I just noticed that David Kirkpatrick at NewMajority.com noted that he read Secular Right. Some people have wondered what this website is about in positive political terms. To some extent I’m wondering about what NewMajority.com is about aside from acknowledging that there is something wrong on the Right (wrong not in a metaphysical sense, but in a sense of democratic political success). I think there is something of the same issue here on this website, we tend to attempt to clear a space where it is acceptable to air both secular and conservative thoughts without accusation of contradiction, but many of our critics suggest that there is no issue at all and no real conservatives make arguments on religious grounds alone. That is debatable, but I thought I would bring something up which might flesh out a positive position which I hold, and that regards a moderate restrictionism when it comes to current levels of immigration. As it happens, David Frum, has swung to this side in recent years as well.
My reasoning for this is rather simple, and I sketched out some of the rationale in an essay for Taki’s Magazine. It is based on an empirical assertion as to the limits of human rationality, and the latent hidden variables within existing societies which we may not see. Some libertarians believe that free movement of labor is both a moral and economic issue because allowing those from poor nations to migrate to wealthy nations increases the wealth of the poor. Additionally, they believe that usually that the wealthy are also enriched because of the economic benefits which accrue from specialization within a society (e.g., hire an immigrant to do all your own yard work so you can work more and play more). Many Left liberals agree as to the policy though their rationale might differ (though ultimately it is about utility there as well).
To all this I would contend that there are likely negative externalises not being considered (e.g., all immigrants must be treated in hospitals) nor the spillover effects from a particular type of society (e.g., a literacy rate above a particular threshold resulting in certain expectations which are reasonable from your fellow citizens). Open borders are problematic taking into account current configurations of human nature and society. Ultimately these are not metaphysical assertions about the inviolability of a particular culture or nation-state in a specific form, but a proximate utilitarian assessment about maintaining a flourishing society. In short, I believe society is better conceived of as an evolving organism, changing with new inputs, rather than a modular construction which can be mixed & matched at a whim as factors of production are swapped in & out.
I see you bringing up a lot of interesting niche news here, but I don’t feel like the site has taken a stand on many of the broader issues.How does the Secular Right propose we handle health care, the environment, social security, Gitmo, torture, etc? A political movement is best defined by how it deals with things that are unprofitable but still important. These are the things I find hardest to blog about as a libertarian, which is why I try to do so directly.
Well again, “the site” doesn’t take stands, individual contributors do. Additionally, I don’t think the “Secular Right” takes a specific set of issues as necessarily entailed by secularity or Rightism. Just like Members of the “Religious Right” disagree on specific details. I mean, Walter Olson is libertarian (if on the conservative side), so you can infer from that what his own policy positions are (as well as his writings). Derb has been writing about politics for years, as has Heather. Rather that a specific set of positions entailed by a precise set of axioms (which is somewhat a libertarian way of thinking anyhow), I like to think about my non-religious conservatism as a disposition or modality of reasoning about issues and attaining ends. But, to be frank, I also think it is more than a method, it’s a culture. I think Derb’s column on Metrocons points to some issues, which I think are also evident in David Frum’s outlook….
I haven’t seen much here beyond freshman dorm atheism. The usual post here is about some quaint stupid thing some religious person has done or said.
Why should there a forum called “Secular Right”? Other than “life” issues all conservative ideas come from the right. All left wing ideas come from some liberal interpretation of Christianity or Judaism. For many on the right, abortion is the overarching issue, and for many of them it is the *only* issue.
Religious people have not dragged the Republican Party too far to the right, they have dragged it too far to the left. The voters of Sugar Land apparently were happy Tom DeLay was a reliable vote against abortion and either wanted or didn’t care about the havoc he was wreaking with earmarks. There was some horror amongst conservatives when welfare reform was up that it might increase the number of abortions, and thus would be bad. Well, let me come right out and say it, maybe getting an abortion rather than having a child you can’t support and going on welfare is the more responsible action? But that makes me “not a Republican” to a lot of people.
George W. Bush extracted a terrible price from the party for doing the war on terror and the Iraq war. He demanded, and got, the right to spend whatever he thought necessary domestically to maintain a congressional majority, and destroyed the party in the process. Maybe we should have just gone with John Kerry and maintained a little dignity and credibility. I’m just sayin’.
Sugar Land voters didn’t re-elect Delay because he was pro-life. If he was a pro-life liberal, he’d have been tossed. At any rate the havoc DeLay was wreaking with earmarks is no worse than what other politicians have done. The thing that undid him was a combination of his abrasive personality and the political prosecution that was dropped once it had to, uh, go to court. If you like welfare reform, then you should like DeLay as he was the guy who kept all the tough stuff in the bill despite Clinton’s attempts to water them down. The fact is, no effective politician you find will have clean hands.
A Kerry win in 2004 would have been better for the country and the GOP and the right. It would have given Bushism the rejection it needed.
An excellent point, Thras. Religion seems to have butted in under the pretense that government is immoral as well as incompetent, and then used their newfound control to make the government more intrusive. The very concept of right and left has been corrupted; it now needs a qualifier for moral stance.
Even after reading everything posted on this site, I still don’t feel like I understand how a secular, social-conservative thinks. It just seems like secondhand religion to me. People who read the works of those who read The Books in order to squeeze out the philosophy without being tainted by the holiness. That is just an outside perspective. As someone who is not nearly as well read as Hume, I have trouble following his posts.
I don’t see all left wing ideas coming from religion. Most left wing ideas make sense without gods. They want the government to solve everyone’s problems. It makes less sense for the right, who want the government out of their lives, to dictate morality for others. It can certainly be argued that religion has been the primary drive, but not that it is necessary, which I think has been the main point made by this blog.
How does the Secular Right propose we handle health care, the environment, social security, Gitmo, torture, etc?
Hume responds that the site does not strive for a collective position; I would add that if an issue is not traditionally interlaced with religious claims, I don’t necessarily see the need to address it here. Anyone who wants to read my or the other contributors’ positions on purely political or cultural issues can do so elsewhere–as Walter Olson has already pointed out (for example, at: http://manhattan-institute.org/html/mac_donald.htm?f=yes). My purpose in contributing to this site is to beat back the assumption that as a conservative, I must be religious. Since the claim that the world is overseen by a loving, just God strikes me as wholly inconsistent with the evidence, I would prefer not to be associated with it. I am as annoyed by religious irrationalism as I am by any other kind of irrationalism.
If a conservative buttresses a political claim with a religious trump card, I would expect that someone on this site will call him on it. Conservative values–such as self-discipline and personal responsibility–are human values that need no religious justification. Religious conservatives strike me in any case as highly selective in their application of specifically Christian values to politics. My guess is that Jesus would be far more sympathetic to a redistributionist economic policy and far less solicitious of the claims of the wealthy to be left alone by the government than the Republican platform is. The Sermon on the Mount is not exactly license for calculating capitalist accumulation.
Hume mentions immigration. The Catholic Church’s position, articulated most frequently by Los Angeles Cardinal Mahoney, that “no one is illegal” is probably a fair reading of Jesus-centric ethics. I happen to believe that such a position is also deeply un-conservative. Conservatives should understand that respect for the rule of law is the irreducible precondition for a stable, prosperous society. Many prominent religious right-wing pundits, such as Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity, simply ignore their Church’s teachings when it comes to illegal immigration. Apparently, they pick and choose their pieties.
I’ve been a Frum admirer for a number of years. He writes with clarity and precision. (His literary excursions alone are worth the price of admission.) I’m not sure where his NewMajority is going, but clearly it’s an attempt to unwind the Bush years and clear out the charlatan thickets inhabited by reflexive, back to basics, conservatism. Whether such a project can succeed, electorally, seems to me dubious.
Contra Steel Phoenix, I don’t think that secular social conservatism is an oxymoron, much less “second-hand religion.” There’s some solid social science backing up the claims of secular social conservatism.
As for Razib, I’ll confess that I too have problems given my limited understanding. GeneExpression is not for the faint of heart.
Finally, I don’t much care whether or not SecularRight makes policy pronouncements (and I thought this question had been resolved in favor of the notion that it doesn’t have to). To me it’s enough that I can read some very intelligent bloggers–and commenters–on the Right without having to scroll over yards of editorializing on the March For Life. “Freshman dorm atheism?” A sophomoric trivialization.
The secular argument for social conservatism is, as far as I know, that social liberalism is too expensive–in fiscal terms, not moral ones. Consenting adults can do what they like, but why should I pay for the consequences? If you’re an umemployed woman with no financial resources who wants to have seven children by seven different men, none of whom sticks around long enough enough to change a diaper, much less contribute to the support of the kid, why should I have to support them? If you decide to become a junky or a lush, why should I pay for that? It has nothing to do with morality–just a disinclination to subsidize other people’s irresponsibility.
Consenting adults can do what they like, but why should I pay for the consequences? If you’re an umemployed woman with no financial resources who wants to have seven children by seven different men, none of whom sticks around long enough enough to change a diaper, much less contribute to the support of the kid, why should I have to support them?
Susan, that is a moral argument. It’s based on consequences instead of divine commands, but it is a moral argument, and I don’t think we should abandon the language because the religious use morality as well.
Of course, the very immoral answer to your question is that you support them because they are enough people in power who want to make you support them.
This is one of the reasons libertarianism doesn’t get off the drawing board. It relies on abstract appeals that ignore the real world. Theoretically, open borders is a libertarian position. The same can be said theoretically of a freer sexual atmosphere. Look at the libertines Reason magazine celebrates, like Madonna and Dennis Rodman. The problem is that in a democracy, things like that militate against libertarianism because they increase the number of non-libertarian voters and make society so ungoverned that everyone else will demand a heavy-handed state to restore order.
I should have stated more clearly that I was making a pragmatic rather than a religious argument in favor of social conservatism. I don’t care who zooms whom, as long as I don’t have to cash in a retirement fund to pay for it.
The problem, Susan, is that that argument doesn’t translate well into the real world. If you don’t foster and maintain a moral environment that sanctions serial illegitimacy and other “victimless” crimes, you will wind up with the social costs. That’ll come both in the form of taxes and a less secure society.
Unless I’m misunderstanding you, I don’t understand what would translate BETTER than an appeal to the wallet. Tell taxpayers that they’ll have to pay directly for the cost of serial illegitimacy, etc., and they might refuse to pay for it. Or at least try to elect people who won’t force them to pay for it.
In the beginnings of democracy it was widely thought it would bring failure as mob rule would act selfishly and create chaos. What we have found is that people rise to the responsibilities they are given. One of the reasons we fail to free people from tyranny is that they have been kept by their governments as children. When freed they act irresponsibly, but this doesn’t mean freedom is a failure. We are a sufficiently enlightened people to not need a mommy government doling out our allowance and keeping our fingers away from the stove burners.
What we have found is that people rise to the responsibilities they are given. One of the reasons we fail to free people from tyranny is that they have been kept by their governments as children…We are a sufficiently enlightened people to not need a mommy government doling out our allowance and keeping our fingers away from the stove burners.
I don’t think so. People were given unlimited credit, and they abused it, big time – now our nation faces bankruptcy. A structure that required 20% down payments and fixed interest rates and loan affordability – i.e. “keeping our fingers away from the stone burner” – might have forestalled this disaster.
We are a sufficiently enlightened people to not need a mommy government doling out our allowance and keeping our fingers away from the stove burners.
We?
How many are “we”?
Have a look at what the average Joe is, not even to speak of the most dejected.
This is the illusion of the intellectually well off, which, interestingly, strikes both on the right and on the left, with different consequences of course… 🙂
Ziel (and Steel Phoenix):
Essentially, you’ve not rebutted SP—the two of you are actually in agreement. Steel Phoenix merely didn’t finish his analogy.
The current debacle isn’t due to some being given huge amounts of credit. Rather, it’s due to their having been extended such credit by
coercive (government) policy forcing lending institutions to accomodate such applicants, compliant regulatory agencies condoning the “securitization” of these potentially weak loans along with others, and a further inclination on the part of authority to step into the picture to rescue the failures (and they may not be done yet).
All of these difficulties were predictable and, in fact, were predicted with surprising accuracy—just not ny the “right” people. The right people–the ones most responsible– are still in there to get the country out of the current mess. Don’t be surprised when some things get considerably worse than they are at present.