R.R. Reno critiques the "conservative" case for gay "marriage"

First Things editor R.R. Reno lays out quite clearly the faulty logic behind the arguments for gay "marriage" being embraced by a number of "limited government conservatives."

We’ll hear this argument again and again in the future, so it’s worth taking a close look. The fundamental claim is libertarian: getting the government out of moral questions is a gain for limited government. That seems tautologically true. If the government isn’t telling you whom you can or can’t marry, then the zone of government power contracts and individual freedom expands. But a closer look suggests otherwise.

As Edmund Burke recognized, the form of liberalism that understands liberty as requiring limited government (as opposed to understanding liberty as empowerment, which almost always involves pumping up the power of government as the agent of empowerment) also requires morality, culture, and tradition. That’s a Burkean separation of powers, as it were. Governing power is dispersed rather than concentrated, because morality, culture, and tradition embody independent authorities that shape and order our lives. They’re something the government power must respect rather than superintend, must work around rather than steamroll.

For example, the wrongness of murder and the sanctity of property both limit the scope of government power. The law may specify how to try and punish murder, but government does not invent or define murder. Instead, the law recognizes a moral truth prior to law and politics. That’s why late-term abortions are so scandalous. Nobody is confused about the humanity of the seven-month-old child in the womb, and yet our law refuses to see killing him or her as murder.

Religious truth also limits government, as our Constitution recognizes. Theology is beyond the competence of politics, and for that reason Congress is not to make laws establishing (endorsing) or limiting the free exercise of (condemning) religion. Our religious convictions are practices beyond the purview of politics.

Redefinition of marriage to allow same-sex unions undermines the proper separation of cultural and governmental power that is so important for a liberal regime. Marriage is an institution as fundamental as religion and morality. It is more primitive and ancient than anything resembling organized government. It has varied historically and culturally, of course. But male/female complementarity and its procreative potential is universal, however diverse the forms. Government has always treated marriage like murder—a moral fact recognized rather than a policy formulated, a given truth framed in law rather than something to be fed into the machinery of political debate.

As marriage gets redefined we’ll see an expansion of government. That’s because gay marriage won’t just happen if government “gets out of the way.” It requires creating a new possibility that will not come to pass if traditional institutions and moral traditions are left alone. Government must intervene. Our moral traditions must be subjected to what activists think of as corrective surgery. With gay marriage we’re sure to get legislation redefining what it means to be a parent, and what it means to be a child, as is already the case in California. In the way of these redefinitions will come programs to “reeducate” John Q. Public to the “new realities.”

Here as elsewhere the progressive project is always political. It sees a problem: The pre-political institutions and traditions of society are violating rights and creating inequalities. Then it reaches for the ready tool for redress and correction, which is almost always the power of government—coercive force.

Large government and its threat to freedom aren’t only a matter of size; it’s also a question of the scope of its claim to authority. Gay activists are consistent when they focus on “rights” and “equality,” the first of which must be guaranteed by government coercion, and the second of which must be created by the use of government power. They see that government must intrude. Cultural traditions can’t be allowed to define marriage, because they have done so unjustly. Instead, voters and their representatives must, and failing that, the courts. The political process defines marriage rather than responding to something that can’t be absorbed into the political process.

Tyranny isn’t just a situation in which the government is telling you what to do at every moment. It’s also a society in which government says that, if necessary, it can. In this respect gay marriage reflects a dramatic enlargement of government. If legislatures and courts can redefine marriage, what can’t it intervene to reshape and re-purpose?

IRD: Christianity and the liberal right

Pursuing spiritual ends through secular means is never wise. This is true perhaps now more than ever, as the IRD's Addie Darling observes.

Looking back at the discourse of the past month, I can’t help but wonder if – given the current dialogue- the alignment of traditional Christians with the goals of political parties- particularly the Republican party, will doom any attempt at salvaging a society that values human dignity, the family, and authentic justice. This is not necessarily because the goal of promoting the traditional family or preserving the institution of marriage is an unworthy cause, nor because our culture is too “lost” or depraved to understand the Gospel, but because both parties’ individualist foundations undermine a Christian understanding of the world. While cooperation with political parties is necessary to achieve certain ends, Christians must distance themselves from the heresies of Americanism and radical individualism that infect both parties. Radical individualism undermines the communitarian and cooperative nature of the Church, has given rise to the sexual and social revolutions that have gotten us into this mess, and it won’t get us out of it.

At the core of Christian social teaching- on sex, on economics, on justice, on poverty- is a theory of solidarity with all men- particularly with the weakest and the marginalized who have no one to turn to. Yes we have personal relationships with Christ, sin is an individual action and we are judged as separate persons. However, Christianity is fundamentally a communitarian faith: with the support of the family and the Church, we come together as parts of a body in pursuit of Christ.

Individualism, however, destroys this body. Its isolationism and self-interest sends a message that the individual’s actions do not concern anyone else, and furthermore, that the individual has few-if any- obligations to others. The apologists for modernism preach that so long as one does not directly and significantly impede the ability of others to pursue their own desires, nearly all things are permissible- even at the expense of the community. This divorce of man from community reduces morality to the pursuit of one’s personal pleasure, rather than what is good, and transforms politics into a tool for supporting individual prerogatives. In short: individualism breeds moral relativism and gives public license to nearly all self-centered initiatives.

Gone is an idea that Christ is the vine, and we are the branches; annihilated is the idea that we grow in our own ways and towards our own goals, but we fundamentally are part of the same body. Instead, this view creates a society of princes, lording over their own self-designed kingdom – and anyone who suggests otherwise is a tyrant seeking to impose himself upon others.

It is this rhetoric and set of assumptions that underlies the core of the both the Republican and Democratic Party platforms today, and, as hinted by R. Reno in First Things, if this message does not change, then it will undermine the conservative philosophy that it masquerades as, not to mention orthodox Christian beliefs.

Richards: Capitalism does not need Ayn Rand

Jay W. Richards of the Christian Research Institute joins David Bentley Hart in attempting to douse the flames of conservative enthusiasm over the movie adaptation of Atlas Shrugged. Adam Smith is the gold standard for understanding capitalism, but it was a distortion of his views, namely the claim that capitalism is based on greed, that Ayn Rand popularized. Rand's objectivist philosophy was wholly inconsistent with a Christian worldview. Capitalism, argues Richards, can get along just fine without her.

In response to the critics of capitalism, many conservative Christians turn to philosopher Ayn Rand for ammunition. Rand was a staunch defender of capitalism, but also an anti-Christian atheist who argued that capitalism was based on greed. Greed, for Rand, is good. But if Rand is right, then Christians can’t be capitalists, because greed is a sin. Fortunately, Rand was wrong. She missed the subtleties of capitalism. First, we should distinguish self-interest from selfishness. Adam Smith, the father of capitalism, famously wrote, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” True enough; but that alone isn’t a problem. Every time you wash your hands or look both ways before you cross the street, you’re pursuing your self-interest—but neither activity is selfish. Second, Smith never argued that the more selfish we are, the better a market works. His point, rather, is that in a free market, each of us can pursue ends within our narrow sphere of competence and concern—our “self-interest”—and yet an order will emerge that vastly exceeds anyone’s deliberations. Finally, Smith argued that capitalism channels greed, which is a good thing. The point is that even if the butcher is selfish, he can’t make you buy his meat. He has to offer you meat at a price you’ll willingly buy. So capitalism doesn’t need greed. What it does need is rule of law, freedom, and human creativity and initiative. And we can point that out without any help from Ayn Rand.

Atlas Shrugged and careless conservatism

It's not available online yet, but David Bentley Hart's lament over the imminent theatrical release of Atlas Shrugged, the magnum opus of novelist and objectivist philosopher Ayn Rand, is worth reading if you can get your hands on a copy of the May issue of First Things. Hart does not share the enthusiasm of many on the Right (the trailer was unveiled at this year's Conservative Political Action Conference) who are eagerly anticipating the film's release. Neither does he share their high opinion of Rand's abilities as a novelist/philosopher, although he admits his opinion may be tinged with a bit of decidedly unobjective emotion.

All right, all right--perhaps I'm being just a little spiteful. I may even be overreacting. The world survived the filming of The Fountainhead (if only by the skin of its teeth), and it may yet survive this. And Ayn Rand always provokes a rather extravagant reaction from me, and probably for purely ideological reasons. For instance, I like the Sermon on the Mount. She regarded its prescriptions as among the vilest ever uttered. I suspect that charity really is the only way to avoid wasting one's life in a desert of sterile egoism. She regarded Christian morality as a poison that had polluted the will of Western man with its ethos of parasitism and orgiastic self-oblation. And, simply said, I cannot find much common ground with someone who believed that the principal source of human woe over the last twenty centuries has been a tragic shortage of selfishness. 

Still, I like to think that my detestation of Rand's novels follows from more than a mere disagreement over differing versions of the universe. What's a universe here or there, after all? I prefer to think it's a matter of good taste. For what really puts both Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead in a class of their own is how sublimely awful they are. I know one shouldn't expect much from a writer who thought Mickey Spillane a greater artist than Shakespeare. Even so, the cardboard characters, the ludicrous dialogue, the bloated perorations, the predictable plotting, the lunatic repetitiousness and banality, the shockingly syrupy romance--it all goes to create a uniquely nauseating effect: at once mephitic and cloying, at once sulfur and cotton candy.

Whittaker Chambers couldn't have said it better and, no doubt, if Rand and venerable First Things founder Richard John Neuhaus were still among the living, the former's subsequent attitude toward the latter would be similar to her disdain for William F. Buckley, Jr. after Chambers's unflattering critique of Atlas Shrugged appeared in National Review in 1957. But the fact that Hart is something of a voice in the conservative wilderness is a bit disconcerting. The re-emergence of Ayn Rand as an iconic figure in both intellectual and popular conservatism may not be exactly the death knell for Western civilization, as Hart suggests somewhat whimsically, but it is problematic.

When a socio-political movement finds itself exiled to the political wilderness, as American conservatism found itself at the dawn of the age of Obama, it looks for some philosophical anchor on which to moor itself while it re-examines its priorities. The embrace of Randian Objectivism by some on the Right is careless and counter-productive. David Browder recently noted the flawed anthropology of Rand's philosophy and questioned why "a chastened Republican intellegentsia" would "take refuge" in it. Classical conservatism, while not always consistently rooted in biblical or Christian principles, nevertheless shares with Christianity a negative anthropology with which Rand's objectivism is wholly at odds.

The Oldest and Best Argument for Conservatism

Peter Matthews, a.k.a. the "Guitar Priest," posts this quote from Australian philosopher David Stone.

A primitive society is being devastated by a disease, so you bring modern medicine to bear, and wipe out the disease, only to find that by doing so you have brought on a population explosion. You introduce contraception to control population, and find that you have dismantled a whole culture. At home you legislate to relieve the distress of unmarried mothers, and find you have given a cash incentive to the production of illegitimate children. You guarantee a minimum wage, and find that you have extinguished, not only specific industries, but industry itself as a personal trait. You enable everyone to travel, and one result is, that there is nowhere left worth travelling to. And so on.

This is the oldest and the best argument for conservatism: the argument from the fact that our actions almost always have unforeseen and unwelcome consequences. It is an argument from so great and so mournful a fund of experience, that nothing can rationally outweigh it. Yet somehow, at any rate in societies like ours, this argument never is given its due weight. When what is called a “reform” proves to be, yet again, a cure worse than the disease, the assumption is always that what is needed is still more, and still more drastic, “reform.”

Remember the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result.