What’s the matter with the Right?

Over at The American Scene, Reihan Salam asks, IS SOCIAL CONSERVATISM THE PROBLEM?:

… I doubt that Frum fears a Republican party composed in large part of devout religious believers — rather, I think he’s worried about the perception that the GOP has become narrowly sectarian. Note that Huckabee did very well with white evangelicals, but very poorly with pro-life Catholics, this despite a message that was arguably tailor-made for Reagan Democrats. A “less overtly religious message” could nevertheless hold fast to the core concerns of cultural conservatives.

I was mumbling the word “sectarian” before I got to that point. Solutions? I think ultimately we are in for a new age of sectionalism, and the lowest tension resolution will be federalism.

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A model of rational critique?

 Jonah Goldberg posts the “appalled” Ed Feser on secular conservatives.  Apparently Mr. Feser thinks of himself as the opposite of “smugly unreflective and dogmatic.”  Readers can decide for themselves. 

 I will respond to just one of Mr. Feser’s un-smug, non-dogmatic statements: that only someone blithely ignorant of religion would call it “unscientific.”  

I wonder to which science Mr. Feser is referring.  There was the Templeton prayer experiment, and that didn’t work out too satisfactorily, did it?  Granted, the research design was laughable, in a charming sort of way (the people praying for the recovery of cardiac patients, for example, were only given the patient’s first name and last initial, on the assumption presumably that God would know to which Jim G. they were referring).  Perhaps Mr. Feser could propose a more scientifically rigorous design to show the efficacy of petitionary prayer or any other religious practice of his choosing. 

The curious thing to me is why the idea of secular conservatism is so “appalling” to Mr. Feser and others.  We are only proposing that the basis of conservatism  can be broadened beyond revelation to rest on an understanding of human nature itself.  Reason and the evidence of history show the crucial importance of parental responsibility, self-discipline, limited government, and free economic exchange in creating a society in which individuals can most thrive.  Do religious conservatives believe that only religious belief grounds conservatism?  That position strikes me as rather an admission of defeat.

Secular conservatives applaud the virtues put forth in various Holy Books, we simply claim them—proudly–as the creation of human beings, to which all have access.

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Why Secular?

I want to make something clear, again, so that it doesn’t crop up on the comments over & over: the point of this website (for me) is not to argue for the abolition of all religious sentiment.  Rather, it is to push back against articles such as Can Atheists Be Good Citizens? by Richard John Neuhaus, a prominent conservative intellectual. This is a nation where an agnostic conservative can write books with titles such as The Pursuit of virtue and other Tory notions.  A common sentiment I’ve heard, and seen in these comments even, is that by definition someone who does not believe in God is simply not a conservative. In which case, should Heather Mac Donald go work for Brookings?  Should John Derbyshire write for The New Republic?  Should AEI offload Charles Murray, who though sympathetic to Christianity, is not (last I checked, Charles evolves) a believer?  Should conservative institutions perform the sort of “faith check” (i.e., you sign some document affirming your adherence to particular propositions) before hiring individuals which many Christian colleges do, so as to filter out those deluded non-believers who wish to forward the conservative cause?

Note: I see no logical reason why the reading-out-by-definition should be limited to atheists & agnostics.  Many conservatives (myself included) whould agree that this is ultimately at heart an Anglo-Protestant nation.  In which case, where does that leave those who are not Anglo-Protestants?*

* As an empirical matter I think many religious traditions which have assimilated, such as Judaism and Catholicism, are cuturally Anglo-Protestantized (an atheist Jewish friend who was raised Orthodox told me he refused to enter Reform Temples, as they were “too Christian”).  And Mormonism, though recognized as non-Christian by most Christians, is clearly an organic outgrowth of American New England Protestantism.

Posted in Odds & Ends, politics | Tagged , | 21 Comments

Mystery Man

This story in this morning’s New York Post caught my eye.

He’s developed a scientific theory to prove God’s existence, but a wealthy Upper East Side man can’t figure out what happened to his $200,000 donation to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation.

Richard Sills — an eccentric educator/scientist/poet who has run for president — has filed suit against the Great Communicator’s foundation for allegedly keeping him in the dark about what it’s doing with his money …

Sills, a computer scientist, offers up his scientific proof of God based on what he calls, “The Law of Opposites.” He concludes since there’s no evidence of God’s existence, God must exist.

Well, that seems to me like a promising approach. Who is Richard Sills, though? For a guy who’s run for president, he’s left a remarkably thin trail. All I could find on a quick google was this:

On Wednesday June 6, 2001, the back page of the Business Day section of The New York Times was devoted to Richard Sills’ “A Scientific Proof of The Existence of God” …

I’m sure the businesspersons of New York found that very improving. But who is the guy?

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Libertarians & the Secular Right

Over at Volokh Conspiracy Ilya Somin points to this weblog, and notes:

Although one of the four contributors (Olson) is more libertarian than conservative, the main focus of the blog seems to be on the latter. After all, few doubt that one can be both an atheist and a libertarian. Many of the most influential libertarian thinkers of modern times were atheists or agnostics (e.g. – Milton Friedman, F.A. Hayek, and Ayn Rand). Although there are also some highly religious libertarian intellectuals, including some of my co-bloggers here at the VC, few if any libertarian theists doubt that an atheist can be just as much a libertarian as they are.

I wish I could be a libertarian. But my current understanding of human nature makes me not much of one. My own inclination is to err on the side of liberty, but unfortunately I do not believe that the broad license of liberty which most libertarians believe right and proper would be conducive to the flourishing of human society or the contentment of most individuals.*  I am willing to be convinced otherwise and brought back to the libertarian fold…. (Also, I consider libertarianism a species of liberalism, only tactically aligned with American conservatism, though temporary alliances stretched out may take on an air of permanence)

* Since most libertarians today derive their position from utilitarianism, the disagreement here is about what is more than how things should be (i.e., if most libertarians were grounded in Natural Rights it might be the latter).

Posted in culture, philosophy | Tagged | 14 Comments

Religion and Morality: The Home Front

I’m curious: how often do parents in religious households back up the command: “Stop hitting your brother!” with the addendum, “which a close reading of the interaction of the Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Commandments would suggest is prohibited”? Or even with the more straightforward: “because God said not to!” Relatively rarely, my guess is, because parental authority contains its own compulsion—and, hence, irresistible logic. I may be wrong, however, and will humbly look forward to being corrected accordingly.

Continue reading

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Do We Exist?

Mr. Hume:  Concerning your correspondent:

Modern rationalistic secularism is clearly a product of the left. (Think of the origin of the terms left and right.)

That is only half true. How many of the French revolutionaries were unbelievers? Robespierre was not; Danton I don’t know; … someone should do a tally. Their religious commonality was a hatred of the arrogance, power, and corruption of the established church. That left plenty of room for other religious opinions.  And the Right they were opposing was not, to put it mildly, congruent with American conservatism.  Your correspondent may, of course, be a clerico-monarchist; but if so, he is in even more of a minority among American conservatives than we are!  (And would have been in an even smaller minority among our nation’s Founders.) 

Contrariwise, leftists have often been driven by religious impulses:  I wrote an essay about one such here, and there is a partial list of prominent Christian Socialists here. The Labour Party in England was founded by Nonconformists, not atheists, and drew great strength over many decades from the chapel-goers of Wales and the English North. Your correspondent has an extraordinarily simple-mimded conception of the relationship between religion and politics.

I really don’t think this is a disputable contention.

He’s saying this to a chap traveling under the pen-name “David Hume”?

I think someone can be a person of the right and have a secularist tic.

Tic, schmic.  What your correspondent thinks fails the reality check. There are many people like us:  people who cherish limited government, fiscal restraint, personal liberty, free enterprise, self-support, patriotic defense of the homeland and its borders, love of the Constitution, respect for established ways of doing things, pride in Western Civilization, etc., and yet who cannot swallow stories about the Sky Father and the Afterlife, miraculous births and revivifications.  What does the one set of things have to do with the other?  We are secular conservatives. What else are we? Figments of our own imaginations?

I don’t deny that Derbyshire is generally a man of the right.

Jolly decent of him.

But there can not be a secular right in mass,

What does that mean? I doubt anyone on this site imagines that the American right will swing secular next month, next year, or in the next decade. I certainly don’t. There are lots of us though, and that’s a mass.

… because the right opposes secularism almost by definition.

I think this means:  “Most Americans who think of themselves as on the right are hostile to secularism.” That is true, but there is a great deal more to be said. Here is David Frum saying some of it in Dead Right:

[T]he conservative movement is secular to its toes. Even those conservatives, like [Irving] Kristol and Pat Buchanan, who believe that excessive secularism is a genuine problem, believe it for secular reasons. They expect that a more devout America would be a better-behaved America … But … American churchgoers will almost certainly disappoint the intellectuals who trust in them … Fundamentalists will go on giving conservative Republicans their votes, but it is not from them that the conservative movement of the future will draw its ideas.

Conservative movers and shakers, David implies — correctly, I believe — are in the position of the magistrate in Gibbon’s famous quip about the various modes of worship in ancient Rome, which “were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful.” To say this does not preclude individual cases of the magistrate himself being religious, as (for example) Pat Buchanan certainly is.

There can not be a secularist right (or secular conservatism) in mass in America because America is a particularisticly Christian country …

See above. I have already agreed that secular conservatives are not going to take over American conservatism any time soon. We just want to play in the band.

I’d add another point. America’s “particularly Christian character” is a thing of the moment. In my lifetime (which hasn’t been that long) I have seen two deeply Christian nations lose their religion. I mentioned one of them up above: Wales, whose chapels were packed every Sunday in my childhood, and were centers for communal life in a way few American churches are. Those chapels are now derelict. In 2001 they were closing at the rate of one per week.

Ireland, too. Forty years ago there was hardly a more religious nation in the world. The 1951 census showed only 64 atheists in the entire Republic of Ireland. Nowadays the single-digit stats for Irish religion concern vocations:  just nine priests were ordained in 2007 (when 160 retired or died).

I have no idea whether this de-religioning will happen here. Neither does your correspondent, though. I see no strong reason to think it couldn’t happen here. Modernity is a force not to be underestimated; and religious particularism is a shaky foundation on which to build an enduring political philosophy.

… conservatives, if they are actually conservatives …

Here we go with the litmus test.  What next, public self-criticism sessions?  I smell ideology.  Where’s my garlic?

… should seek to conserve that particularity.

Well, religious conservatives perhaps should, but I don’t see what’s in it for the rest of us.

Secularism is virtually the opposite of Christian particularity.

Hard to argue with that. But wouldn’t, say, Judaism, also be “virtually the opposite of Christian particularity”? How about Hinduism? Back to the Founders:

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.  (Jefferson, Notes on Virginia)

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This “Hume” on That Hume

I feel somewhat strange posting this, but I just want everyone to know: David Hume is not my Ayn Rand!  I only say this because several people seem to be under the impression that I agree with all of David Hume’s propositions. Some have mocked the fact that I agree with proposition “X” when Hume argued for “!X,” and so forth.  Rather, my selection of the name “David Hume” (my real  identity is no secret) is simply a homage, as the Scottish philosopher was both an unbeliever and a reputed Tory (and in my youth I greatly admired Hume, and to a great extent still do).  Additionally, I will go on the record to reiterate that those who contribute to this weblog speak for themselves.

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Is the Secular Right an oxymoron?

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. Continue reading

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Science & progress

Some have left comments (which I have deleted) to the effect of “scientists once accepted X, but now accept -X, therefore why should one put stock in acceptance of evolutionary theory?” This is obviously a complicated issue, and there is a whole domain of philosophy of science which is not even an obscure field (e.g., Popper & Kuhn are relatively well known names). But I think the problem with this sort of statement is that more often scientific progress occurs like so:

X +/- 10 ? X +/- 1 ? X +/- 0.1

Scientific models become more precise and are refined so as to generate more fruitful predictions. It seems more accurate to say that Relativity did not overturn Newtonian Mechanics so much as extend, supersede and refine.  R. A. Fisher’s Genetical Theory of Natural Selection did not overturn Darwin’s original formulation of the process by which evolution was driven by natural selection, rather, it added a mathematical formality which aided in the process of verification and refutation.

Why am I posting so much about science?  First, I do think it is fair to say that the Right has a “Science Problem.”  But secondly, my own conservatism is grounded and framed in the scientific understanding of human nature, at least to the extent we understand it.  Any conservatism which is empirical and takes the idea of a human nature seriously must ultimately assimilate the most recent findings of the evolutionary & behavioral sciences.

Posted in philosophy | Tagged | 9 Comments