I even invented a verb for that avoidance tactic, to “derbyshire”. I employ it when encountering any self-absorbed reptile who has nothing interesting to say like Andrew Sullivan, Frank Rich and Garry Trudeau.

A conservative secular blog may have merit. (Although I can’t see them discovering an off ramp on the expressway to nihilism that they are traveling on with their secular pals on the Left.) But no matter, Derbyshire damages the initiative’s legitimacy because he has none of his own.

Until the “secular Right” actually comes up with something useful and original to say (that is other than simply stripping Christian justifications from conservative positions), I can’t see the point of it. (Admittedly, I think Mencken is overrated as a social commenter.)

And, whether one wishes to assert that American is a “Christian nation” (it is not as I understand the Faith, but that is a theological judgment, not a sociological one), we certainly must admit that, when speaking of religious influences on American ideas, we are discussing Christianity and, specifically, Anglo-Protestant Christianity. Other religions (Judaism, Islam, etc.) are irrelevant to this discussion and it is only PC platitudes that cause them to be mentioned (such as the fiction of “Judeo-Christian values”–as opposed to “Gentile-Christian values”?)

What would make you think that? Most libertarians are in no mood whatsoever to coexist with social conservatives. Go on Reason.com/blog and try to sell it there, you’ll quickly see what I mean. There’s a libertarian streak within conservativism, because we have liberty ingrained in our traditions, but the opposite is not exactly true.

If you think there are such things as “natural rights”, then please show me where those rights can be found in nature. Personally, I cannot find them. Deer do not get a trial by jury before they are devoured by wolves. No hyena ever presented a search warrant before searching a cave for a wild boar to have for dinner. There’s a reason they call it “the law of the jungle” you know.

Human history doesn’t have much better news in it. Even at its pre-Christian high points – Athens and the Roman republic – you had rights if you were a citizen, and if not, well, too bad so sad. So too for the American republic which modeled itself after the Roman, and Thomas Jefferson, who wanted to be Aristotle when he grew up.

And the issue isn’t “kicking the non-religious out” of the conservative movement. It’s that irreligiousness can’t really get you into it in the first place. As I’ve said before, cold, hard, godless logic can’t get you to conservatism. It may be able to get you to Objectivism or libertarianism or anarcho-capitalism, and these might be movements that can be broadly classified as being on the right, but it can’t get you to conservatism. Anyone who can get from there to conservatism is somewhere along the way fooling themselves. Most often this seems to manifest itself in being a “cafeteria conservative”, but in ways that are bizarre and insensible. Again, why does Derb defend legal abortion but rail against the iniquities of homosexuals? Does other people’s sexual behavior pick his pocket or break his leg?

And then there’s attitudes towards Israel. Let’s be plain here – if there is no God, then the claim of the Jews to Israel is a massive fraud based on a forged deed signed by somebody who doesn’t even exist. For this, we should piss off a fifth of the human race – a fifth known for combativeness, and which controls the lion’s share of a resource without which our civilization comes to a screeching halt? Where is the logic in that? The only way that not throwing Israel under the bus in order to maintain general good relations with the Arabs makes any sense is if one believes that God willed the Jews that land. Without that belief, supporting Israel is self-defeating and irrational. And yet the secular right never seems to waver in its support for Israel. What can one call a willingness (even a passion) on the behalf of someone to take sides in a conflict between one religion they don’t believe in and another religion they don’t believe in other than bizarre and irrational?

But I digress. The point here is that conservatism without faith is a house of cards, easily blown over by the slightest breeze. I have as little time for Derb’s delusions as he has for what he sees as mine.

To Nergol,

It is fine if you do not believe that human rights and permanent moral truths are accessible by reason via natural law. This is a religious question, and there are many religious sects which claim that the only source of knowledge of God-given rights and Divine laws is through scripture. The Ash’ari school of Islam is one, and the Calvinist school of Christianity is another. It is not my point to debate this, and I am definitely not a fan of Ayn Rand.

As for saying that religious pluralism is of the left, I respectfully disagree. The Founding Fathers of this country protected religious liberty in the federal constitution through the first amendment. There is also no religious test for office. A good discussion of this is Michael J. Perry’s book “Under God?” where he writes that although we all have the free exercise of religion, we may legislate against things even if from a purely religious motive and this is not prohibited by the Establishment Clause. For instance, if someone wanted to ban gay marriage or abortion only because of religious reasons this would not be unconstitutional. For this argument see this article by Perry: “Is Religion a Constitutionally Legitimate Basis of Lawmaking in the United States? Herein of the Nonestablishment of Religion.” http://www.law.emory.edu/fileadmin/templates/CSLR_Media/PDFs/MJP-_Religion_as_the_Basis_of_Lawmaking.pdf

All I am saying is that when we come to political movements, we are asking a simple question – what should the government do and what should it not do? If you are talking about social conservatism, and your answer to the question is that government should ban things which are morally harmful (not a fully agreed upon proposition on the Right) whether on the state or to some conservatives the federal level such as homosexual marriage, then this policy position can be taken up by numerous religious sects.

I am not saying to take religion out of conservatism. I am saying that all religions should be permitted to be conservatives. Muslims overwhelmingly voted for Obama in California, and who can blame them with the GOP implications that Obama was a Muslim and that this was “un-American.” Yet, at the same time, they overwhelmingly voted for Prop 8 to ban homosexual marriage.

And I don’t think it is cultural Marxist to complain about nativism and xenophobia. It is cultural Marxist to impose a certain standard upon people and MAKE you follow it. It is cultural Marxist to teach people that tolerance of everything means acceptance of everything. I am not a cultural Marxist, and I don’t blame supporters of tighter immigration for nativism and xenophobia. But true nativism and xenophobia needs to stay out of the Right.

If we begin to have a “religious test” for office on the Right, then basically all non-Protestant Christians have to be kicked out of the movement, because Protestant Christianity is the overwhelming basis of America’s cultural and religious heritage. Nobody is saying for a cultural Marxist “All cultures are equal,” mentality. Of course Catholics will believe Catholic culture is superior to Protestant culture. Muslims will believe Islamic culture is superior to Christian culture. The religious will believe that religious culture is superior to atheist culture. Or else they wouldn’t be a part of their groups.

Yet, this does not mean, if a Jew or a Muslim republican who was black or red or green, ran for office upholding traditional conservative values, we wouldn’t support him. Or even an atheist. We may severely disagree with such people – and I abhor atheism and secular fascism – but if they agree with our political views we should consider voting for them. Any conservative who would vote against for instance an Arab Muslim conservative running for office, just for that reason, WOULD be a nativist, xenophobic, and ungodly racist. That is my point.

I am not a “secular conservative” in the definition Derbshyire uses. I do have a religious, as well as rational, motivation for my political views. Yet, I am not going to kick people out of the conservative movement for anything other than POLICY. Anything else would be very UN-religious.

As I have often pointed out to my Catholic friends, while there were liberal and extra-Biblical (IMO) elements of the radical Reformation, the Reformers did not see themselves as rebelling. Rather they saw themselves as restoring a more authentic New Testament Christianity from a Church that had corrupted it. So this was at least arguably a conservative impulse. As they saw it, it was not progress but regress/restoration.

AbuHatem, you make some good points about how there is arguably no conservative tradition in America. I don’t agree with this, but I understand the argument. But the religious pluralism you are celebrating is obviously of the left as is secularism. You hurt your credibility by throwing out the Cultural Marxist boogie words nativism and xenophobia. There is nothing more inherently conservative of a nation than restricting immigration, and nothing more revolutionary than mass immigration.

Conservativism is about valuing individual rights, but placing them within the context of the responsibilities dictated by our traditions.

I don’t see any way how the traditional concepts of the family and the community can be joined to the “it’s my body, it’s my choice” school of feminist thought. The two simply cannot mix.

The problem is not necessarily that what Derbyshire et al. want as public policy is something I disagree with, but that without religious guidance they are foundationless and unsupportable. Of course, much of what the left wants as public policy – specifically charity and pacifism – is also foundationless and unsupportable without religious guidance, but that never stopped them.

As for “natural rights”, that is nonsense. Nature gives gazelles the right to be ripped to shreds by a lion. Watch some nature shows and see what “natural rights” really mean. Part of the problem with atheists (especially the irreligious left) is that they have spent 150 years trying to find a way for scientific Darwinism to not logically lead to social Darwinism, and have mostly covered their failure by punting. At least Ayn Rand, for all her faults, didn’t attempt to dodge that question.

Again, without religion, all you can really hope for is either Epicureanism or Objectivist libertarianism. Nothing else can be made to make sense – to have a solid foundation and be internally consistent. then again, a solid moral foundation and internal consistency has never been of much importance in a place where the man who wrote:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”…

While looking out the window at the slaves he owned laboring in his fields.

I agree. I think the right can find value in “religion” and the “religious” – and I certainly agree with Alexis De’Tocqueville that religion is of fundamental importance to the maintenance of liberty in a polity. And I understand, as a Muslim, that the main religion in this country is Christianity, and hence I in fact do appreciate attempts by Christians to work against politically correct secular fascism in the taking away of civil liberties and civil rights.

However, if we look at the history of this country and the Founding Fathers, and we look at non-Protestant Christianity, there was much criticism of the American project as being based in heresy. For instance, see the Tories who moved to Canada after the revolution such as for instance Quaker minister Joseph Stansbury who in his work “The Loyal Verses of Joseph Stansbury” attacks the revolution and says that although he is living a life of ugliness and hardship in Canada, he realizes that he is obeying the natural law and God by escaping disloyalty to the British crown.

If you look at the Catholic Church in Quebec during the American revolution, they were disgusted by what they saw. In fact, after the French revolution, they found themselves to be the only true French in the world for following traditionalism.

If we also look at the Civil War for instance, we find the Catholic Church would later turn against slavery and take an anti-slavery theological position, while American baptists claimed that slavery was theologically sanctioned. This is all discussed in the book “The Civil War as a Theological Crisis” which compiles American opinions on the subject.

If we are to talk about America’s religious heritage, then that is one thing. I completely love how America has a religious heritage and is religious to this day, even if it is not a religion that I am a part of. However, such celebration of heritage only becomes sectarian when we begin to “excommunicate” others from conservatism and patriotism and heritage if they don’t share our same sect. This country was founded on the basis of religious freedom. There are many non-protestant Christians in this country. There are Catholic Christians who were never the majority. There are Mormons who are not part of such a “heritage.” There are Jews who are not part of such a “heritage.” Ditto for Muslims.

Culture is something important, but cultural conservatives must not take cultural conservatism to mean nativism or xenophobic sentiments. There are many different races and religions which are equally American and equally protected by the constitution. That doesn’t mean that all cultures are equal or we should accept all values or any of the politically incorrect nonsense that comes from the hard postmodern left. Yet, at the very least, the GOP needs to reach out to all corners, and realize that the Right or conservatism is not a RELIGIOUS SECT, it is a political movement. We need all of the religious – Protestants, Catholics, Mormons, Orthodox, Jews, Muslims, whatever – to feel like they can become free and coequal members of this political movement.

But that’s a false standard, at least as applied to the American context. Our political tradition has been heavily informed both by dissenting Protestantism and by deism, which leads ultra-traditionalists to declare that there can’t be an American conservatism or American Right. If there is such a thing as an American Right, however, its views on the basic questions of political action — war, taxation, the relationship of the state to society — can be predicated upon any of several grounds, religious or nonreligious. Politics is a practical art, not a thing of pure theory.

That extends to the practice of regulating the relationship of religion to the state. The duty of the American Right, both Secular and Religious, is properly to keep the peace between the many Christian sects, other religions, and deist/rationalist/secular elements in society, to preserve the negotiated settlement that the First Amendment has come to represent. I don’t think the Secular Right transgresses on that settlement by making arguments that may or may not persuade anyone — that’s no different from the freedom that religious sects enjoy to proselytize. If the Secular Right were to get behind efforts to use legal power to change the customary role of religion in American life, that would be a different matter.