Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Their Religion Problem — and Ours   [Jonah Goldberg]

Since it seems were wading deep into the vortex of religion and politics, let me just throw one quick thought out: It depends. I think Hitchens' point about Romney and the official racism of the Mormon Church has some merit, even if I don't share his acidic attitude toward Mormonism or religion. I see nothing wrong with politely asking him about that.

But more to the point, it doesn't matter nearly as much as it would if Romney was running as a "Mormon president." Religion is relevant if politicians claim or telegraph that they will rely on their religion as a guide to their public policies. I don't think we — meaning voters, journalists, political chatterers generally — need to be wild-eyed about this. People understand that your basic religious upbringing will inform your values and instincts toward certain policy questions. We live in a religiously informed culture and we know that you can be "religious" in outlook without being programmitcally doctrinal.

That said, I take it that Huckabee is running as a "Christian leader" and therefore I think how he defines that title and what it means for his approach to public policy is entirely fair game. He's a big boy and a smooth talker so I'm sure he has an answer.

What I find annoying is that liberalism largely exempts itself from this sort of investigation (and liberal journalists dispense this exemption freely and without reflection). The beauty of religious conservatives is that their dogma is open to scrutiny and investigation. Conservatives generally have a written canon that includes everything from the Bible to scores of political books. Liberalism's canon is largely unwritten, it's dogma made-up as they go along (and yes, I'm over-generalizing to make a point; there are plenty of important liberal philosophical treatises that go unread by politicians and political journalists).

As someone who subscribes to the view that liberalism is a secular religion, it is very frustrating that liberal politicians do not offer up a paper trail for people to scrutinize the way conservatives do. Liberalism has a dogma as rich and serious as conservatism, but you can't go to a liberal politician and ask: Are you loyal to John Dewey? Richard Rorty? John Rawls? You can't ask what their bible is because they are acolytes of the bookless faith of good deeds, the cult of do-goodery. So when they argue for keeping "religion" out of politics they are saying "keep your religion out of politics." When they say that we need to "get past ideology" they are saying we need to get past your ideology. This means that conservatives must constantly defend their own territory rather than demand a similar accounting from liberals.

Unfortunately, our political culture is ill-equipped with dealing with this fact. This wasn't true before Woodrow Wilson and the New Deal cemented a new conception of the primacy of government in our lives. The assumption that the state should be an all-purpose problem solver is a deeply ideological — I would argue religious — position. But we have been trained not to see it that way. And so we don't ask the right questions.

11/27 05:02 PMShare