Making the Most of Your Political Motivations

As someone whose interest in politics and culture stems primarily from a religious upbringing, I think the TNR-hosted debate between Ross Douthat and Damon Linker over the place of religion in public life is too interesting not to mention. It’s a sort of secular royal rumble of the secular and religious intellectuals, and it’s fascinating to behold.

Ross opened strong (“it's somewhat difficult to tell whether you think that previous irruptions of faith into American politics were just as dangerous to the health of our secular republic as the "theocons" and their sinister agenda--or whether you think there's something particularly un-American about Neuhaus and company”), and he got a reasonably good response from Linker, seeming to mount a decent defense (“liberal politics presumes that it's possible and desirable for political life to be decoupled from theological questions and disputes”). But in his rebuttal today, Ross simply trounces Linker and his absurdly narrow definition of the “liberal bargain.”

Linker’s essential proposition is that, in liberal society (by which we’re talking about modern, rights-based, not “liberal” as in left-leaning Democrat), one must give up one’s religious inclinations when arguing or acting in the public square. So, in his formulation, you can argue for a position that your religion might lead to believe, but you must leave any religious backing for that reason out of your reasoning—and even then, Linker and the other theocracy-shouters seem to reserve the right to question whether a “reasoned” position is really just a religious position cloaked under a veil of argument. It’s a cheap way of discounting the arguments of opponents based entirely on their motives rather than on the validity of their actual position or even the strength of their arguments. As Michael Dougherty says:

There seems to be a fundamental suspicion that religious convictions are, for one reason or another (usually expressed in halting, or coughed over mumbling about separation of church and state) inferior to all other sources of political motivation. This hostility is usually unreflective. Anyone who observes modern politics with even slightly open eyes can see that politics are driven by the irrational: hatreds, resentment, group identification, tribalism (whether that be ethnic, religious or class), bigotry of all kings, wish fulfillment - and on and on. Liberals like Linker should thank Neuhaus. Linker may not like the catechism out of which Neuhaus teaches the peasants, but it is certainly more high minded than the "I'd have a beer with this guy.

Similar, but unmentioned, is the manner in which some have been attacking arguments made by anyone harboring a profit motive. Just as some are trying to prod religious believers out of politics, despite the fact that many of the decisions made in the public sphere affect them, there is an ongoing effort to, as the President of CEI (and my boss), Fred Smith, has written, remove the market from the marketplace of ideas.

Now, of course, it’s always useful to understand the motivations of anyone making an argument, and there’s nothing that says that a speaker’s motivations shouldn’t in some circumstances discount their position to some degree or another. But to totally disallow positions taken on the basis of religious motivation or profit interest is, as Ross points out, a far larger threat to the pluralistic, tolerant, "liberal bargain" on which America was founded than any of the overly broad alarmist claptrap spouted by so many anti-corporate and anti-religious doomsayers.