John Schwenkler and John Cole both responded to my earlier post on the call for social and religious conservatives to use reason, rather than appeals to religious teaching, in public arguments. Schwenkler is correct when he writes:

Indeed, I would say that conservatives have if anything devoted too much time to the task of “proving” things like the immorality of abortion (or the existence of God, though that’s a topic for another post) to the satisfaction of their secular peers – where exactly observers like Parker, Cole, and the rest have gotten the impression that things are otherwise is something of a mystery to me.

Many of Parker’s critics have made this point, stressing how typical reliance on reason and empirical evidence is in pro-life arguments. I alluded to this when I noted that it was not the kind of argument employed that mattered to those put off by social conservative views, but the conclusion at the end of the argument, and when I mentioned many pro-lifers’ preference to frame things in terms of rights and equality (hence their fairly frequent comparisons of their own cause to past progressive emancipation and civil rights movements, as if they hope that this will win them bonus points from bien-pensant people). In the past, Ross and I have gone back and forth over whether it made sense for pro-lifers to use philosophical language that already conceded basic claims of individual autonomy. If I recall correctly, Ross did not think this ideal, but regarded it as an unavoidable necessity if pro-lifers were going to be able to make their case to others. At the very least, we would not have been having such an argument if this had not been prevalent in pro-life arguments for some time, so Parker was railing against something that is far more rare than she supposed (if she gave much thought to the matter at all). There are some, including myself and John Schwenkler, who think more forthrightly religious arguments are more compelling, because they concede fewer important assumptions, but we are decidedly not representative (as usual).

There are a few reasons why there is a perception, or rather misperception, that appeals to religious teachings are commonplace in social conservative arguments, and therefore a self-imposed limitation on social conservative ability to persuade others. There is the tendency for people outside of a group to miss distinctions among members of that group that are both obvious and significant to those inside it. It is true that one can find, perhaps among Theonomists or staunch believers in the “Christian nation” reading of American law, direct appeals to Scripture in their arguments on public policy, but these are not representative of social conservatives generally. Among the loudest critics of impending “theocracy,” finding marginal views on the Christian right and then conflating them with the views of all Christian or, more broadly, social conservatives are common methods used to try to link all forms of social conservatism with far more intensely religious and specifically Christian arguments. What an outsider will dub the “narcissism of small differences” does not usually appear small or trivial to those inside the group. There is another tendency, closely related to the first, to lump together everyone who claims membership in that group and make sweeping statements about what “they” do. These are common habits, I’m sure I have fallen into them on many occasions, and we all tend to make such generalizations more sweeping the less we understand (or care about) the diversity within another group. Obviously, the less sympathetic someone is to the group in question, the more likely he is to make sweeping statements that cast the group in whatever he regards to be the worst light. It can also be appealing to frame opponents as being more radically different from the “mainstream” than they really are in the hopes that persuadable people (i.e., those usually paying less attention) will come closer to your side.

The preference for arguments that do not appeal to religious teachings or Scripture is based in the social conservative version of the “defensive crouch,” which recognizes the resistance to these appeals and instead tries to debate on the terms set by opponents. There is a similar move among some non-interventionists, who will critique the war in Iraq by conceding broader claims about U.S. hegemony or the official demonization of other regimes for the sake of appealing to a broader audience. While this can be useful in showing how the war has worsened things on the terms of its proponents, it is fundamentally weaker than a full-throated critique of the illegality and injustice of the invasion or a straightforward argument that the war has significantly worsened our national security, and it is not particularly more likely to persuade anyone. For instance, it is correct to argue that our invasion of Iraq has greatly strengthened Iran’s influence in the region, and one might think that this would make many of the most vocal supporters reconsider the wisdom of the war when it leads to what they must, and theoretically do, regard as a bad outcome. However, this is not what happens.

Even if they acknowledge that Iran’s influence has grown significantly as a direct result of the war, and even assuming that they always regarded Iran as the greater threat, these supporters will insist that the U.S. presence in Iraq must continue in order…to contain Iranian influence! After all, even non-interventionists think that expanding Iranian influence is undesirable, so how can they want us to leave now? All that this sort of argument will have done is to help legitimize the next round of demonization, sanctions and military action, and meanwhile it undermines arguments against a long-term U.S. presence by granting that the containment of Iran ought to be a high priority, but it might well be considered more “reasonable” and more likely to persuade because of its weakness. By pulling off a clever maneuver that temporarily succeeds but ultimately plays into the strategy of the opponent, larger objectives are abandoned and even the temporary success gained from the maneuver vanishes.

Likewise, having conceded the centrality of individual autonomy with appeals to rights theories, pro-lifers are no more likely to persuade those on the pro-choice side, as they have already admitted the fundamental assumption that pro-choicers use to defend their position as the morally superior one. Once pro-lifers have allowed the debate to be defined in terms of choice vs. coercion, or the individual vs. oppressive society, winning over people, especially those in the “persuadable” middle, will become harder, not easier.