“Crunchy conservative” Rod Dreher’s new USA Today op-ed is entitled “GOP’s path to victory still goes through God”, and at least he doesn’t shy away from telling us where he stands:
Today, the greatest threats to conservative interests come not from the Soviet Union or high taxes, but from too much individual freedom. … All political problems, traditional conservatism teaches, are ultimately religious problems because they result from disordered souls.
Less individual freedom. Religion inserted into the management of “all” political problems since they all, without exception, “result from disordered souls”. What an appealing future for conservatism. Do you think Jeffrey Hart might have had a point when he described such a tendency as “toxic to moderate, independent, suburban, young and, more inclusively, educated voters”?
P.S. Some other reactions to Dreher’s column: James Joyner, Dennis Sanders, Doug Mataconis, Andrew Stuttaford.
I think there is plenty of room for common ground between libertarians and social conservatives on this sort of thing. The libertarians say the don’t want to have to pay (or otherwise suffer) for other people’s irresponsible behavior. The social conservatives say they’d rather such behavior not happen in the first place.
Rod Dreher’s phrasing is indeed toxic – freedom and permissiveness are not the same thing! Permissiveness is when the nanny state steps in to make sure nobody falls into the pits that they dig. Then again, a lot of libertarian proposals (like legalization of cannabis / marijuana, which seems perfectly logical to me) seem toxic to a lot of conservatives, so maybe I wishfully thinking of common ground that doesn’t really exist.
From the article:
“Besides, was it the religious right that conceived and executed the disastrous Iraq war? Did preachers deregulate Wall Street? Did evangelical leader James Dobson screw up the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response to Hurricane Katrina? Jack Abramoff — did he concoct his crooked lobbying schemes during long protest vigils outside abortion clinics? To be fair, religious conservatives didn’t stand up to any of this. We own a share of the GOP’s failure. But to scapegoat us for the Republican implosion is preposterous.”
I find it interesting that they are trying to separate themselves from their religion now that it is a liability. Aren’t these the same people who believe God makes America the greatest nation on earth? Dobbs told Larry King that he doesn’t believe there is a separation of church and state. According to the very same USA Today, George Bush claims God told him to invade Iraq. Now they try to say the heathens did it and they just failed to stand up to them? Pathetic.
It is useful to distinguish between political strategy (marketing and manipulation) and thoughtful analysis (which is never palatable to the masses). Drehere engaged in the latter, and he may be naive in doing it in public.
I believe that Dreher is certainly correct . . . unbridled worship of individual freedom is one of democracy’s inherent tragic vices, as Plato wrote in the eighth book of the Republic millennia ago. Randians aside, communities need folks who strive for the common good. Conservatives should no cede that august tradition and language to the statists and totalitarians of the Left.
It is also useful to distinguish between social order and legal order as constraints upon individual freedom. Having read Dreher for some time, I would say that he is far more concerned with the culture than with government policy. He and like-minded conservatives think that our society is in danger of losing many of the benefits of Western civilization because our people focus their attention, talent, and time on things that do provide for “ordered souls,” as Dreher notes. Yet, it is just this ordering of the soul — classically called virtue — that creates social stability, security from external forces, and the possibility for human flourishing. You need not start attending worship services to see the truth of these statements; they are the collected wisdom of countless generations, pious and rationalist alike.
For a believer like Dreher, he thinks that the Gospel is the way to treat disordered souls. You may think that just laws, social policy based on objective research, a culture and legal system of personal responsibility, and decent parenting may work better. I can assure you that any thinking Christian will only be eager to assist you in working for these goals. You want a common ground for religious and irreligious conservatives? Find it in the ethical and political principles available to natural reason; for Christians hold these, too, to come from God.
Rod Dreher is the poster child for my contention that there is no such thing as “conservatism” in the sense of a consistent body of political principles, even restricting the context to modern America.
Political problems are undoubtedly the result of “disordered souls”, but what “soul” and “disorder” mean will vary with the observer. A religiously-inclined person, as Dreher undoubtedly is, will use “soul” in its traditional sense (one might almost say, it’s traditional Christian sense), and “disorder” likewise. If one wishes to divorce it from a religious context, one can readily view “soul” as “the software that runs the machine” and “disorder” as being a bug (or set of bugs) in that software — certainly our physical hardware can have defects, so the notion that our neurological “software” can have defects as well doesn’t require a dive into the pool of spiritualism.
We can certainly disagree about what “disorder” is, and where it inheres, and that will certainly inform our policy recommendations regarding how to handle it; but the notion itself seems commonsensical.
Mr Olson’s objection would appear to be most legitimate aimed at Dreher’s approach to solving the problem, rather than his manner of identifying it. In that respect, perhaps Mr Olson might move the discussion along a bit by pointing out what approach he would favor in preference, rather than just pointing and sneering. “Jeez, can you *believe* this guy?” is not, strictly speaking, an argument.
Joseph,
But what of the secularist who believes that person autonomy and individual freedom are the hightest virtues?
Your description of finding a common ground for religious and irreligious conservatives reads to me as a plea for the non-religious to simply find secular labels to put on Christian ethical positions and “get with the (religous) program.” Without forcing Christians and other religious to consider the values and interests of the secularists, and to alter or amend the Christians ethical positions (at least as it comes to politics), you’re not really finding common ground, you’re simply giving secularists a roadmap to make themselves subservient to the religous. Why would we want to accept and follow that map?
This is why I vote Dem, when I am more in line with conservatives. They mix everything up with religion.
Grant Canyon, I am a rationalist (and a Christian) myself in the Greek tradition. I hold (and hope) that human practical reason is able to determine what it means to live correctly, and I think that such reason is available to people regardless of their credal background. The obvious problem is that folks disagree much more on matters of practical reason than on, say, relations in mathematics, which leads folks like Derbyshire to dismiss philosophy as hopeless. What is the alternative, though, save violence, either brutally or dressed up in politics?
So, I would not say that “secularist conservatives” should jump on the Christian ethical bandwagon because we say so. This misunderstands the Christian position on ethics in the same way that the “Don’t legislate your religion on my body” Left does. _Christian_ ethics is not something that any Christian expects of a non-Christian. What is the peculiar _Christian_ aspect of ethics? To love every man perfectly, and to forgive endlessly — to “turn the other cheek”. This goes well beyond worldly sense, and few Christians even attempt it themselves. Thoughtful Christian conservatives do not expect such ethics to become incarnate in the political life of our nation. Even Christian emperors could not make sense of how to implement such commands in public policy.
What you mean by “Christian ethics,” I assume, involves matters like abortion, euthanasia, the social status of homosexuality, and such. These things, I would argue, are not Christian issues at all — they are matters of natural reason that are open to folks who do not accept the Christian revelatory tradition. So, no one is to get with the program against what is according with reason. So, as a nation, we need to have these arguments.
As far as the person who holds autonomy and individual freedom as the highest virtues, I again would say that we have to resort to reason to debate whether that person is thinking wisely. I would have many things to say to such a person, but if we are talking about humans in community, then that person’s highest values are naturally incompatible with communal life, where each one must subordinate his will to some sense of a common good. The only real option for a person who maintains freedom as the highest virtue is a Mad Max Hobbesian state of nature, providing that he is strong enough to survive in anarchy in order to exercise his will without constraints.
Even if you hold in some sort of social contract theory — say, a pirate’s agreement whereby one gives up some autonomy in order to survive, you admit a higher good (namely, survival and life) than autonomy. That you cannot have autonomy without life and that it is not the sort of thing like virtue or goodness or God for which men are willing to sacrifice their life in order to attain it should indicate that it is not the highest good.
How is Dreher’s statement any different from what we hear from far-left liberation theologists, like, say, James Cone? (I mean, other than the racist bits, of course.)
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“What you mean by ‘Christian ethics,’ I assume, involves matters like abortion, euthanasia, the social status of homosexuality, and such. These things, I would argue, are not Christian issues at all — they are matters of natural reason that are open to folks who do not accept the Christian revelatory tradition. So, no one is to get with the program against what is according with reason.”
But here, I believe, you give away the game. It is simply not true that one must, using “natural reason”, reach the same result as the Christian thinker on these issues.
The unstated premise of the Christian position on euthanasia, for example, is that the perpetuation of human life, of whatever kind and in whatever condition, is commanded by God. The non-theist, who does not subsribe to that dictum (or the theist who follows a different theological tradition) would hold a different premise, perhaps one that says that one is free to determine whether to continue his existence, when such continued existence is not worth living to him.
Similar difference exist with all of the ethical points you mention. None of the Christian positions naturally and necessarily follow in the absence of religious belief.
“[B]ut if we are talking about humans in community, then that person’s highest values are naturally incompatible with communal life, where each one must subordinate his will to some sense of a common good. The only real option for a person who maintains freedom as the highest virtue is a Mad Max Hobbesian state of nature, providing that he is strong enough to survive in anarchy in order to exercise his will without constraints.”
Here, I don’t agree with your premise. Such a person can be simply willing to subordinate that limited part of his autonomy (as an act of personal choice), but no more, necessary for community life to be possible. He does so in order that maximize personal autonomy for all may exist, by providing the maximum sustainable environment for the exercise of that autonomy in the long run. This is so even if it entails curtailing a limited amount of that autonomy in the short run.
“Even if you hold in some sort of social contract theory — say, a pirate’s agreement whereby one gives up some autonomy in order to survive, you admit a higher good (namely, survival and life) than autonomy. That you cannot have autonomy without life and that it is not the sort of thing like virtue or goodness or God for which men are willing to sacrifice their life in order to attain it should indicate that it is not the highest good.”
Men are not willing to sacrifice their lives for personal autonomy? “Give me liberty or give me death.” “I may disagree with what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it” (Or, if you’re into ’70s reggae, “I’d rather be a free man in my grave, than living as a puppet or a slave.”)
Again, one can voluntarily give up the exercise of personal autonomy in the short run or even permanently in the case of self-sacrifice (itself an act of autonomy) and still hold personal autonomy is the highest virtue if, by doing so, he is maximizing the exercise of personal autonomy for himself and/or others.
@Tim of Angle
Tim, you are quite right that folks with different worldviews understand soul and disorder differently, and you’re right that, ultimately, such differences would result in divergences in public policy. However, I do not think that the difference is important politically in our society, where most Christians have accepted the liberal nation of the state. Dreher is not suggesting a Holy American Empire where the regime enforces confessions and fasts. Where you do see more American Christians “standing up” for their religion in public matters (as in the “war on Christmas” spectacle), it is more a matter of (1) resentmet toward multiculturalists who deny any common historical culture to American society, (2) respect for large majority’s in an area to express its way of life publically, and (3) respect of tradition.
You also see it in the conservative Protestant community’s reaction to the teaching of evolution in public schools. This is a sticky area, but necessarily so in a liberal regime that takes upon itself the job of indotrinating children. You can have a regime with an established comprehensive system of goods and ideals that educates its young according to them, or you can have a regime that allows its citizens to carve out private value systems that can coexist with other value systems within the larger agreed upon public value system, in which each worldview pocket educates its own children. The problem occurs when you mix the two, which has occurred and worsened in America. That is why real liberals push for the complete privatization of education — get the state out of the business of indoctrinating students. The question is — can a community adequately function as a sum of many private communities without strong unifying bonds to hold it together? This is the problem of liberal regimes.
I think Rod chose his words badly. Personal freedom is not the problem. People using their personal freedom toward wrong ends is the problem. The latter problem cannot and should not be addressed by the government, but rather by other individuals who should show by example how human beings should behave.
I believe this is in fact the whole mission of the church. Jesus himself explicitly rejected any effort to inject himself into government, but led by example.
People who believe that there is “too much” freedom should come right out with specifics: at whose head are they going to point the gun, and for what reason? In other words, what liberties do they feel entitled to coercively restrict, and by what right? You know, bottom-line it for those of us who value our freedom, so we can be prepared to shoot back.
To restate Voltaire, we do not agree with choices people make, but we would fight to the death to ensure they had the freedom to do so.
Liberalism in the old sense relies upon the idea that people have the right to make decisions for themselves, even if those decisions are poor ones. We can assert that the decisions are poor, or even be able to demonstrate this objectively, without wanting to constrain or force people to decide in the way we think best.
The problem is not that there is too much freedom, the problem is that many people choose poorly, and this can create problems for an entire society when too many people make poor decisions.
Past attempts to deal with this problem include strong social pressure to conform to established standards, but that carries its own problems.
“The question is — can a community adequately function as a sum of many private communities without strong unifying bonds to hold it together?”
There are minimum requirements for such subgroups to form a larger community. Even though there can be many things on which they disagree, there cannot be disagreement on how the subgroups interact with each other. You can’t play a game unless everyone agrees to a particular set of rules. There have to be defined principles that explain what people must agree upon, how they can disagree, and how disagreement can be handled.
I thought the terrorists hated us for our freedom. Are they the ordered souls we seek?
Joseph: ” it is just this ordering of the soul — classically called virtue — that creates social stability, security from external forces, and the possibility for human flourishing.”
I find this to be true only on a very individual basis. Seeking to integrate ones experiences into an accurate worldview increases our empathy and ability to understand the cause and effect of our actions. When order is sought by group-think and based on irrational beliefs such as Christianity, it serves the opposite purpose. It seeks to impose its own irrationality on others. It stifles individuality and progress. You don’t see physicists starting wars between relativity and quantum mechanics, because they aren’t seeking righteousness, they are seeking truth. ‘External forces’ are the end result of stability based on tradition and unity. Freedom and individuality may increase the crimes of individuals, but it doesn’t end in war. Groups based on unity and tradition are strong because of their numbers, not because they are right. We would be more effective to attack our enemies beliefs than their citizens. Remove the glue of irrationality and they are no longer enemies.
I think you guys are over-reacting to Dreher’s editorial. I do not agree with Dreher much, but I think he’s right in this case. Unfortunately, Dreher used a poor choice of words when he said the problem is “too much individual freedom”. What he was really doing in this article was to criticize irresponsible behavior and short-term greed. The context of the editorial is the Wall Street mess and the irresponsibility and the short-term greed of the financial wizards that created it.
Instead of criticizing “individual freedom” per se, Dreher should have emphasized that accountability is the flip-side to individual freedom and that many of us have forgotten this (certainly the Wall Street people did).
There is a very good article floating about the web called “The End” that summarizes what happen on Wall Street over the past 15 years. I highly recommend it:
http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/11/11/The-End-of-Wall-Streets-Boom?print=true
A key point in this piece is that much of the Wall Street greed was fueled by the Wall Street firms going public and, thereby, acquiring shareholder money that they could play about with. Prior to this, the investment firms were partnerships that did their business based on long-term relationships with clients. Anybody who does business based on relationships with customers and suppliers can tell you that trust and reputation are paramount virtues. One does not need to believe in the divinity of Christ or be a member of any religion, for that matter, to understand this.
I think the idea that something like euthanasia should be left to individual interpretation (if one is not a Christian), or that atheists will champion euthanasia automatically, misses the point of secular conservativism entirely.
History has countless data points that show that a society/civilization that invalidates (and works against) the principle of “life is precious” declines/perishes. It has dastardly impacts. The point is not that an atheist will automatically be against something that had a religious basis, only that there ARE secular reasons why it is a good thing (from a public policy perspective) and it is only those arguments that should be championed in the realm of Caesar. If the ONLY substantiation is one of religion, then it won’t hold water in a secular society.
Even if we look to the Christian tradition as holding many wise principles, we don’t have to agree on the author in order for it to have value.
If we begin, as atheists, with the premise that the past held no other explanation than “God did it” then we simply need to change that sentence in order to understand Christian philosophy and its importance on Western society. If we know as atheists that there is no God, then man wrote it, but why? how? He based it on thousands of years of observable outcomes, and (for the most part) had some fairly sound ideas on how man behaves in any given situation, and how to live in such a way as to minimize the negative outcomes on everyone else (and himself). That defines, for me, what an atheist conservative is: one who bases their decisions on how man WILL behave (and builds public policy/government on that reality) and live happily among others, not how we hope he will behave.
The fact that we have other explanations today (some in the science realm and some more loosely related to a better understanding of the human psyche) doesn’t invalidate the observations from the past, as a starting point for secularism. And, as conservative atheists, that’s how we relate to religious teachings and history, in general. If you have no other explanation for something occurring than an Omnipotent being, then that is what you’ll accept as the answer. It doesn’t, however, invalidate what occurred, and how an altering of behavior (based on compliance with religious teachings) had a positive result, from an outcome perspective.
Atheists don’t have to be enemies of the religious, or even contrary, except when public policy discussions require that we accept “God did it so we can’t discuss it” as the final answer. It doesn’t really matter if someone is motivated by religion to make a secular argument, only that they do it with secular reasoning (ie, data, not dogma), if they want others to agree with their take on the matter.
I think it would be a huge mistake, in general, to make statements that suggest that all atheists are anti-theists, rather than “not religious” (which is what the word literally means). I would also hate to see all atheists lumped into a general-belief-basket that suggests that religious teachings, especially Christianity, haven’t been a catalyst (or at least friendly) to the foundations of Western civilization (that gave rise to the conservative principles we share today). While the Great Conversation didn’t begin with Christianity, the Enlightenment did, and even us who label ourselves atheists should not deny that, or attempt to separate it from the great Gantt chart of Western conservative thought.
We can disagree over the author of religious textbooks (man or God), but that’s a very different discussion from the soundness of many of the principles therein. There is much wisdom therein, to be sorted out and individually validated against what is known about modern man (and what makes him tick), but we shouldn’t appear to desire to be throwing out the Jesus baby with the bathwater.
I would also hate to see all atheists lumped into a general-belief-basket that suggests that religious teachings, especially Christianity, haven’t been a catalyst (or at least friendly) to the foundations of Western civilization (that gave rise to the conservative principles we share today). While the Great Conversation didn’t begin with Christianity, the Enlightenment did, and even us who label ourselves atheists should not deny that, or attempt to separate it from the great Gantt chart of Western conservative thought.
The Enlightenment began after the Renaissance, which was the rediscovery of the long-suppressed (mostly by Christianity) Greek philosophers. Contemporary religious organizations were openly hostile to this entire process, but lacked authority because they were horribly corrupt (the illegitimate sons of popes serving as mercenaries, and so forth).
Many religious organizations even today are essentially attempting to repeal the Enlightenment and return to an age of faith and authority. I don’t know if that’s your idea of conservatism or not, but I certainly don’t want to see it happen in the country I live in (or indeed any other, although my ability to work against it is less in that case).
@mrsdutoit
I think your reasoning would be sound if it were agreed that the principles of Christianity (in this case) were all sound. That is begging the entire question. Speaking for myself, I disagree with this assertion, because to the extent that “Christian philosophy” contains sound principles, it is often, if not always, universal, non-exclusively Christian principles (i.e., universal norms like the so-called “golden rule”) that are sound. It is the exclusively Christian ones which are dubious, foolish, or dangerous.
@Grant Canyon
“I think your reasoning would be sound if it were agreed that the principles of Christianity (in this case) were all sound.”
If I had suggested that they “were all sound” then your comment might make some sense, but since I suggested nothing of the sort, it has no relevance at all.
To your point, however, it is just as foolish to assert that all Christian teachings are “dubious, foolish, or dangerous” simply because they are Christian, as it is to suggest they’re sound because they’re Christian. Yin. Yang.
Each is to be evaluated on its merits, and (as I made quite clear), “…to be sorted out and individually validated against what is known about modern man.”
Wholesale acceptance OR invalidation because of its association with Christianity is equally ridiculous.
Regarding Chris’s comment “The Enlightenment began after the Renaissance, which was the rediscovery of the long-suppressed (mostly by Christianity) Greek philosophers.”
Suppressed how, exactly? I think you may be drinking a bit too much from the anti-theist well. People couldn’t read… and where did the Western tradition of TEACHING the common man to read come from? OOPS… it was Aquinas. While Aquinas was not singularly responsible, the reintroduction of the Socratic method was championed by him. It was the monasteries and churches that maintained the Greeks and brought Europe OUT of the dark ages (and maintained the traditions during it), and then championed the Western tradition by teaching people to read.
You can’t simultaneously suggest that they destroyed it, when they kept the tradition alive, waiting for a time in which a reading public could be receptive to it.
More importantly… knock modern Christianity for its faults today, but don’t attempt to revise history to fit into convenient (and revisionist) memes that attempt to discredit Christianity for what it did do. It is within the Christian tradition to improve oneself, to engage in intellectual pursuits and individual achievement and study. It is THAT tradition where we can find kinship with our Christian fellows, and the way to engage them.
“If I had suggested that they ‘were all sound’ then your comment might make some sense, but since I suggested nothing of the sort, it has no relevance at all.”
I did not state that you said they were all sound, I said that is the only situation in which your analysis would be useful.
“To your point, however, it is just as foolish to assert that all Christian teachings are ‘dubious, foolish, or dangerous’ simply because they are Christian, as it is to suggest they’re sound because they’re Christian. Yin. Yang.”
Then it’s a darn good thing I never said that. I did not say that “all Christian teachings are ‘dubious, foolish, or dangerous’,” only those that were exclusively Christian are.
“Each is to be evaluated on its merits, and (as I made quite clear), ‘…to be sorted out and individually validated against what is known about modern man.’”
But that is exactly the point. Those exclusively Christian (even exclusively religious) principles have no place in the public discussion, not only because of their religious nature, but because of their dubiousness, foolishness or dangerousness. Those which are not exclusively Christian or exclusively religious should be evaluated, but wholly on their own, secular merit without regard at all for their religious association. So where does Christian principles – as Christian principles – have value?
“Wholesale acceptance OR invalidation because of its association with Christianity is equally ridiculous.”
I’m not arguing that anything “associated with” Christianity should be invalidated, I’m saying that since the only portions of Christianity which are legitimate and potentially valuable in a secular society are those portions which are not exclusive to Christianity or religion, the “Christianity” part of those so-called Christian principles is unhelpful at best.
@mrsdutoit
Perhaps we are talking past each other. I believe that we may be seeking a similar end, but where I would not let the religion in the door; you seem to be of the view that the religion can come in, but will be escorted from the premises if it doesn’t behave itself.