A comment:
I wonder what the writer’s here have to say about my contention in the TAC thread that the idea of a secular right is virtually an oxymoron. Modern rationalistic secularism is clearly a product of the left. (Think of the origin of the terms left and right.) I really don’t think this is a disputable contention. I think someone can be a person of the right and have a secularist tic. I don’t deny that Derbyshire is generally a man of the right. But there can not be a secular right in mass, because the right opposes secularism almost by definition. There can not be a secularist right (or secular conservatism) in mass in America because America is a particularisticly Christian country and conservatives, if they are actually conservatives, should seek to conserve that particularity. Secularism is virtually the opposite of Christian particularity.
I think the Secular Left and Religious Right would probably agree enthusiastically on this. The first point is that there can be no “mass movement” of secularists when defined as atheists or agnostics, period, Left, Right or Center, because there aren’t enough of us in the United States. From the GSS, 4.4% who were conservative were atheists & agnostics, while 11.3% who were liberal were. Of atheists and agnostics 45.5% were liberal and 23.4% were conservative. On the issue of support of Christianity as the status quo, and so conservative position, this is a fair point in my opinion. But the more accurate point I think is that the American culture is imbued with a civil religion of Christian flavor & influence. The problem today on the Right is that the movement has made a tacit alliance with a highly sectarian movement which represents only a minority of Americans, theologically conservative Protestants. Several individuals in the comments have avowed their own religious beliefs, but affirmed their support of this project because they do not believe religion and politics should be coterminous. In contrast, there are some who would say that to be a conservative one must by necessity be a Christian of a particular variety.
From where I stand the point is not about purging religion, or religious people, from the Right. Nor is it my goal to engage in a jihad against religion, as such. Rather, the point of the Secular Right is to emphasize that one can be on the Right and non-religious. Here is David Hume, arguably the first public intellectual who disavowed any supernatural beliefs in the English-speaking world:
With regard to politics and the character of princes and great men, I am very moderate. My views of things are more comformable to Whig Principles; my representations of persons to Tory prejudices. Nothing can so much prove that men commonly regard more persons than things, as to find that I am commonly numbered among the Tories.”
Perhaps there is some a priori grounds to reject those who don’t admit a belief in the supernatural in a predominantly Christian society as members of the Right. I won’t make any apologies for myself, nor will I make a proactive case for why Hume, Friedrich Hayek or George F. Will, are of the Right. Theory is irrelevant when faced with reality. We do exist.
Note: Thomas Hobbes might count as a nonbeliever who precedes Hume. But I am not so sure that the Left and Right are useful terms that far back (Hobbes’ was a supporter of the king, obviously), Hume flourished a generation before the French Revolution and so I think an argument can be made in adding him to the genealogy.
From where I stand the point is not about purging religion, or religious people, from the Right. Nor is it my goal to engage in a jihad against religion, as such. Rather, the point of the Secular Right is to emphasize that one can be on the Right and non-religious.
I really appreciate clear statements of purpose like this. I agree with you about what the point isn’t. If I may elaborate on what the point is, for me it is about the need to build bridges for the purposes of saving civilization. Sounds pompous, and all of that (I’m not particularly proud or ashamed of sounding pompous). It’s just that PC multicult, unrestricted immigration, and creeping Islamization (more an issue in Europe than America) pose an existential threat to everything I hold dear.
Before I realized this, I was a secular centrist who thought of left vs. right as a sort of interesting football match. I could “see arguments on both sides” of every issue, and I though elections were academically interesting. My main political worry was things that seem minor to me now: school prayer, creationism, stem cell, death penalty.
Now I know it’s not a football match. For me, Secular Right is about teaching people who are the way I used to be that a Nativity scene at city hall is not as important as the importation of thousands of people who won’t assimilate, who won’t respect, who won’t even barely tolerate Western Civilization.
No, but “secular Left” is certainly one. The real issue is here is that the Left is made up largely of elitists who reject the Enlightenment (Hume, Smith, Locke, etc) because its ideas ultimately shattered the class system and now allows anyone with a clever idea to rise to the top of society. That’s why the old money rich kids like the ones who run the NYTimes are lefties – they’ve been knocked off their perch by bloggers and others who never went to the big name prep schools and universities.
If you view religion as a set of dogmas then the modern Left is nothing but a religion, a collection of dogmas enforced increasingly by anti-democratic PC “multi-culturalism” and “diversity” – unanchored by reason. Nihilism then is their reaction to the fact that whenever their beliefs have been subjected to the acid bath of skepticism they’ve promptly dissolved – thus their rejection of empiricism. Nihilism flows from the absence of laws (thus the state of the post-modern Left) and not from the absence of a religious bureaucracy.
Perhaps if you think of “Republican” as evolutionary rather than revolutionary.
From Thomas Jefferson to Pat Robertson and back again.
Because, the core meme complexes of the contemporary GOP will simply have to evolve, or the party will occupy a permanent rump position.
“If I may elaborate on what the point is, for me it is about the need to build bridges for the purposes of saving civilization.”
I would question whether building bridges with the worst elements of the religious right (i.e., those who would use the power of the state to impose their religious ideas on society, etc.) would save civilization, or would it destroy it by destroying our culture’s rational and secular foundation. In that sense, the things you cast off as being “minor” — school prayer, creationism, stem cell, death penalty — are very important. (Which is not to say that the immigration issues you discuss aren’t important, too.)
And, I see no problem with being a Jeffersonian conservative and being secular.
The problem is that socon memes have colonized the core themes of the original republicans and hollowed them out. The GOP is branded as the party of uneducated fundamentalist bigots, and stands for abortion bans and and anti-citizen legislation(prop 8) and anti-science and little else.
Schiavo and the perfectly execrable Terri’s Law is an excellant example of pandering to socons.
The conservative leadership allowed that in order to win elections, an uneasy alliance at best given that anti-choice and anti-gay legislation is antipathic to libertarian positions on citizen liberty and rights.
Jefferson was a polymath, and if conservatism was his preferred form, I tend to respect his judgement.
I think an effective argument can be made that Jefferson was a secularist.
Wow. I got my own thread.
My point about “mass” was not absolute numbers. My point was more that there can be rightists who happen to be religious skeptics/agnostics/atheists (no offense but often who have a chip on their shoulder), but there can’t be a skeptical/agnostic/atheistic right.
Personally I see secularism as a different although not unrelated concept. To me secularism implies the relationship of religion to society, not necessarily the truth of religion. One could be a Christian secularist and far too many modern Christians are. Christians spout Enlightenment liberalism with the best of them. Even the much demonized Religious Right. Where they don’t, it is essentially a principled exception (based on Scripture for example) to their otherwise underlying liberalism.
Secularism is clearly a child of Enlightenment rationalistic liberalism, as is systematized unbelief. There have always been unbelievers and there always will be, but rationalistic systematized unbelief is a relatively new phenomenon.
Again, think back to the original left and right. The left supported liberty, equality, the rights of man, etc. These were relatively new rationalistic, universalistic concepts based on the vain philosophies of man. On the right you had the defenders of the ancient regime. This was not about philosophical abstractions. It was about defending what was. It was defending the particular.
There may well have been a lot of irreverent people on the right, but the Church was one of the things that was being defended.
Now I think it is possible to carry this historical analogy too far. If you want to be too specific to Revolutionary France then only Catholics could be rightists. (I know some people who believe this.) But generally speaking, within historic Christendom, any rightish movement or impulse has to defend Christianity. And preferably not just because it is foundational or socially useful but because it is true.
This is what throws off a lot of skeptics and secularists. They just can’t comprehend that there are people who actually believe Christianity to be true. Who believe that the dreaded dogma is actually true and important.
Of course this raises the often debated question of the nature of the American “Founding” and if America can ever have a truly rightist movement. For the record, I am not one who believes that the American “Founding” was hopelessly tainted by Enlightenment liberalism although some paleos do. So I do not buy the notion that “conservatism” in America is attempting to conserve some form (mild to radical) of Enlightenment liberalism, although there are certainly liberal elements to our founding, especially rhetorically.