Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2007/01/12/dogcollared_svengalis.php

Dog-Collared Svengalis

Friday, January 12, 2007

Read these two stories, and decide which you like the best.

(1) …liberal politics was devised as a rescue operation for European life in the wake of the religious civil wars. The Protestant Reformation, as well as the rise of market economies and scientific skepticism, shattered the unity of political life in the West, and the response was a proposal (made in various ways by, among others, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Jefferson, Madison, Smith, Hume, Kant, Mill, and Rawls) to base political life on what Aristotle called the goods of “mere life” (like domestic and foreign peace, economic prosperity, and basic or minimal individual rights). These were the minimal goods on which all human beings, regardless of their views on “bigger” or “higher” questions, could agree on. By contrast, the goods associated with the “good life” (like happiness, virtue, righteousness, and piety) would neither be presupposed nor explicitly cultivated by the political order. Why? Because in the modern age there was no plausible scenario in which consensus on these matters could be established or assumed.

(2) …the reason the United States had proven to be such an accommodating place for religion was that it “had preserved the political-philosophical heritage of medieval Christendom better than any European nation, even the ostensibly Catholic monarchies of France and Spain.” Unlike European systems that embraced political absolutism, the American founders upheld an “older wisdom” rooted in the political limits prescribed by Catholic “natural law.”

Damon Linker wrote both of these. The first story represents his own view, which he calls “the liberal bargain,” and it appeared in, of all places, the comments section of a blog, The American Scene. The second is his summary, in his book The Theocons, of the historical views of John Courtney Murray, S.J., from whom he quotes in that passage.

Your choice of story says a lot about you, politically and otherwise. Do you think religion is a private matter, which, when punted into politics, effects strife? Or does it underpin everything to such an extent that trying to remove it from the public is like loosening all the screws on your jumbo jet? I happen to think Linker’s version is truer, though it is deficient in its own way.

But first, some background. The Theocons is intended as a broadside against the editors of First Things, where Linker once worked as an editor. He calls the political faith he broke with “theoconservatism,” and the best way to explain it is that it wants to use right-wing politics as a means of Christianizing American culture and also to use Christianity as a means of advancing right-wing politics. “Christianity,” though, is putting it too strongly. Catholic “natural rights reasoning,” with nods to Judeo-Christian culture, are most central. The positions taken by these five or so Catholic intellectuals include support for both Gulf Wars, free market capitalism and opposition to abortion, euthanasia, and gay rights. Curiously (or not), most of them were left-wing radicals during the 1960s, albeit religious ones. Later, they spoke of a “crisis of meaning” in the wake of the anything-goes atmosphere they helped to produce. And most centrally, all agree with the basic narrative put forth by John Courtney Murray: America is not a Judeo-Christian nation simply by virtue of its being 87% Christian, but in its very doctrinal bones.

This book chronicles the various stances taken by First Things and its allies, focusing especially that magazine’s most overwrought pieces, a few of which questioned—in light of abortion—the legitimacy of the American regime itself. This story comes off as a little provincial. Richard John Neuhaus, Robert George, and Michael Novak might or might not be wrong intellectually, but their real political influence is debatable, though Linker depicts them as culture war consiglieri to the president and a microcosm of crypto-theocratic thinking in America. But recently, in the book Tempting Faith by evangelical and former deputy director of faith based initiatives at the Bush White House, we have learned that the religious right now feels equally as duped as the neocons and the libertarians who now regret trusting Bush with power. Whatever these theocons are, they are not themselves engines of politics. I think they remain of interest, however, because they represent an interesting intellectual development pertaining to the nexus of faith and politics.

The problem of reconciling religion and secular government is more significant than it is often made out to be. By this I don’t mean that it’s of great magnitude, in the sense that theocracy or atheist tyranny is imminent; however, the friction between believers and the secular regime they obey is persistent and in fact inheres in liberal democracy itself. Consider the true believer’s dilemma: he is happily party to the grand truth about life, at least insofar as it is comprehensible to the human mind. Yet various impediments prevent every other person from agreeing with him. So, to guard his safety, he embraces religious pluralism: a reciprocal relationship between faiths, in which sects are not supposed to interfere with each other. But this, in his mind, must be a temporary arrangement because the truth will out. God is ultimately larger than a constitution.

An awkward situation. The solution Neuhaus offers is to advance moral arguments that are not contingent upon inner faith: instead of quoting scripture, for instance, politicians will talk about a “culture of life,” which appeals to a wide spectrum of believers and even some secularists. And to the Catholic faithful, educated in a skeptical environment, he recommends “thinking with the church”: that is to say, finding ways to justify rationally the divinely inspired mandates of Rome. This may seem in fact not to be “thinking” at all but casuistry. In fact, casuistry—a main component of which is lying, to yourself and others—is the common denominator of both of these recommendations. Once you surrender the ability to arrive at a conclusion contrary to that of church, you have strayed from rationality. And once you have decided that faith must answer to reason, then you have abandoned faith.

In The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom mulled over the implications of the liberal bargain, in which you give up the right to establish your faith and are then given the freedom to worship as you please. “In order to make this arrangement work, there was a conscious, if covert, effort to weaken religious beliefs, partly by assigning—as a result of great epistemological effort—religion to the realm of opinion as opposed to knowledge. But the right to freedom of religion belonged to the realm of knowledge. Such rights are not matters of opinion. No weakness of conviction was desired here. All to the contrary, the sphere of rights was to be the arena of moral passion in a democracy.” This is extremely powerful. In polite society, it is considered rude to proselytize but not gently to caution people against “imposing their beliefs on others.” Considering what religion claims—ultimate truth—that is an incredible achievement on democratic society’s part. Can anyone then blame the true believer when he screams that the wool has been pulled over his eyes, that the glue holding together liberal pluralism is finally a subtle atheism?

The atheist would of course smile and say that this zealot is being duped for a reason: because in the past his kind tried to hassle and slaughter millions of people, and this is the only known way to beat the poor boy’s sword into a plowshare. Devious but it does the job, I suppose. But these secularists then ought not to yelp with surprise at fanatical anti-Enlightenment flare-ups, the kind we have enjoyed for the past quarter millennium or so. That is because the theoconservatives’ complaint, the “crisis of meaning,” is not addressed by liberalism. It’s simply not addressed. By the way, it has turned out that the human mind needs “meaning” of some sort. And the most killing ideologies since modern liberalism have been the ones that provide comprehensive answers: nationalism, communism, imperialism, fascism, various strains of theocracy, and other protests against temperate, live-and-let-live existence, which seems not to sit well, unless it’s slathered with a mind-numbing pop culture, in which sports stars and pop singers serve as the heroes, or their modern replacements, role models.

Take the case of Kansas, and what’s the matter with it. The liberal press has speculated a great deal about what makes poor red staters run. In the aftermath of the 2004 election, some wondered how these unkempt Wal-Mart manatees summoned the nerve to deny homosexuals in various state referenda the right to marry. They bellowed with rage that these yokels vote against their economic self-interest, and for what? “Values”? The state of marriage in red America is shoddier than in the blue. The most interesting explanation of this came, I think, in an American Prospect article by Garance Franke-Ruta, who wrote that “in today’s society, traditional values have become aspirational,” meaning that poor Republicans are not puritans defending the castle from smut-peddlers but are instead the victims and perpetrators of a culture thick with divorce, illegitimacy, and other harmful habits. Thus the sinners most passionately long for something more. Think of Raskolnikov, who can axe two helpless women to death and then just as easily toss all of his savings to a destitute family, one not unlike the red staters who look toward a romanticized moral code. Efficacy is a separate issue: banning gay marriage will almost certainly do nothing to save the perceived sanctity of marriage, what little there is left to save. But the point is clear: liberalism does not think the “crisis of meaning” is important or even a crisis at all. All that matters is range of choice between empty lifestyles. To ask for more is terribly ungrateful, they say, and in a way it is.

This is not to say that liberal pluralism is worse than the alternatives. It is the worst form available—except for all of the others, to borrow from Churchill. This wise phrase means that liberalism, once settled upon, ought to be taken seriously—that is to say, we should take stock of both its strengths and flaws. If the crisis of meaning is not addressed, then time will only widen and deepen the theoconservative foothold in the national mind. The trick will be to address the crisis without spoiling the gifts of a free society, and, as to how this might be done, your guess is as good as mine.