the following passage:
"We are a pluralistic society. We
do not have an established state religion.
We are in fact composed of ethnic and
religious communities so diverse that in
other parts of the world, war is the normal
condition of their relations. Serbs and
Croats, Arabs and Jews, Christians and
Muslims co-exist in America, but elsewhere
are at each other's throats."
I should use this passage to demonstrate to my students what a non sequitur is. Pluralism is a fact about our *public* lives. I thought the issue was the role of religious conviction in *political* debate? These are two very different issues. Besides, it isn't obvious that social pluralism behooves us to relegate religious convictions to private conscience, as Horowitz seems to think. Religious beliefs are constitutive of traditions and communities. And those traditions and communities, in turn, form our public *and* political identities. To describe them as features of private lives is to trivialize them. To proscribe them from public debates is authoritarian. It also unmasks any presumption of neutrality. Here Horowitz is simply naive.
I think he unreflectively buys into Liberalism's most deleterious presumption: that we can find a morally, ethnically, and religiously neutral framework within which we as a culture can make political decisions.
Yet the result of this effort is anything but neutral. Even nonreligious critics of liberalism recognize this. What tends to happen is that Liberalism comes to embody an ethos of its own; substantive ethical and religious views (i.e., nonliberal views) are systematically precluded from the political conversations. The only sort of pluralism Liberalism can stomach is a plurality of liberals, that is, those who try to find political agreement apart from any ethical/religious tradition. What's so neutral about that? Any person whose political and social views have been shaped by a religious community simply cannot be a full participant in public debates about what our politcal culture ought to look like. In this way Liberalism is just as exclusive and contentious as Trent Lott's religious beliefs.
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BARRY WRITES:
The idea that one cannot employ one's religious beliefs in the political sphere is commonly held.
But he said that it's clear neither Lott nor Armey themselves meant their observations as political statements or policy agendas, but rather as professions of personal belief. So what he's saying is not that you shouldn't employ your beliefs, but rather that those who legislate public policy should be careful as they make public statements about private beliefs, and furthermore that those on the other side (in this case homosexuals) should be more perspicacious about exactly what it is they're attacking.
If Lott thinks that homosexuality (as well as Buddhism and adultery) is a sinful lifestyle that's one thing, but if he tries to pass laws in Congress based on the moral issue rather than the social one, he's in the wrong. Lying is sinful, but not illegal. Certain *forms* of lying (perjury, libel) are against the law, but for reasons distinctly other than their morality. For all the pontificating, murder is against the law not because of the sanctity of life, but rather because any civil society that allows murder will simply not survive as a civil society.
And on the other hand if gay activists oppose Lott's policies, it should be because those policies result in the deprivation of life, liberty, or property without the due process of law, rather than because they find his religious beliefs odious. There really *is* a line to be drawn between those beliefs and public policy.
Horowitz seems to think that religious language is inherently combative.
I'm not sure he thinks that — what he was saying was that the only way to *resolve* religious differences is with physical warfare; and the only disagreement I have with that is that even warfare doesn't resolve them. But there really *is* no way to resolve religious differences. All that dialogue does — the finest, most civil, thoughtful dialogue at that — is get everyone's opinion out there in its most persuasive form, for anyone to choose or reject. But when it comes to religious differences, the only choice is to say that we'll all live with them and that that's ok with me if it is with you.
That's exactly what the Protagonists did, for instance: a Baptist, a Catholic, and a Muslim — we often had major two-way disagreements (who was Abraham? who was Muhammad?) and three-way disagreements (what is the Bible? what does religious authority consist of?), but, importantly, our conversations were over coffee and pie at Earl Abel's, and stayed there. That's 2 things going on: first, that we didn't let our religious differences onto the bandstand, and, second, that we were able to commune to some extent. Often people's concept of 'open-mindedness' involves being 'non-judgmental' and promiscuously affirming. But I'd offer instead the image of 3 musicians, a Baptist, a Catholic, and a Muslim, arguing about and retaining their mutually exclusive beliefs, but still able to have coffee and pie together at Earl Abel's, and enjoy doing so — not to mention making music together.
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SHAWN F WRITES:
Lying is sinful, but not illegal. Certain *forms* of lying (perjury, libel) are against the law, but for reasons distinctly other than their morality. For all the pontificating, murder is against the law not because of the sanctity of life, but rather because any civil society that allows murder will simply not survive as a civil society.
The first statement is straightforward enough, but your gloss on it shows that matters are not so simple here. The sentiment behind the death penalty (which I no longer support) is hardly an inclination to protect the larger social order. No, there are strong moral intuitions involved here, as is much of our political life. Moreover, I think the distinction between what's legal and moral (as if what's moral is *just* a matter of private conscience) belies the fact that our political convictions are informed by moral traditions which are constitutive of our moral and political identities. The idea that matters of private conscience should not interfere with public policy has its roots in just such a tradition.
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BARRY WRITES:
The sentiment behind the death penalty (which I no longer support) is hardly an inclination to protect the larger social order. No, there are strong moral intiutions involved here, as is much of our poltical life.
well, that's why I'd use as my example the fact that murder is unlawful, rather than the existence of the death penalty. Quite a few people believe that the punitive religious language invoked to support the death penalty is misplaced, and (rightly, I think) ask for rationales for it that can be arrived at by reasoning about state and society rather than religious traditions that ultimately are based in revelation.
And of course we'd both agree that matters of private conscience *do* have a place in our public political discussions, but I'd say that that is so only insofar as they can also be supported in ways that others who *don't* share my beliefs can agree with. For instance, an instructive (if amusing) example is the often-cited spectacle of right-wing religious conservatives teaming up with radical feminists on the issue of pornography — the claim that it victimizes women is arrived at in very different ways, but they don't have to share the underlying view about what humans are and what we're here for; they only have to share the idea that pornography victimizes women, and produce rhetoric that is persuasive to voters and lawmakers.
So, religious conservatives can claim that abortion is wrong, something they've arrived at because their religious convictions lead them to reason that it's an abomination. However, their public discourse doesn't often (anymore) revolve around the religious idea of abomination, but rather humanistic reasoning about the value of human life — arrived at in their case by dint of their feelings about us as God's children, though presented publicly in terms that will be persuasive (hopefully) even to those who *don't* share those feelings.
So there's a situation where one's religious values definitely shape one's political thinking, where the moral and religious convictions of people most certainly inform their political stances, but certainly don't *interfere* with public policy.
On the other hand, we see people who, because of their religious convictions, advocate public prayers in schools, but are unable to convince others that those prayers are valuable, because belief that they are valuable rests on belief in their efficacy and appropriateness in a place where not all the affected citizens share the same ideas about religion and prayer.
I really *do* think that there are aspects of my faith that are matters of private conscience, and though these things may affect what thinking I'll have, they shouldn't govern my lawmaking. Rather, my lawmaking should be consistent with my private convictions while being defensible on grounds of the common social good.
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SHAWN F WRITES:
I appreciate your remarks concerning the consistency between religious convictions and social policy. John Rawls argues in his fairly recent book Political Liberalism that a public conception of justice ought to be one that can find support — and *justification* — within a variety of ethical/religious communities. So the reasons one has for accepting the normative principles that shape the social order will differ from someone else's. Rawls then thinks he's found a way to accept the diverse philosophical, ethical, and religious views as being publicly acceptable. Notice however that those views will be publicly acceptable *so long as* they underwrite an already existing political conception of justice. Those views have no political legtimacy *in their own right* Their value (from Rawls perspective) lies in their ability to bolster a liberal theory of justice. Seen this way, it still looks as if acceptable religious expression (in the public square anyway) is circumscribed by another doctrine.
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BARRY WRITES:
maybe — but that already existing political conception of justice is going to have certain features that are aligned with the major religions: a concern for the protection of its citizens, barriers against deprivation of property and so on. Naturally, the degree to which these features exist and the peculiar shape they take is going to differ not only from society to society but from age to age.
So it's perhaps a bit unfair to say that religiously informed views that can be persuasive outside the circle of one's fellow believers are valuable only in their ability to "bolster a liberal theory of justice," when actually — if those beliefs conform to reality in the sense that our old friend Lewis explores as the "Tao" in the "Abolition of Man" — it is our theories of justice that often conform to ancient and lasting ideas present in the major religious systems. Again, sometimes they don't line up, and sometimes they'll disagree outright, but nonetheless: a political stance that is shaped by a religious sensibility and is also persuasive to reasonable participants in public discourse who are outside that religious tradition is one that, rather than being circumscribed by the doctrine of modern liberalism, is at least arguably involved in the subsequent shape of modern liberalism's incarnation in public life.
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Meanwhile, in a spinoff discussion of law and its premises,
SEAN M WRITES:
The root question is "What is the aim of Government/Law?" There are several possible answers:
1. Maximize safety
2. Reflect the will of the masses
3. Reflect the will of God
4. Maximize liberty
Each of these is, to a greater or lesser degree, at odds with the others, and working toward any one of them will result in more distance from the alternatives.
The liberal approach seems to be closely tied in with Maximizing Safety. People shouldn't have to live with unpleasant consequences of their actions, even if the actions are stupid. The government is considered to be wiser than the people. Results: Motorcycle helmet laws, free condoms, needle exchange programs, indefinite and unrestricted welfare programs.
Our current system seems to, more than anything else, Reflect the Will of the People. Things are made legal or illegal according to the popular whim. What else can justify alcohol being legal but marajuana not? The two problems with this are that it ensures a constant tension among the citizens, and it allows things that are absolutely immoral to be made into law if the masses will it. Guillotining of the aristos, gassing of the Jews, etc.
Reflecting the will of God is another potential basis for law, but is nearly impossible to pull off in a society as pluralistic as our own. Schaeffer makes a case that law is valid only as far as it reflects divine law, but how do we manage this when there's no consensus on divine law?
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BARRY WRITES:
Our current system seems to, more than anything else, Reflect the Will of the People.
well, there's a constant tension and balance between that and Maximizing Safety (or, to use a more comprehensive phrase, provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare). And i'd say that that balance is what makes America such a great — and perilous — place.
The founders thought that every government derives its power from the consent of the governed. And, though I gulp to say it, I think it must be true. Even in the darkest hours of Communism, most people were sort of dimly undiscontented, or at the very least not discontented enough to revolt. The ones who were *really* oppressed, who had it as bad as or worse than their feudal ancestors, were the minorities like Christians, gays, left-leaning intellectuals. Others had a sort of middlingly decent existence — abhorrent by our standards (we who are the most privileged generations on Earth, ever) but not by world historical ones. When it became clear that other states than communism were a possibility, they were enacted, just as when it became clear earlier that other states than aristocracy were a possibility.
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SEAN M WRITES:
Perhaps you're right, that the greatness is in the form of a dynamic equilibrium, where there are many forces pulling in many directions, sometimes more to one side or another, but altogether maintaining a pretty good balance. I don't like this idea, because it's just so doggone messy. Of course, people are doggone messy too, so maybe it's a good fit.
Frustrating. Can fallen man find a stable form of government that doesn't eventually dissolve into oppression or decadance? I'm starting to think not.
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BARRY WRITES:
And I'd agree. Which is why the idea that God cannot be contained in a structure built by human hand is such an ingenious one.
That said, our society, so "decadent" now, is *how* much worse than a hundred years ago???? When people thought they *owned* other people? When women could not vote or own property? When you really could get run out of town, literally, on a rail for having odd religious beliefs? We live in the freest society in history, and in many ways the most Christlike. Also the loudest. Payoff, right?
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SEAN WRITES:
That's interesting. Not only are we fallen, then, but are in an ongoing state of continuing the fall. I think I could buy that. And it makes sense in light of the theme that all of this world is doomed to pass away — not only in an ultimate, eschatalogical sense, but also in a more immediate, historical sense. Also parallels the second law of thermodynamics.
As far as your statement that "the majority must rule, and the minority must be heard," I think I understand fairly well what it's driving at, but it just seems to push the question back a level. Instead of "Should the Jews be gassed if the majority wants it?" (No, because it's against the law) the question becomes "Should the laws be changed so that Jews can be gassed if the majority wants it?" What is the origin of and basis for Law?
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BARRY WRITES:
well, that's just it: we christians are always wanting to push things back to a level beyond absolute necessity. We love to say, "why not do this? aha - because of the Law! but what is the Law's authority? aha - the people! but what is the people's authority? aha, aha, aha, --until we get to the Summum Bonum.
But most systems of government are perfectly willing to do without the summum bonum. Ours, for instance, resists pushing things back to any other levels by simply pushing things *around* at the same level. The will of the people, the decisions of their representatives, the judgments of the courts, the conscience of a single outspoken individual — it's all there, and authority is simply shuffled around. Germany was vulnerable in the 1920s and 30s because of their attitudes toward authority, and because the authoritative voice of the church had eroded, and because their attitudes toward Jews were already such that they just might stand by and let someone else do the unspeakable as long as it remained unspoken.
All of which conspires to make it so that that kind of extermination is well nigh impossible in America today, where the church is a dynamic force in the public square (despite much whining to the contrary), and where *nothing* is unspeakable or unspoken. This is precisely why Americans put up with so much nastiness: if that comedian on HBO can get away with bestiality jokes about Mother Teresa, then Ivan Denisovitch is safe.
