The Secular Right
As you all probably know by now, there is a new blog for secular conservatives called Secular Right. That’s fine as far as it goes, but at the same time I don’t quite see the point. If the point is to say that non-believers and secular people can be conservatives, too, that seems to be something in no need of demonstration or argument. As I have noted before, and I will say again, Russell Kirk could identify conservatism in Santayana, and we might find many other skeptics and secularists as we look back. Having granted that, one would like to see some of these secular conservatives acknowledge more often that respect for a transcendent moral order is an integral part of the conservative mind and some recognition that such an order would have to have been established by God. If the point of the project is to say that modern conservatism has become too religious, or too wedded to Christianity, and therefore a specifically secular conservative resistance to this trend is necessary, I will have to laugh, because here our secular friends will have then embraced a popular myth that does not have much in the way of evidence to support it. If it is simply to argue for inclusion among other conservatives, I haven’t seen many efforts to cast them or keep them out.
I will repeat what I said a couple years ago when I was objecting to the fad of skeptical and secular conservatives lamenting the tremendous power of religious conservatism and alleged over-reliance on revealed religion:
Of course, it’s true that people of conservative temperament need not have any religion, and it’s also true that conservatism has never strictly been tied to a particular set of religious claims. As a modern and post-Revolutionary phenomenon, conservatives have often eschewed or transcended confessional labels. The good, old days of the Holy Alliance were wonderfully ecumenical and not tied to any particular orthodoxy. Some even say that one of the chief characteristics of conservatism is that it is a kind of social and political thought that need not have much to do with orthodoxy, and a brief glance over The Conservative Mind would seem to confirm that with a parade of a number of theologically latitudinarian and non-religious gentlemen (Paul Elmer More and Santayana being the ones that leap to mind immediately). Bolingbroke was a forerunner of the skeptical conservative, and Humean skepticism is sometimes considered a source of British conservative thought. It has been to my own dismay that the general acquaintance of most high conservative thought with the substance of theology has been limited at best, and it is partly for that reason that I proposed reimagining conservatism in terms of the patristic thought of our Christian tradition.
But the typical conservative assumption that man is fallible and not perfectible by human means is tied inextricably to the Christian understanding of the Fall. The skeptical man will say that this is not necessarily so, and that any fool can see that man is fallible without recourse to a doctrine of ancestral sin. But that doctrine is the only thing that makes sense of the predicament of man that preserves the possibility of true meaning. With the Fall, there is also Redemption. With mere fallibility, there is no remedy and so, ultimately, no hope in this world or the next. Further, the detachment of conservative thought from the Christian roots that nourished it in the first place is both a losing proposition and an abandonment of a sizeable part of the patrimony we have received from our fathers. Put simply, without a theological vision (and our tradition points us towards the theological vision of our civilisation’s Faith) conservatives have no meaningful vision of the good life and can only cavil and harumph at liberal, meliorist plans on the grounds of their impracticability rather than for their fundamental spiritual error and hubris. Without such a vision of consecrated order, ordained by God, conservatism becomes obsessed entirely with what is immanent and cannot form any coherent statements about who man is or what his purpose is supposed to be.
If secular conservatives have “pride in Western Civilization,” as Derbyshire puts it, they cannot very well ignore or deride as nonsense the central religious inspiration of that entire civilization, which is Christianity. Are they obliged to accept revealed truths? No, but they can and should pay due respect to the revelation that animated Western societies for most of their history and the traditions of our ancestors that have been tested over time and which have endured to become established customs. If all they are asking for is to “play in the band,” as Derbyshire says, no one is telling them that they cannot.
I think you’re being a bit persnickety about that site, Daniel. It’s a clubhouse; people enjoy clubhouses.
The unbelieving conservative contributors to the Secular Right blog are a bit crotchety about all the God talk they encounter in conservatism, and have decided to get together and talk among themselves about atheistic conservatism.
There’s not much more to it than that, and thus it’s not particularly assailable.
ossicle, read the site. It is not just a talk among ourselves club. It is evangelical in intent. Christians are dragging down the Party. Christians are running off the “brights.” Christians are naive for believing. Religion is unnecessary for social order. Blah, blah, blah. The usual canards are all there.
They’re free to have their club, and if that’s all it is I am not bothered in the least. That being said, one need only think back to how everyone fell over themselves at NRO to praise and laud Heather Mac Donald when they were arguing with her over atheism, religion and the rest to see how unnecessary it is. Mainstream conservatives are eager to accommodate non-believers and skeptics, if only to show how reasonable, modern and ‘with it’ they are; it is the very religious and intensely theological who scare them to death. I am less accommodating, I suppose, because I don’t think these things are simply a difference of individual opinion, but it is because I look at modern conservatism and see an overwhelmingly secular movement that I find it hard to credit complaints from secular conservatives that they are somehow marginalized or made to feel unwelcome.
respect for a transcendent moral order is an integral part of the conservative mind and some recognition that such an order would have to have been established by God.
I don’t see how that can be the case.
We used to think that interracial marriage was bad, that gays should be fired from their jobs or banned from the military, that segregation was smart, that slavery was sanctioned by God, etc. Now we don’t.
An instinctive aversion to change, and a consciousness of the problem of unintended consequences, doesn’t require a deification of the status quo.
And as far as more basic morals go, every culture seems to have hit upon the golden rule. I don’t see why sociology, or psychology, or evolutionary biology, isn’t as sound a basis for political views as theology.
RedPhillips, I had not got that impression from the posts I read there, but I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’ll go back and reread, I don’t think there are all that many posts in toto yet. If you’re correct, then I’d largely take back what I said.
Daniel, as is nearly always the case, and in particular if RedPhillips is correct, my own opinion falls to yours once I’ve heard your argument.
A propos of not much, the dialogues between Heather Mac Donald and Michael Novack have been unbearable morasses of disingenuousness and passive aggression. LESS, PLEASE.
If all they are asking for is to “play in the band,†as Derbyshire says, no one is telling them that they cannot.
But what you seem to be saying is that they’re welcome in the band so long as they recognize who the bandleader is:
they can and should pay due respect to the revelation that animated Western societies for most of their history and the traditions of our ancestors that have been tested over time and which have endured to become established customs.
Fine as far as it goes. Christianity has obviously been inseprable from the American experience; but what are you looking for here? An acknowledgement of cultural superiority? An admission that – sure, this is specifically a Christian nation?
Well, which is it–do they want to be included, or do they want to dictate terms? It seems to me that they already know who the “bandleader” is going to be, because a conservative coalition in America is going to have a disproportionate number of observant religious Christians for a long time to come, so what they are asking for instead is respect and recognition that their conservatism is valid. I have no problem doing that. Deriding religious conservatives’ central beliefs, as they seem inclined to do fairly often, takes advantage of this respect. At the very least, I would prefer to see secular conservatives make their arguments without the undercurrent of “believers are irrational fools.” We could have an argument about the rationality of faith, the limits of reason and how revealed truths address the whole of human nature rather than just one part, but that would lead to an impasse very quickly. What I would like to see is a respect for the history and content of the civilizaton that they want to preserve, and that extends to taking seriously arguments derived from the central religious tradition of that civilization. It’s not all that much to ask.
“But what you seem to be saying is that they’re welcome in the band so long as they recognize who the bandleader is:”
I’m not sure why this is such a problem, and is in fact the way that most broad-based political coalitions work: If you are a “Blue Dog” conservative Democrat, I think you quite correctly realize that you belong to a largely progressive political party, and that party may hold views in direct opposition to yours. You go along to get along, staking your claim to certain issues, while repectfully noting your disagreements on others. The contemporary American Right, broadly understood, has economic libertarians that care nothing at all for social issues (or hold liberal/progressive views on those issues), social conservatives that hold out and out protectionist/Christian Democratic sentiments on economic issues, etc.
At the very least, I would prefer to see secular conservatives make their arguments without the undercurrent of “believers are irrational fools.â€
I don’t think they would be saying that if they didn’t perceive a hostility toward their unbelief.
Because what they hear cultural conservatives saying – and you yourself seem to be saying – is: Sure, you can can play in the band. But we will lead the band; we shall decide on the tune, and the arrangement. This is a Christian nation, and our party shall make a point of not merely recognizing that fact, but perpetuating it. And we will legislate, and craft policy, with that as the end goal.
And you – as a secular conservative – are welcome to join in the tune if you like. Play along; fun for everyone. Just make no mistake as to who’s in charge, and who should be in charge.
“transcendent moral order”
Following on Elvisberg’s comment, what exactly does this mean?
I believe that certain actions tend to have certain consequences. I believe that there is more or less a basic human nature, and that not paying it heed can lead to bad consequences.
Does this mean that I believe in a transcendent moral order?
I’m religious, but not much of a conservative, and I really don’t see how the two match up. I certainly believe in a transcendent moral order, but I don’t see how that leads to conservatism, or vice-versa. I can see how conservatism, in respecting the inertia and wisdom of tradition, tends to accept Christianity and its moral universe as part of the western tradition, but I don’t see how conservatism itself is really based on or wedded to the Christian notion of the Fall. Quite the opposite. As Daniel points out, Christianity is not just about the Fall, but about a messianic message of redemption, which is anything but conservative in nature. Quite the contrary, it is an idealistic message of hope. I know Daniel likes to think his pessimism is rooted in Christianity, but it is not, it is rooted in his conservatism. One cannot really be a pessimistic Christian, and still believe in redemption.
Conservatism, as I see it, sees human nature as imperfect and imperfectable, and is against the very notion of trying to perfect it. In that sense, conservatives are pagans, and not Christians. They don’t really put much faith in the Christian message of redemption. Those who do can’t really be described as conservatives anymore. They are a rather tense and contradictory combination of conservative and romantic idealist, who really do believe in man’s perfectability, they just presume that God will make them perfect.
My personal religious and political solution to this is to believe in the eternal fallibility of man, and to beleive in salvation, but not in believing that salvation represents the perfection of the worldly man or life on earth. Perfection is a heavenly, Godly matter, and God’s will on earth is not aimed at creating a perfect world here, but on leading us to embrace the Kingdom within the heart, which becomes our dwelling place beyond this life and death.
So in my view a real conservative need not believe in God or even a transcendent moral order. That’s just not part of what conservatism inherently is about. And conservatives who do believe in God will not, in my view, see God as working to perfect this world or the people in it, either morally or materially. Moral perfection is no more attainable than material perfection – even with God’s help. God did not create this world to be perfect, but as a place for man to see his imperfections and turn back to God.
“I don’t see how conservatism itself is really based on or wedded to the Christian notion of the Fall.”
It is only one of the most basic ideas at the heart of conservative thought. Perhaps that isn’t closely tied enough for some.
“So in my view a real conservative need not believe in God or even a transcendent moral order. That’s just not part of what conservatism inherently is about.”
Why is it then that so many conservatives keep saying that it is? Perhaps because this is how conservatives understand their own tradition?
“One cannot really be a pessimistic Christian, and still believe in redemption.”
But Christian pessimism is an acknowledgement that it is God that redeems an otherwise fallen race and creation. The teachings that we are fallen and receive salvation only as a free gift of God have serious implications for life in this world. I don’t know how you can be anything other than a pessimist about this world if you accept that the Fall is real.
Traditional Christians are not chiliasts. They don’t believe in perfection of the world below, and don’t conceive of redemption in these terms.
Heehee!
In this last election the right drove away All major metropolitan areas; it drove away young people 2 to 1; it drove away hispanics 2 to 1; it drove away virtually 100% of blacks; it drove away affluent diverse suburbs in virtually every major city in America. It was hard for TV cameras to find a black face at the GOP Convention. Bigots waited in lines to see Palin at rallys and regularly talked racist trash to the cameras.
Make sure you drive away conservative atheists too!!
Soon you’ll be left with the southern core of the Confederacy and states where nobody lives – like Wyoming. Texas and Arizona will be in play in coming elections with the growth of the hispanic vote.
Then you will have a nice pure southern rural lilly white party! (but you will have your virginity – ahhem – principles)
“…the detachment of conservative thought from the Christian roots that nourished it in the first place…” The problem here (if we believe Christoper Dawson) is that both conservative AND liberal thought in the Western tradition have been nourished by Christian thought, and especially Christian eschatology, in the form of a linear trajectory of history (progress toward perfection in the City of Man or the ‘incarnation’ of the City of God in the end of days). Santayana and other non-Christian conservatives would, for the most part, be happy to accept the fallen state of mankind but would (rejecting the language of ‘Redemption’ which forces secular or non-eschatological perspectives to be interpreted in terms of Christianity) focus on the fundamentally cyclical (or adirectional) nature of history. Fundamentally, though (and leaving philosophy of history and eschatology aside), you may wish to preserve “the possibility of true meaning,” but why must anyone else’s perspective be judged by YOUR limited criterion?
In other (somewhat facetious) words, there’s nothing new under the sun…
How many are your deeds,
though hidden from sight.
O sole God without equal !
You made the Earth as You desired, You alone.
With people, cattle, and all creatures.
With everything upon Earth that walks on legs,
and all that is on high and flies with its wings.
When You rise, You make all arms firm for the King,
every leg is on the move since You founded the Earth,
You rouse them for your son, who emerged from your body.
Pharoah Akhenaten – 1350 B.C.
Carved on the walls of the Tomb of Ay at Amarna
Looks a lot like Psalm 104 – at least so say the experts.
Note the monotheism; note the last line – “You rouse them for your son, who emerged from your body”
:-)
It’s a knee jerk reaction against the real and perceived domination of the GOP by religious conservatives. As such it’s a symptom of the unravelling of the coalition of religious fundamentalists, nationalists and economic conservatives that have made up the party for the past thirty years. We might as well chill out because there are going to many more such symptoms before it’s all over.
One thing the religious find hard to conceive of is how strange the world looks to the areligious. Go on, try to imagine it. Every single believer in a god in the world is wrong. Every such belief is a false belief; every action motivated by such belief motivated by a false belief. Why this assumption it’s easy and somehow ‘lightweight’ to be an atheist? Put yourself there for a second.
“Why is it then that so many conservatives keep saying that it is? Perhaps because this is how conservatives understand their own tradition? “
Daniel, you’re bordering on defining conservatism as a narrowly Christian dogma based on the biblical story of the Fall. It certainly is not so defined. Obviously many western conservatives are Christian, and naturally such people will tend to look at the Fall as the archetype of (or even the explanation for) man’s limitations and failures. But are there no pagan conservatives? No Hindu, Islamic, Buddhist, Confucian, or Egyptian conservatives? I can assure you that if you step out of the parochialism of your own brand of Christianity, you will find that conservatives exist around the world, in all kinds of religious and secular traditions, without any knowledge of or debt to the biblical Fall. The notion that human beings are limited and incapable of redeeming themselves by their own efforts is a fairly universal belief, not even dependent on any particular religious system, but clearly observable by anyone with much sense to them. Even in our western tradition I could point to virtually the entire Greek system of myths, within which even the Gods and Goddesses seem incapable of perfection, the striving for which is one of the chief sins of their moral system. Might I remind you of Prometheus, or Icarus, or the tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles, or the philosophies of Socrates and Plato, who are the forefathers of virtually the whole of conservative politics, and so on. The kind of “fall†they describe is different in kind from the Judeo-Christian Fall, just as their form of redemption is different, but it certainly qualifies as a form of conservatism that is not rooted in the Christian religious tradition.
So I think it is historically absurd to claim that conservatives understand themselves in relation to the Fall. Only some Christian conservatives do. You are one of these, and that is fine, but you must understand that conservatism is a universal human orientation, and not merely a Christian one. Nor is it dependent in any sense upon a belief in any God at all, much less the Christian God. Nor must it be aligned to some redemption mystique, certainly not the Christian one. A conservative is capable of believing that redemption is both impossible and absurd, and even of criticizing Christians for abandoning conservatism in their idealistic belief that “God†will redeem them in heaven one day. In fact, that would actually be more true to the basic conservative orientation than belief in such a God, which is why I say that no believing Christian can really be purely conservative. To believe in any form of true salvation, even in heaven, is to believe in man’s perfectability.
“But Christian pessimism is an acknowledgement that it is God that redeems an otherwise fallen race and creation. The teachings that we are fallen and receive salvation only as a free gift of God have serious implications for life in this world. I don’t know how you can be anything other than a pessimist about this world if you accept that the Fall is real.â€
One simply cannot call certain belief in redemption in any way “pessimisticâ€. It is virtually the definition of optimism. In relation to life on earth, the belief that God is leading us towards this redemption is itself the highest form of optimism within the human realm, greater even than, say, a Marxist notion that history is leading us towards the perfect communist state. The fact that God is the agency of this salvation, rather than our own efforts, is merely a way of resolving the obvious conundrum of how clearly fallible and sinful beings will ever become redeemed and perfected – one simply posits a perfect agency for that transformation. Again, this cannot be called pessimism, nor can a life lived by such a belief be called pessimistic. It is a life of inspiration and ressurrection.
Now certainly, as you say, one does not have to equate such a life, or such a path of devotion, with notions of worldly perfection or redemption in earthly terms, such as various Christian sects which believe that the earth itself will be turned into a worldly paradise for their perfect enjoyment. One can accept the conservative assessment that this world will never, by its very nature, achieve such perfection, but it is only by returning to God’s Paradise that true perfection is revealed, but that is where conservatism does indeed believe in progress, not just in heaven, but on earth itself, where the soul progresses towards God, even as it engages in the messiness of life. So while our path to God is not determined by our own efforts, it is a path we walk nonetheless, and make certain progress in. And that is why Christianity is as much a liberal religion, or can be seen as a basis for a liberal philosophy, as it can be seen as a conservative religion, based on a conservative view of the world.
Daniel:
I would agree with you, and would take it a step further: An atheist cannot be a conservative, at least not if we’re talking about the full-blown, modern, materialist atheist.
An “eastern” sort of “atheist”, who still believed in transcendent moral law and objective value or purpose, could be a genuine conservative, and so can a skeptical sort like Hume. Such people can have genuine respect for the foundations of conservative thought, because they can share the same premises, even if their approach is a bit different.
For the Western materialist though, the transcendent as a category can only be seen as a complete delusion. You can’t have genuine respect for something that you think is unadulterated bunk. At best, you can provide occasional lip service when prompted to do so.
And, as expected, that’s exactly how the “secular right” behaves. They’ll say things like “We have pride in Western Civilization” with their mouths if pressed, but will then go right back to trashing the foundations of Western Civilization and conservative thought, and to complaining that conservatives are religious. They can’t believe that any of those things have objective value, because they believe them to be false, and because they don’t believe in objective value (that being a transcendent, immaterial concept).
Of course, Western atheists can sometimes share some of the same policy preferences that conservatives happen to prefer at a given point in time, despite not sharing the same reasons for those preferences. But that doesn’t make them conservatives any more than liking to jump makes me a kangaroo.
Conradg,
Good comment. One remark, though: it seems there is a very real sense in which a Christian can be pessimistic, owing to original sin. Although it is true that God has initiated a plan of Atonement that will result in many people being redeemed by the grace that constantly surrounds each of us, there are many, many more who reject that grace and are quite possibly damned (even eternally damned) because of it (“many are called, but few are chosen”). If you think of yourself and most of your friends and family as likely to experience eternal damnation owing to your nearly whole-hearted rejection of God (even if you think you’re accepting God, you very well might not be), then this can be a pessimistic realization indeed. To be honest, it’s so horrifying that I can’t myself fully believe it, even though I think I’m probably rationally compelled to.
bobcat,
I agree that some Christians can be pessistic based on the arguments you describe, I just think those are wrong theological arguments that don’t recognize the universality of Grace. I think there’s no place for eternal damnation in the Christian Gospel, but obviously others disagree. The Christian Gospel is based on the notion that Jesus loves us unconditionally, no matter how wretched or seemingly unworthy we are, and that love cannot and will not ever be rescinded regardless of how much we sin. That is our salvation, and it is therefore certain for all, even those who turn away consciously, or who are turned away by the inertia of their fall. I for one do not think anyone is damned, but many and perhaps all will of course require a long time of turning before they are able to recognize that there were already saved long ago.
Deuce,
I’ve had plenty of conversations with scientific atheists, and I think without a doubt that they can indeed by true conservatives, if one defines a conservative in the manner we seem to be doing in this thread, which is someone who sees human beings as inherently imperfect and imperfectable, and thus suspicious of any program based on trying to perfect human society or human individuals. Scientific atheists can easily become conservatives merely by studying evolution, which is both a highly imperfect process which does not aim towards any perfect end, and cannot even be conceived of as having that aim. It aims at survival, and thus competition, and an atheistic conservative therefore is very willing to accept human beings as they are in all their imperfections. In fact its’ very hard to imagine a pure scientific atheists as being anything but a conservative, except insofar as they see that some sort of self-directed progress is possible in understanding that natural process of evolution that has created us, governs us, and makes our future. But they understand that such progress is inherently limited, and not pointing towards anything one might call “perfect”, which to a scientist can exist only in theoretical equations, and never in material life. They do not believe in perpetual motion machines, in other words, but only in entropy, which is the ultimate conservative form of pessimism.
Conradg,
I myself don’t believe in eternal damnation, though I think the thrust of the NT pushes one in that direction (though there are passages, as Keith DeRose points out here: http://pantheon.yale.edu/~kd47/univ.htm), and theological reasons, as you point out, for thinking that universalism is true). I instead follow the Lewisian line that people can resist God for some time, but eventually they will turn to him. So I believe in eventual universal salvation, but I also think that there could be, and probably is, a kind of intense suffering before that. That still seems like enough to be pessimistic about. Moreover, the nearly ubiquitous fact of evil that almost every one of us is culpable for also gives us reason to be sorrowful, though perhaps not pessimistic.
conradg:
But that isn’t enough to make one a conservative. There are *two* basic premises that are needed to make one a conservative:
1) There is a such thing as the perfect, the true, and the objectively valuable, and humans are capable of perceiving and working (to a limited degree) towards that standard under the proper conditions of human flourishing.
and
2) Humans are flawed and imperfectable, and thus not capable of actually reaching that standard, and grand utopian schemes that try to coerce man into perfection will end in failure, and will destroy those modest scraps of the objectively good and valuable that he has attained.
Premise 1 is *vital* to genuine conservatism. That’s why the word “conserve” is in it. The conservative believes that his civilization has bits and pieces of the perfect – the objectively good – and therefore that it ought to be protected and conserved against grand schemes that would destroy it.
The conservative believes not only that utopian schemes are bound to fail at achieving perfection, and only end up making things different, but that they will usurp and destroy things society has already achieved that are objectively good and valuable, and thus end up making things objectively worse by causing man to lose sight of truth and objective goodness.
Conservatives are pessimists, but not all pessimists are conservatives. It takes both a belief in the perfect and in man’s ability to have knowledge of it, and a pessimism about his ability to take hold of it.