Still Crèche-y After All These Years
D.A. Ridgely on Nov 28th 2007
Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book II, Part III, Sect III
Questions regarding the Founding Fathers’ various religious beliefs or lack thereof and debate over whether America ought properly be described as a “Christian Nation” as either a historical or contemporary fact is becoming almost as annual a blogospheric event as the Christmas Season, er, Winter Holiday season, itself. At least as interesting a question, though, is why such questions should matter.
I weighed in on these questions online some three years ago, albeit as a commenter, on the now inactive blog Left2Right. Readers interested in my sparring back then with University of Michigan law professor Don Herzog and NYU philosopher David Velleman might take a peek here. (Mind you, that doesn’t mean I continue to believe everything I wrote back then.)
What is at stake here? I understand how conservatives, at least of a certain sort, would be keen to determine what Jefferson, Adams, etc. actually believed and meant to establish inasmuch as one of the central tenets of what I’ll call the Burkean variety of conservatism is respect for and at least prima facie deference to past institutions and practices. Such folks tend also and understandably to be more interested in history, itself.
I understand as well how liberals of the non-classical sort might also be keen to claim the Founders as historical allies and as champions of the Enlightenment both for its then revolutionary tenets and for its implicit legitimizing of revolutionary change. That is, it is surely part of the progressive’s self-image to believe that his politics are in some significant ways a logical extension of 18th century notions of religious tolerance, egalitarianism and popular sovereignty.
Finally, it is almost self-evident that many soi-disant “classical liberals” would seek both to identify with and to legitimize their own views by claiming common cause with the Founders.
Stepping back from the fray, however, at least one point becomes increasingly clear. However reasoned the debate may be among the intelligentsia of these respective camps, the general signal-to-noise ratio of the general public debate is far from audiophile quality. Thus, while Prof. Herzog might have wanted to analyze and critique on rational grounds the 2004 Texas Republican party platform’s assertion that “the United States of America is a Christian nation, and the public acknowledgment of God is undeniable in our history [and that] our nation was founded on fundamental Judeo-Christian principles based on the Holy Bible,” I am increasingly inclined to suspect that such approach misses the real point. Campaign verbiage of this sort simply is the sort of rhetoric one hears in the Bible Belt just as one is likely to encounter equally emotional but nearly substance-free economic and political rhetoric in the environs of Ann Arbor. In other words, understanding such phenomena is more properly the work of sociology or social psychology than of political theory, let alone philosophy.
It is the abiding weakness of intellectuals, too often their tragic flaw, to overestimate the power and value of reason, and this is especially true in the case of normative disputes in the public arena. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter in the slightest whether one affirms or denies that America is or ever was a “Christian Nation.” What does matter is what one subsequently believes the claim does or does not require, permit or prohibit. Not even a Founding Father fundamentalist can seriously contend that the answers are, to borrow a phrase, self-evident truths.
Filed in The Belfry, The Bench, The Bureau
While agreeing with the general theme, I have an unsubstantiated sense that there has been a significant change in the relationship between campaign rhetoric, a candidate’s core beliefs, and what the candidate will actually do once elected.
My no-doubt naive image is that in an elysian past, although candidates for national office would pander to local biases, especially on local issues, once in office they would take their positions on national issues - of which it could be safely assumed that the folks back home were at typically uninformed, often even unaware - based on their own reasoned judgment. Ie, their positions were their own and did not necessarily coincide with those - if any - of their constituents.
Today, with pervasive (mis)information available to all, everyone becomes an expert on all issues and expects their representative to implement their carefully reasoned (ie, Rush said so) positions on even the most complex issue. If these perceptions are accurate, we have moved from Madison’s concept of representative democracy, with it’s buffers between popular will and policy, to something perilously close to the true democracy he feared.
Is this way off base?
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I would note that comparing an element of a party platform to the rhetoric around a college campus is apples and oranges. They may be equally foolish, but their prospective impacts are incommensurable.
Which leads to a loosely related question. Consistent with your Ann Arbor comment (understood to be humor, not serious demographic analysis), the assumed characteristics of the “typical liberal” appear to be often, possibly mostly, derived from attitudes on college campuses. Given that the young are notoriously prone to not actually voting, the opinions of the young have always tended to be non-representative, and those characteristics almost never align with the (non-young) people I know who would gladly accept the label “liberal”, I am curious why that might be the case.
For example (one of many), although in the 60s we were all young and (appropriately, given the abysmal state of civil rights then) for “revolutionary change”, now that we are older, wiser, and (most determinative) richer, we aren’t that keen on it. But we remain liberals, at least by our definition (admittedly, close to classical, as I understand that term).
- Charles
Hi Charles. Yes, I suppose there was a time not so long ago when candidates and subsequently elected officials were held even less accountable by the electorate for lack of available information. Whether that is a good or bad thing depends in significant measure not only on the competence and good faith of the elected officials but on how one views the relative strengths and weaknesses of republics versus democracies as well as, for that matter, the very legitimacy of popular sovereignty. (In other words, as the kids used to say, your mileage may vary.)
I largely agree with your later comments (and, yes, the swipe at Ann Arbor was intended humorously and not, I should add, aimed at Messrs Herzog or Velleman). But it seems to me that that only goes to noting the fairly obvious fact that people with emotionally based opinions and political power are more dangerous than people with emotionally based opinions but without the power. As for how the latter relate to older liberals, I haven’t a clue.
This is an interesting post and I hope to tie it in with a future post of mine.
[...] In trying to get a handle on America’s Founding — an historical event which in part because of the authority of the US Constitution, many sides want to claim — those three interacting factors necessarily yield unresolved disagreements over how to properly understand said event. Two things got me thinking about this recently. The first was my coblogger, D.A. Ridgely’s opinion on the culture war over America’s Founding and religion: Thus, while Prof. Herzog might have wanted to analyze and critique on rational grounds the 2004 Texas Republican party platform’s assertion that “the United States of America is a Christian nation, and the public acknowledgment of God is undeniable in our history [and that] our nation was founded on fundamental Judeo-Christian principles based on the Holy Bible,” I am increasingly inclined to suspect that such approach misses the real point. Campaign verbiage of this sort simply is the sort of rhetoric one hears in the Bible Belt just as one is likely to encounter equally emotional but nearly substance-free economic and political rhetoric in the environs of Ann Arbor. In other words, understanding such phenomena is more properly the work of sociology or social psychology than of political theory, let alone philosophy. [...]