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You are here: Home / Politics / Crisis of Faith

Crisis of Faith

by John Cole|  April 21, 20059:06 pm| 10 Comments

This post is in: Politics

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A pretty perceptive piece by Andrew Sullivan about what I have been feeling as of late regarding the GOP. Sullivan creates a new dichotomoy for discussion- conservatives of faith and conservatives of doubt. The intro:

Conservatism isn’t over. But it has rarely been as confused. Today’s conservatives support limited government. But they believe the federal government can intervene in a state court’s decisions in a single family’s struggle over life and death. They believe in restraining government spending. But they have increased such spending by a mind-boggling 33 percent in a mere four years. They believe in self-reliance. But they have just passed the most expensive new entitlement since the heyday of Great Society liberalism: the Medicare prescription-drug benefit. They believe that foreign policy is about the pursuit of national interest and that the military should be used only to fight and win wars. Yet they have embarked on an extraordinarily ambitious program of military-led nation-building in the Middle East. They believe in states’ rights, but they want to amend the Constitution to forbid any state from allowing civil marriage or equivalent civil unions for gay couples. They believe in free trade. But they have imposed tariffs on a number of industries, most famously steel. They believe in balanced budgets. But they have abandoned fiscal discipline and added a cool trillion dollars to the national debt in one presidential term.

On Conservatives of faith:

This conservatism states conservative principles–and, indeed, eternal insights into the human condition–as a matter of truth. Because these conservatives believe that the individual is inseparable from her political community and civilization, there can be no government neutrality in promoting such truths. Either a government’s laws affirm virtue or they affirm vice. And the meaning of virtue and vice can be understood either by reflecting on the Judeo-Christian moral tradition or by inferring from philosophical understandings what human nature in its finest form should be. These truths are not culturally relative; they are universally valid.

The state, therefore, has a duty to protect, at a minimum, all human life, meaning it must regulate abortion and end-of-life decisions. The conservatism of faith sees nothing wrong with channeling $2 billion of public money to religious charities, as the Bush administration boasts; or with spending government money to promote sexual abstinence as a moral good; or with telling parents in government literature that a gay child may need therapy. Science must be hedged by faith, as the teaching of evolution is questioned and pharmacists are allowed to refuse prescriptions for contraception on religious grounds. And public education must have a moral component. As President Bush said in his first State of the Union, “Values are important, so we have tripled funding for character education to teach our children not only reading and writing, but right from wrong.” The “we” referred to here is the federal government. The alternative, in the eyes of faith-conservatives, would be to allow those with a different morality to promote a rival agenda. Since neutrality is impossible, conservative truths trump secular values.

Conservatives of Doubt:

The alternative philosophical tradition begins in precise opposition to the new conservatives’ confidence in faith and reason as direct, accessible routes to universal truth. The conservatism of doubt asks how anyone can be sure that his view of what is moral or good is actually true. Conservatives of doubt note that even the most dogmatic of institutions, such as the Catholic or Mormon churches, have changed their views over many centuries, and that, even within such institutions, there is considerable debate about difficult moral issues. They understand that significant critiques of human reason–Nietzsche, anyone?–have rendered the philosophical quest for self-evident truth even more precarious in the modern world. Such conservatives are not nihilists or devotees of what Pope Benedict XVI has called “the dictatorship of relativism.” They merely believe that the purported choice between moral absolutism and complete relativism, between God and moral anarchy, is a phony one. Their alternative is a skeptical, careful, prudential approach to all moral questions–and suspicion of anyone claiming to hold the absolute truth. Since such an approach rarely provides a simple answer persuasive to everyone within a democratic society, we live with moral and cultural pluralism.

For conservatives of faith, such pluralism can allow error to flourish–and immorality to become government policy–and therefore must be limited. A conservative of doubt, however, does not regard the existence of such pluralism as a problem. He sees it as an unavoidable fact of modernity, an invitation to lives that are more challenging and autonomous than in more traditional societies. Even when conservatives of doubt disagree with others’ moral convictions, they recognize that, in a free, pluralist society, those other views deserve a hearing. So a conservative who believes abortion is always immoral can reconcile herself to a polity in which abortion is still legal, if regulated. Putting government power unequivocally on the side of one view of morality–especially in extremely controversial areas–must always be balanced against the rights and views of citizens who dissent. And, precisely because complete government neutrality may be impossible on these issues, government should tread as lightly as possible. The key in areas of doubt is to do as little harm as possible. Which often means, with respect to government power, doing as little as possible.

Read the whole thing before you flame. I’ll let you figure out which one better describes me.

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Reader Interactions

10Comments

  1. 1.

    Kimmitt

    April 21, 2005 at 9:34 pm

    Okay, help me out — what’s the difference between a “Conservative of Doubt” and a liberal?

  2. 2.

    Lee

    April 21, 2005 at 10:25 pm

    Why quote Andrew Sullivan on religion? for gosh sakes, it ALL comes down to sex for him. Every single point has it’s roots in sex (aka homosexual marriage)… i cannot read him with an open mind anymore. when i try, my instinct tells me where it’s heading. His disagreements with catholism has it’s epicenter with allowing marriage between same sexes…
    BTW, the video from iraq (execution of the helicoptor pilot (to change subjects) is horrific. very sad.

  3. 3.

    bago

    April 21, 2005 at 11:19 pm

    Well, he’s catholic, and in case you haven’t noticed, if there’s one thing catholics have hangups about, it’s sex.

    Original Sin, Chaste clergy, altar-boy scandals, no female clergy and condoms of sin.

    When your sex advice comes from a 78 year old virgin, you might not be entirely coherent.

  4. 4.

    JG

    April 21, 2005 at 11:21 pm

    Government spending is way up, size of government overall is up, the military is being used to free oppressed people under totalitarian rule. Whats the difference between any type of conservative and a liberal? Bigger government is ok as long as its intrusion into day to day individual life is biblically driven?

  5. 5.

    Ben

    April 22, 2005 at 6:50 am

    Lee,
    So homosexual marriage is about sex? Is heterosexual marriage totally about sex? You haven’t read much Sullivan have you? I don’t always agree with him, but he is brilliant and much more likely to think outside the box than people like you who simply pass judgement… you must be one of those alleged christians.

  6. 6.

    SilverRook2000

    April 22, 2005 at 8:58 am

    A conservative of doubt is actually a “true” conservative. A conservative that is faith driven is actually a “liberal” with a different agenda. Both “liberals” and “faith” based conservatives try and use the power of the state to force their views on individuals. The current administration is as “politically correct” in its own way as the left is. Rather than practice fiscal restraint, separation of church and state, and even separation of powers, it has plunged into a morass that may very well destroy the Republican party.

  7. 7.

    Mr Furious

    April 22, 2005 at 9:06 am

    since I cannot read the whole thing (subscription-only) I can only hope whatever comes before and after you excerpt brings it all together, because that is the most tedious sullivan I’ve ever read.

    That said, John, you’re a Conservative of Doubt and you are no longer welcome in your Party. Come on over to the “light” side…

  8. 8.

    Mr Furious

    April 22, 2005 at 9:16 am

    Hey SilverRook, how exactly is, say, fighting against discrimination against homosexuals enforcing views on the religious? The state can’t legislate that they like homosexuals, no one is forcing you to attend a gay wedding. And a gay marriage literally has no effect on traditional marriage except in the eye of the beholder. and I don’t know a law or edict that can effect that!

    Yet the religious right wants to legislate homosexuals out of existence. Not physically of course (though if they could come up with a way, some would), but by slowly eroding or erasing any public acknowledgement of any rights at all, they make the lives of homosexuals so miserable they return to the closet, and the right can pretend they don’t exist at all.

    Those are NOT two sides of the same coin at all.

  9. 9.

    Jorge

    April 22, 2005 at 9:50 am

    Hi,
    These guys are way extreme and over the top, but there is still a lot of truth in this.

    http://www.whitehouse.org/dof/marriage.asp

  10. 10.

    Kimmitt

    April 22, 2005 at 11:51 am

    Rather than practice fiscal restraint, separation of church and state, and even separation of powers,

    These are liberal tenets, at least since 1980. Philosophies evolve.

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