I know you like French restaurants, Amy, but America isn’t France, and that brand of secularism simply played no role in our constitutional order–thank heavens. ~Joseph Loconte

What sort of a rejoinder is this?  It’s like saying, “I know you like vodka, Michael Dougherty, but fortunately we don’t have a communist gulag in this country!” [Note: This is just a for-instance; I don’t actually know that Michael likes vodka–it’s an educated guess.]  I like the tart riposte as much the next guy (and perhaps more than most), but this seems oddly strained.  He goes from objecting (correctly) that no one claims that Roberts and Alito should decide cases “purely on religious teachings” and then runs to the opposite extreme and accuses Ms. Sullivan of pushing French-style truly religion-free secularism. 

Prof. Loconte spends a good part of the first half of his second installment in TNR’s Theocons: An Epic Miniseries (as I am calling it) making playful use of metaphors for Ms. Sullivan’s allegedly shoddy arguments. We are deluged by fish in a barrel and covered by straw men, and yet several paragraphs go by and all Prof. Loconte can offer up is a strained denial of the very position he seemed to give without qualificatiion just two days ago when he wrote:

What this critique misses, however, is the deeper challenge that Bush has delivered–politically and conceptually–to an increasingly secular culture. Take the judiciary. After the Harriet Miers debacle, Bush reasserted a political doctrine that evangelicals helped to craft: There must be no religious test for public office. [bold mine-DL] He appointed two devout Catholics to the Supreme Court, John Roberts and Samuel Alito, who evidently affirm their church’s “culture of life” philosophy. Both probably believe that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided. Both clearly view religious institutions as sources of democratic strength. The intellectual and moral gravity of Roberts and Alito (not to mention a host of other Bush judicial appointments) could shift the legal culture in a faith-friendly direction for years to come.

Today Prof. Loconte backpedals furiously by insisting that while those crazy evangelicals and Bush agree with the “religious test” rhetoric, he does not:

Let me begin with what we agree on. We agree that it is false and offensive for conservatives to allege (as some have done) that Democratic opposition to judicial nominees–because of their abortion views–amounts, ipso facto, to religious discrimination.

False and offensive, eh?  (It may be false–why is it really offensive?)  It didn’t seem terribly false or offensive to him two days ago.  He certainly didn’t bother to offer the remark, “By the way, I find this stuff false and offensive.”  Perhaps he was originally playing, ahem, devil’s advocate for the evangelical view of this question and was not stating his view of it one way or the other.  But that was not clear and it is entirely clear why Ms. Sullivan would respond as she did when she wrote:

First of all, there was never any threat to the important political doctrine preventing a “religious test” for public office.

But perhaps most curious of all, and almost inexplicable in light of Prof. Loconte’s enthusiasm for “faith-based” programs (does it trouble anyone that “faith-based” programs sound about as true to the Faith as “fact-based” stories are to reality?) is his earlier assault on David Kuo, whom we learn is an eccentric and bitter man.  Either Mr. Kuo is right and the “compassionate conservative” scheme is mostly hot air and no substance, or he is not.  The frustrated resignation of DiIulio seems rather pertinent, but it goes unmentioned all the while.  Calling Kuo eccentric and bitter isn’t an argument, and since Loconte rests so much of his defense of the evangelical influence on Mr. Bush’s government on the success or failure of the FBI (the other FBI) it would be a body blow to his entire view if it could be shown that, in fact, the faith-based initiative has not amounted to very much and has been largely symbolic.  Throwing some money at AIDS sufferers in Africa may strike many people as commendable, but when it comes to “faith-based” things in this country those who favoured such a program have good reason to be miffed (and the religious conservatives who reject the entire idea in principle have even more reason to be miffed that such things are being done in the name of their religion!).  This is a sizeable flaw in his overall argument that Ms. Sullivan has not yet fully exploited, but she would be well-advised to drive the dagger home on this point.

Prof. Loconte’s argument actually gets weaker from here:

Are there some conservative Christians who demonize Democrats and their politics this way–in ways that you and I both find ridiculous and divisive? Sure. But to impugn Bush is to slip into the camp of the conspiracy-mongers, and to break bread with them.

Always watch for the first person to accuse his interlocutor of engaging in conspiracy theory.  (Sometimes it goes like this: “You obviously believe that the Rothschilds rule the world if you think that AIPAC has any influence in Congress!”)  That person is getting beaten in the debate and, what is more, he knows he’s getting beaten.  Sometimes this kind of argument that your opponent is a conspiratorial loon of some sort–or sympathetic to the conspiratorial loons–will be successful in confusing an audience, but it rarely holds up over the long haul.  Obviously, Mr. Bush thrives off of and his supporters encourage the demonisation of the godless and immoral Democrats.  He is as implicated in this as anyone.  That it has a significant ring of truth in many instances doesn’t hurt the efforts to demonise (it is not difficult to cast as rather godless those people who do not go to church and do not, well, believe in any sort of God whom Christians would recognise), and one might say that it is only fair that religious people dish out as fiercely as they receive from secular liberals, who can never stop prattling on about intolerant and bigoted Christians who are coming to stop people from having sex ever again (except to have lots and lots and lots of babies, which can be a problem for maintaining the coherence of the message).  That being said, Mr. Bush does not get to opt out of the responsibilty for the rhetorical style that fuels a significant part of his power base and which he certainly does nothing to discourage.  Perhaps this kind of demonisation is acceptable or even desirable, but Prof. Loconte does not attempt to make that argument.  No bloody barricades of the culture war for him.  No, Mr. Bush is above the fray and helps AIDS patients and abused women around the world.  Only praise is meet for the emperor.

Then, feeling his back rubbing up against something that seems very much like the proverbial wall, Prof. Loconte rides the theocracy conspiracy-mongers of the left for all they are worth:

While we’re at it [we weren’t at it, but why not?-DL], let’s talk about those conspiracy-mongers. Here’s an easy one: Since the events of September 11, what category of politician or public intellectual has essentially drawn a straight line from conservative Christianity to Islamic extremism? You know the answer: the liberal or progressive.

Try ingesting Kevin Phillips’s American Theocracy, Michelle Goldberg’s Kingdom Coming, or just about anything from the mouth of Howard Dean, Arthur Schlesinger, or George Soros, and you get a feel for what may be playing at a Democratic National Convention near you. The stupefying irrationality of it, the rank nativism, the spiritual tone-deafness–this is what prompts my bewilderment, for it makes me wonder why the Democratic Party has been such a comfortable home to so much of it for so long.

Give Prof. Loconte points for accomplishing a bold feat: he has accused liberals of engaging in “nativist” politics in the belly of The New Republic!  This is remarkable in itself.  I have to admit that I don’t really know what this means, though I assume that it is some offhand attempt to marshal outrage at anti-Catholic bigotry in the 19th century and identify that with the criticisms coming out today.  This is not nativism, but just secularist prejudice that offends equally against Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox alike.  Prof. Loconte’s point would also be a lot stronger if Kevin Phillips were not a secular Republican who doesn’t much like evangelicals and other religious conservatives in the GOP.  Like Andrew Sullivan (who is responsible for the ghastly, the appalling, the stupid label of “Christianist”) or Ryan Sager or other prophets of fundamentalist doom appearing in the GOP, he is conventionally aligned on the right but is not terribly interested in being on the right hand of God, so to speak (and even less interested in bringing God into politics).  It is true that most of the hysterical warnings about impending theocracy have come from committed liberals and Democrats, which is obvious and which is totally and completely off the subject at hand, which is whether or not evangelicals and religious conservatives have real influence in the GOP and this administration.  Are they being played for suckers, or not?  Prof. Loconte attempted to answer this the first time around, but then after a rather vigorous hiding by Ms. Sullivan he had to make for the safer, higher ground of screeching about liberal intolerance against and paranoia about Christians, which is well-known and which tells us nothing about the influence of religious conservatives, evangelicals or Christians generally on the current administration, the GOP or even the conservative movement broadly defined. 

As if to prove Ms. Sullivan’s point that the GOP hasn’t really got very much real to offer these folks, Prof. Loconte spends three out of eleven paragraphs in today’s installment summoning the demons of the crazy liberal who despises Christianity in politics and who doesn’t seem to care much for conservative Christians, either.  These people are real; they exist in considerable numbers; they think having “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance violates the establishment clause–what can I say?  They’re rather batty.  But they are also irrelevant to the current debate.  This conclusion, which serves as Prof. Loconte’s last word on the subject, reinforces the impression that the GOP doesn’t have much to offer, except that it is a place where religious people will be ridiculed less than in the other party and will be paid lip service but will, on the things that matter most to them, generally be shunted off to the side and ignored.  In the end, the only thing Mr. Bush or his party can say, and the only thing that Prof. Loconte can say for them is, “Flee Michelle Goldberg and the Democrats!  They are coming for your Bible!”  Conservative Christians have heard all of this too many times before, and they have also seen next to no action on the things near and dear to their hearts, so the question remains whether this political marriage is a good one and whether it has a future based in anything more than fear and loathing of the alternative.