A secular perspective on politics?

I’ve been thinking of what it means to be of the “Secular Right” recently due to the comment threads where people asked us to weigh in on our specific political positions. Some people take the Secular Right to be libertarian (as evidence by that characterization in the inbound links). As an empirical matter this isn’t unfair. But there are non-libertarian Rightists who are not religious. My own political orientation is of a very squishy libertarian variety which I suspect most libertarians would claim heretical. On the other hand, I am socially liberal enough on many hot-button issues that I doubt traditionalists would accept that I could be any such thing (no less for the fact that I am not religious). In the past I have assumed that my secularity allowed me to have a particularly “reality based” outlook on the world. Yet even here, I don’t think that captures the reality on second thought. I don’t really think any political ideology is metaphysically true, rather, politics are presupposed on a particular set of norms.

Consider Will Wilkinson (who just got engaged, congratulations!), a secular libertarian.  He favors open borders.  I don’t think that’s realistic….but, he has also admitted that his way of judging utility would have no issue with humanity’s population slowly converging upon 0 until there was only 1 human remaining in the last generation of our species’ existence, granting that utility was maximized for that individual.  Will’s argument is actually very reality based, but it is just predicated upon different set of axioms from my own (in short, I have much more of the irrational  “anti-foreigner bias” which Bryan Caplan identifies).  I lean toward the mild restrictionist side, though if I had to pick between open borders and closed borders, I would pick the latter.  The reasons have to do with my own vision as to what the good life and the flourishing society are.  There are Christians, as it happens, who agree with my position, and those who agree with Will’s position. The former might argue that Christianity is a matter of salvation for the hereafter, and that it is but hubris to to attempt to create a heaven on earth.  The latter sort of Christian, who leans toward open borders is familiar to us, the past 8 years have seen exactly that sort of Christian as head of state in the United States. Their justifications are also familiar, as the universalism of Christianity as a religion is translated into a sort of universalism of utility which has affinities to Will Wilkinson’s godless variety.  Those who march together in politics do not always pray together, and those who pray together (or do not) do not always march in politics together.

But despite all that, I think there is a need for this sort of website.  Secular Right saw light of day in late November of 2008, and it has really been far more successful than I would have ever imagined.  The very response to this website to me is an argument that a site like this needed to exist, that there had to be an open, explicit and forthrightly conservative voice which serves as a counterpoint to the necessary connection between particular religious viewpoints and our political orientation.  Some have suggested that because we are not Christian or religious we can not, by definition, be conservative.  Others have argued that by definition conservatives can not criticise religious beliefs, that anyone who  criticizes religious beliefs reads themselves out of conservatism.  The very prominence of these arguments in immediate reaction to this website tells me that our voice is needful, perhaps even necessary.

But we are not all negation.  I believe that secular conservatives can elucidate a political program informed by naturalistic premises in a way that more religious conservatives may shy away from.  I believe there is value in elaborating an evolutionary conservatism.  In the future I will attempt to do this in a less general, and more specific manner, with application to particular elements of public policy.