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Please Stop Celebrating the Naked Public Square
Fifteen years ago, as a college undergraduate, I had the opportunity to visit Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It’s an interesting place, and some parts are quite moving. Nearly everyone comes away haunted by the Children’s Memorial, commemorating the 1.5 million Jewish children killed in the Holocaust. For me though, another very memorable bit was the main museum, which told the story of the Holocaust from an angle I hadn’t seen before.
Of course, I had studied the Holocaust in school and seen the classic movies. I had heard the pious cliche (laughable when you think about it) that “this is disturbing but we study it anyway so that this can never happen again.” But when American schoolteachers cover the Holocaust, the impression they give is that the extermination of Jews just resulted from a random outpouring of wild-eyed hatred, which could as easily have fallen on short people or green-eyed people or anybody else who happened to be a little different. Yad Vashem’s narrative was much more attentive to the fact that it was not short people or green-eyed people who were hated and killed; it was Jews. And that really wasn’t a point of random happenstance.
In the end, that museum basically amounts to a kind of apologia for the State of Israel. (This also explains another slightly eerie thing about Yad Vashem, which is that it is usually packed with armed and uniform-clad IDF soldiers. I gathered a visit to the museum was a normal part of their training.) It certainly gave my 20-year-old self a lot to consider. That was the first time I understood the really interesting (and tragic) thing about the Holy Land, which is that everybody there has a victim complex and, as inconvenient as that is politically, everybody there has some justification for having a victim complex. Their “victim narratives” ring true, at least to a considerable extent.
I thought it might be nice to set the stage with that story because it’s always good to remember that other people in the world have bigger problems than us. But I still found myself reflecting on this last week, which was a tough week for me news-wise. Somehow I can’t stop reading the coverage on Indiana’s RFRA law and related events, and most of it leaves me feeling beaten down and disgusted. But here’s the thing: it’s not the liberal (mainstream) media that I find so demoralizing. Those people are just doing what they do; I expect it from them. What discourages me is the coverage I read from our side.
Over and over again, I read how shocking and unexpected it is that the left has turned out to be so intolerant. They’re betraying their principles! Who knew the left actually wanted more than just to help gays and lesbians find love and happiness? What will it take to call them back to their once-professed commitment to tolerance and respect for diversity? We should probably write a lot more articles about freedom and small government.
This sort of talk is maddening to people who share my way of thinking. See, the thing is, we figured out years ago that same-sex marriage was about much more than just letting homosexuals be happy. But everybody (frequently including fellow conservatives) told us we were paranoid and closed-minded for thinking this. We’ve known for a long time that liberal progressivism can’t be trusted to protect our fundamental rights, and most especially not our right to religious freedom. But our dour assessments mostly got us written off as pessimists or extremists, and we were told that a harmonious society requires reasonable compromises.
This writing has been on the wall for decades. As commentators like William F. Buckley and Richard John Nauhaus were explaining in the early 80s, secularism undermines the foundations that are necessary for a truly tolerant, pluralistic society. Eventually it becomes a ruthless enforcer of morally relativistic secular norms. But its primary target isn’t, you know, whatever random people happened to choose the wrong color of shirt today. It’s traditional religion. Most especially, it is religiously orthodox Jews and Christians.
We are the target. Not “freedom” or “limited government.” That’s not to say, obviously, that those concepts have no relevance here, but if you’re unwilling to look beyond such formalistic categories, you can’t really understand what’s going on in America today. It’s not random happenstance that Christians (not Muslims or Sikhs or libertarian atheists) have been in the sights of liberal progressives, and if this turn of events has taken you by surprise, you should maybe consider whether there are other things about your view of the American social and political landscape that should be revised. Because, see, some of us weren’t surprised at all.
To be clear, my purpose here is not to gloat about the prescience of particular religious conservatives I admire. That’s obviously pointless, and, hey, reading social and political trends is always extremely difficult. The better question is: what do we do now? And my first suggestion is: stop celebrating the naked public square.
The answer to our problems isn’t a doubling down on a value-neutral, “tolerant” civil society with very limited government. My objection to that solution starts right here: it isn’t possible. Enshrining moral relativism as the norm for public life was what got us to this sticky spot. For the record, Falwellesque Moral Majorityism isn’t the answer either, and if you see that as the only alternative you need to broaden your horizons a little. I recommend looking at authors like Buckley and Neuhaus, but also Kirk, Burke, and other people in that vein. I want limited government, and I care about tolerance too — but we need to think more deeply about what sort of philosophical and social foundation could actually put those goods within reach.
On a somewhat more practical level, the way to rebuff the left’s advances is not to reiterate again and again our love of formal goods like “freedom.” We need the public to appreciate who and what is really being lost here. We need to awaken their desire to see Christians (not just, you know, whoever might happen to be religious in some way) living lives of integrity. The left is so good at this, and we’re generally not, but exciting sympathy is the way to persuade the public to oppose the extremism of the progressive left.
That’s uncomfortable for many conservatives. I understand that completely. I could probably write a book on all the reasons why. But at some point we have to ask ourselves: are we fighting the war that’s happening or just the one inside our heads?
Published in General
I have said this before, but I’ll repeat it. Tolerance is actually dependent on a conception of sin. Christians know we are all sinners and that God is the ultimate judge. We must judge what sin is in order to live our lives, but we are also told to judge not that we be not judged–to let God be the judge. We hope to be forgiven by others so we try to tolerate them so that they will tolerate and forgive us. If this all sounds like it might lead to a lot of tentativeness and soul-searching, it does. But that is a good thing.
Secularism has no such concept. Toleration and forgiveness are just not in their playbook. They are certain they know what is right and anyone who doesn’t agree is evil. They privilege certain groups who can do no wrong and attack traditional allegiances like family or church community and belief systems. They say they champion the oppressed but don’t really. They are a mass of confusion, but are pretty darn insistent about forcing their confusion on others and shunning those who won’t accept their world view.
Actually, part of the reason we’re losing is because we’re just nicer. We’re going to have to get better at sticking up for ourselves and our beliefs.
The founders were an eclectic mix of everything from devout puritans to atheists, with every shade of Christian possible in between. Yes, it’s probably impossible to separate out the Enlightenment liberalism of the founding from the broader development of western civilization (or, as it was often called, “Christendom”), but it’s equally important to remember that the Enlightenment was as much a reaction against religion as it was a reification of the deeper principles. The religious toleration of the Constitution was a strike against the fusion of religious and secular power so common in Europe at the time – as you say, an explicit severing of divine authority and civil society both for the sake of devout believers and secular society. That framework allowed a fantastic flowering of faith, but it also allowed civil society to go its merry way, minimally-encumbered by religious practice.
Secularism, as practiced by the modern left, is really better understood as its own religion – I haven’t read Bottum’s book, but since you mentioned it I have read some reviews, and thanks for the reference. Like any memeplex, it tries to replicate itself as much as possible. Like the puritan Christianity from which it is descended, it is both highly self-righteous and highly evangelical, and so spreads and reacts in recognizable patterns. Outrages. Moral panics. The creep of ideas from the radical fringe to the moderate center. In form (if not in content), the liberal conversion on LGBT rights looks an awful lot like the sudden explosion of abolitionism that took place in the north during the 1830’s, ’40’s, and ’50’s. The Laramie Project is Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and RFRA is the Fugitive Slave Law. Various Christian and secular memeplexes have battled for control of the hearts and minds of Americans since this country’s inception. That’s what tolerance has wrought. It hasn’t always been pretty – at various times Mormons, Catholics, and atheists have all had it pretty rough – but it’s been a darn-sight better than most of the rest of the world. Through it all, we’ve always had peace. Never a single pogrom or kristallnacht. If it’s all right with you, I’ll stick with what’s worked for the past 250 years.
I don’t know…modern secularism seems to have quite a lot of that. After all, aren’t we all born with the indelible stain of racial/religious/gender privilege? And don’t we have to strive manfully all our lives to ensure that we act in anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-bigoted ways? Don’t they even have the “and the last shall be first” cosmology, with their fixation on hierarchies of oppression? Seems to me like they’ve got too much sin in their worldviews, not too little.
Rachel, I really want to help you, I really do. But you make it difficult because your standard of what constitutes help is so high. It never seems to be good enough.
Let me correct myself. They have a cartoonish notion of sin, yet believe those who disagree with them are all about sin and evil, but have no concept that they themselves are sinners, which prevents them from tolerance, repentance, forgiveness and understanding of human nature. They are in short, insufferably self-righteous and intolerant.
You’re not going to have that choice Adam. That’s Rachel’s point. It was Christianity that kept the leftist instinct at bay.
Hear, hear!
So Adam, is it your position then that things are going well right now in this country? That our liberty is safe and in good hands? That sort of seems to be the implication of what you’re saying.
Oh Mike. Look, as I say, I don’t want you to say anything you don’t really believe. But I’m not just making personal demands here; I’m making strategic suggestions. It seems to me that most libertarians feel that they are the ones with the answers here, most of which involve strategies to bypass the culture wars altogether through value-neutral small-government solutions. I’m arguing that perhaps you’re seeing it all wrong. Where you think you’re crafting strategic solutions, you’re really just sitting out the real war. That’s the war in which your liberty is on the line as much as anyone else’s.
And it’s leftists that keep Pat Robertson at bay. I’m glad that we have a healthy marketplace of ideas. To quote the redoubtable Burke: “experience is the school of mankind, and she will learn at no other.”
So long as we defend the bare-bones framework of rights and liberties encoded in the constitution, we can sway from puritan moral panic to relaxed deism to libertine hedonism and back without suffering too much damage.
Small government, liberty, and virtue all go together. You can’t stand for one very effectively if you don’t stand for all of them.
For what value of “well”? I certainly don’t think that religious liberty is as respected as it ought to be, which is why I spend a thoroughly unhealthy amount of time yelling about it on facebook and with my family and friends. But I don’t think the republic is about to collapse. I don’t think that all virtue has gone from the people – but that’s probably because I don’t particularly thing Christianity per se is all that necessary for virtue. I look at my generation and for all that we’re shrill ninnies about gay marriage, we’re finding jobs, getting married, saving money, having kids, and generally being solid citizens. Between the courts, the Madisonian division and opposition of powers, and the fact that the left’s shriller elements are rapidly being exposed for the censorious [CoC violation] they are, we’re all going to be fine so long as we insist on the Constitution and are willing to be the bigger side, arguing in good faith.
Value-neutral small government allows people to practice virtue as they see fit.
Indeed. And, within certain parameters, will work out just fine. But when there are no limits, . . .
. . . when all this is the case, value-neutral small government will not lead to a whole lot of virtue.
And, having said that, I’m not sure myself how much standing for virtue involves using government as a means to the promotion of virtue. It’s certainly not the only means, almost certainly not the primary means.
I can’t say I read things the same way, but I think I see a little better where you are coming from. I guess the theme in your posts has often been, “ok libertarians, you’ve given us the right answer, now what’s plan B?”
That’s a fair question. First of all, if I understand what you mean by the “naked public square” then I wholeheartedly agree it shouldn’t be celebrated. The people in the square are more often than not calling for less liberty. They tend to believe yelling and emoting about things they think they want is an effective use of resources and the correct way to affect change. Screaming about how bad something makes you feel is not worth praise or accommodation.
Now we get to the part about what to do about it. Well, I’ve just come out strongly against the naked public square, so I hope you see me as on your side there.
Beyond that, what I think you want is people to talk about how great Christians are in general and how we owe our pluralistic society to the Christian foundation, and if we demonize the standard bearers of Christianity it’s plausible we will lose the ideas that make liberty possible, especially since the people doing the demonizing reveal themselves to be no friend of liberty.
OK, can I do that without having to enter the disgusting public square we both hold in contempt?
Exactly right Mike! I think too we need to be telling our stories and that includes your story. You especially care about keeping government out of your parenting. So tell your story. Tell how government is trying to prevent you from home-schooling, is using school time to teach your child about various aspects of sex way too early and way to explicitly and in ways that don’t comport with your values, that sort of thing. Whatever fits your case. Or you can tell about the positive thing you do that everyone regards as weird and show why it is a position to be respected and tolerated. The point of Rachel’s Federalist column today is that conservatives need to humanize what we believe by telling our stories instead of trying to rely on abstract principles to make our case.
As something of a relativist, I’m not certain why your first point is necessarily a bad thing.
The second point seems more or less in line with longer trends in the Anglophone world concerning generational attitudes towards hedonism (Edwardian debauchery -> Victorian prudery; Flappers -> Depression -> Baby Boom -> Man in the Gray Flannel Suit -> Summer of Love -> Silent Majority)
The third point is what inevitably happens when a puritan moral panic sweeps the country – we get incredibly tetchy over increasingly fine-grained things until the whole thing breaks like a fever and we go back to more-or-less normality.
As an agnostic I don’t really see any problem with the fourth point, though I would point out that a rigorous application of federalism allows localities and states to base their laws on whatever they see fit (within reasonable limits). I include “rigorous application of federalism” within my general rubric of “small government policies,” but your mileage may vary.
The fifth point is somewhat inevitable given the sheer geographic size of this country. I can’t think of a time when the north east, midwest, south east, and west coast didn’t all have distinctive social characteristics that sometimes existed in opposition to one another. And let’s not get started on Texas. A rigorous application of federalism goes a long way to making this not a problem.
The sixth point is a problem, I agree. However, I would like to point out that once again this isn’t really all that uncommon in U.S. history, and in some ways is actively encouraged by our decentralized political system. It’d be a bit of a strawman for me to say that the only alternative is a Scandinavian-style monoculture, but only a bit of one, and in any event I don’t think that’s particularly desirable.
I’m going to have to just flat-out disagree with point seven. If no-one thought that attaining virtue was worthwhile or even possible, we wouldn’t be seeing anything resembling the current whirlwind of kulturkampf. No, our problems come from the fact that we have several highly-aggressive subcultures simultaneously jockeying for position, each with a very rigorous definition of what virtue is, and each issuing frequent demands that their adherents live up to those virtues. The struggle comes from the fact that those virtues are, in many cases, directly contradictory. We have an excess of moralizing, not a dearth of it.
Look, we’re never going to live in a culture where no-one dissents from the dominant moral code. More importantly, I wouldn’t want to live in such a society, because that would be totalitarian and kind of horrifying. That means there’s always going to be conflict between groups with differing moral visions. We can either get on board with Merina and Rachel (as I understand their position) and accept that this will forever be a zero sum contest, or we can go with the Madisonian idea that tolerance and a “live and let live” modus vivendi will allow us to minimize those struggles. Personally, I’m on board with the latter position.
Adam, the point is that the current regime that is trying to shut down Christians is totalitarian–which you have already admitted–and will not allow a return to normal. You are utterly misreading what Rachel and I are saying if you think that this will forever be a zero sum contest. It can’t be that forever. The current regime is trying crush all before it and will stop at nothing less. It especially wants to chase Christians out of the public square, but that isn’t how Christians operate. We’ve accommodated and accommodated and been lied about over and over with a complicit media, and look where we are. Without us there, you are not going to have the world you want. The left will not allow it. It is the Christian influence that has kept their totalitarian impulses at bay. And BTW, they are the ones who spread the lie that there was ever a threat of a theocracy. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. The PURITANS for heck’s sake insisted on separation of church and state, and they were way more zealous than any Christians today. Anyway, Christians believe that the Christian life is meaningless unless chosen by the individual, which is not a recipe for forcing anyone. Do we want laws that allow us to practice our faith? Yes, absolutely. Do we want a good moral climate, as in laws against drugs and the like? Yes. Would we force anyone to be a Christian? Never. Will progressives force everyone in to their statist “religion”? You better believe it.
Well, here we’re just going to have to agree to disagree on several points. I’ll keep defending toleration and pluralism against any totalitarian impulse, and you’ll defend your Christian interests. Hopefully we’ll be on the same side more than not.
Incidentally the Puritans governed Massachussetts as more or less and out-and-out theocracy for several decades, and the state had an officially “established” religion for several years past the signing of the Constitution. But that’s just a nit-picky point of history, and I only bring it up because one of my weaknesses is a tendency toward pedantry.
Adam, I think our interests are the same. I am for toleration and pluralism. These ideas come from the Christian worldview, which values conscience and freedom of choice. I’m not just defending Christian interests. I’m defending everybody’s interests against the totalitarian impulses of the left, including yours. At least you see where they are coming from.
Well, it looks like you agree with my IF-THEN statement but don’t think very many of the components of the IF part are true.
I don’t have time to address every detail, and that could get tedious, and I’m not at all sure we’d understand each other anyway. So I think it’s best if I give you one clarification and ask for ask for clarification from you on two points.
A clarification from me: the sixth bullet point had nothing to do w/ a lack of people who are not skeptical about the reality, possibility, or importance of virtue; it’s about a lot of people who are skeptical about it.
A clarification I’d appreciate from you: What sort of a moral relativist are you? (My biggest reason for curiosity: I don’t think of genuine moral relativists and people who think it’s a problem when a society little room for agreement as to what virtue is as overlapping categories.)
Another clarification I’d appreciate: How is it that you like Madison but have no problem with ruling improper any appeal to the foundations of morality suggested by the Declaration of Independence?
Fair, though I think we’re probably mostly in agreement. Sorry if I came off as confrontational. As I said earlier in the thread, sometimes my pedantry gets away from me.
I think we may wind up disagreeing here – I tend to think that people who by your or my lights seem to be either lacking in virtue or caught up in thinking that virtue is either unattainable or nonexistant just have different definitions of virtue. Hedonism still contains a conception of virtue – it just is oriented towards physical pleasure rather than self-denial or self-mastery. This approach doesn’t solve the problem, and I’m not really sure it is even all that big of a deal. I’ll happily drop it if it’s just going to cause contention.
I vacillate between descriptive and meta-ethical relativism,
Descriptive relativism is a weak claim about the world – namely, it’s the idea that when people say they have different values than I do, even if those values appear nonsensical, self-serving, or contradictory, they’re generally not lying. Extrapolating outward, you can arrive at a few different positions – the most interesting one being that if someone says they view a situation differently than I do, I should probably try to figure out why they’re saying what they’re saying before I make any judgments. In practice, I implement this by trying to pass an intellectual Turing Test for each other worldview I come into contact with.
Meta-ethical relativism is a slightly stronger claim: because people can honestly disagree about ethics, worldviews, etc., and because human experience is subjective, when two different worldviews come into conflict it is very hard and perhaps impossible to state that any one scheme of truth-claims about “good,” “bad,” “right,” and “wrong,” is objectively correct in the sense that e=mc2 is objectively correct. This is also sometimes called “historical relativism” or “historicism” because it places a great deal of emphasis on the contingent circumstances of time and place surrounding the development and implementation of moral systems – ie., what was considered proper behavior in 17th century China should not be expected to be the same as what would be considered proper in 19th century Bulgaria or 21st century America. I actually take this a step further and sometimes claim that this means we shouldn’t directly compare ethics and morals from vastly divergent places and time periods, because the limited vocabulary we use when discussing ethics and morality will usually not be able to communicate the subtler shades of meaning across the cultural divide, leading to misinterpretation, confusion, schvitzing, and plotzing. I am aware that this sometimes conflicts with my desire to Turing test each ideology I come across.
I draw the line at so-called normative relativism, which is the super-strong claim that because morality isn’t objective, no-one should ever be able to judge or condemn anyone else. I don’t care what fancy arguments have been made for it in the halls of philosophy departments; it’s too cute by half, and deadly poison to any society that wants to keep any semblance of self.
Ultimately, my position can be summed up thusly: “Not everyone thinks like I do, the people who don’t think like I do usually have a good – or at least interesting – reason to think differently, and in the grand scheme of history all of our ideas will constantly get jumbled up, shaken around, and pureed into new and strange forms. The most we can do is argue and fight for our respective positions as best we can, but there are no guarantees as to who will dominate the moral puree in the future.”
I find it very amusing that the Declaration, which mentions “[man’s] Creator” once, and “divine Providence” one other time, and was written by a man whose hobby was literally cutting all the miracles and supernatural things out of the Bible, is your go-to document for showing that the “foundations of morality” are religious. But as you say, I like Madison, not Jefferson, so I prefer the Constitution to the Declaration. The Constitution famously doesn’t mention a deity at all.
I do admit that the U.S. was born of and has lived with a variety of Christian traditions, and contra your post don’t think that appeals to religion are prima facie improper. But I think that our political system is designed to handle religious pluralism just as it is designed to handle political pluralism, and so maintain that laws animated by religious faith are properly capped at the local and state levels.
Well, same from here if I did that! And if you did that: no problem!
I think you misunderstood me. I’m not talking about Mill vs. Kant vs. Aristotle or something like that. I’m talking about things like the idea that there is no moral truth, the idea that all moral truths vary according to perspective, and the idea that moral truth cannot be known. (I’m happy to drop this topic myself.)
Ok. Now if I understand you rightly, this is a view I would sooner call “moral agnosticism” than “moral relativism.”
And now I have to try to figure out how it relates to the topic. I said that virtue, liberty, and small government go together; it’s hard to have much of one without having a lot of all three. You said that value-neutral small government leaves plenty of room for virtue. I said that’s only true when the broader culture doesn’t make widespread virtue next to impossible and cited the teaching of moral relativism in public school as one of seven reasons the broader culture doesn’t do this.
So now I can address your so-called “moral relativism.” Since it’s just a moral agnosticism, I don’t see what reason it could give you to not be concerned about public schools teaching moral relativism. They aren’t doing what you do–being cautious about moral knowledge. They are doing something much worse. They are teaching that no moral principles are even about reality.
This travesty can be described in one of two ways; (a) it can be described as teaching that there is no moral truth to know, which is contrary to your cautious moral agnosticism; or (b) it can be described as teaching that all moral claims can be known to be false, since Christianity and Islam and Kant and Mill and Aristotle all make moral claims about reality, which is also contrary to your moral agnosticism.
Another clarification from me: I did nothing of the sort. I was asking you to explain yourself. (I wouldn’t appeal to the reliability of the Declaration as a premise in a metaethical argument without explicitly saying so; and I probably wouldn’t appeal to it at all!)
I did not say that you said that. I said that you said that you have no problem with ruling appeals to religion and natural law improper; was that not the intent of your words “I don’t really see any problem with the fourth point”?