The Eich affair: why conservatives are wrong, Part 4

Gregory XVI: 'So, too, it is a crime for the state to act
as if there were no God, or not to have a care for religion,
as something beyond its scope, or as of no practical
benefit; or out of the many forms of religion to adopt
whatever one it likes; for states are bound absolutely to
worship God in that way which he has shown to be his
will.' (Mirari vos 1832)

My point in these posts is that conservatives have made a terrible strategic blunder in seeking to limit the attacks on themselves by liberals by accepting the basic liberal picture, and then trying to ameliorate the problems liberalism causes by special pleading. This was never going to work; in the medium and long term it never has worked. It is high time conservatives freed themselves from this strategy and tried something which addresses the arguments at the basis of the liberal project, which are often terribly weak.

Political liberalism is the view that, on the basis of an agreed set of very basic moral principles designed to protect us from obvious harms like being murdered, everyone should be able to pursue the good life as he conceives it to be. This contrasts with the political theories of the ancient world, which started from a particular understanding of the Good Life, as the life of virtue, and maintained that the role of the state was to promote that by encouraging virtues and discouraging vice. Classical Catholic theories, to simplify, had the same idea but bearing in mind that our ultimate good as human beings is heaven, and dividing responsibility for the government of a Christian society between the state and the Church. A Catholic state, naturally, must do its best to assist the Church in its proper function spiritual government over Catholics.

Pius IX: 'that erroneous opinion, ... called
by Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI, an "insanity,"
viz., that liberty of conscience and worship is
each man's personal right, which ought to be
legally proclaimed and asserted in every
rightly constituted society; and
that a right resides in the citizens to an
absolute liberty, which should be restrained
by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil,
whereby they may be able openly and publicly to
manifest and declare any of their ideas
whatever, either by word of mouth,
by the press, or in any other way.'
(Quanta cura 1864)

I want to describe two wide open goals in liberalism, which are being neglected by the 'conservatives' who are so terrified of being called 'illiberal' that they can't bear to breath a word of criticism against liberalism, hoping desperately - but in vain - that the freedom promised to all by the liberal state will allow them to carry on their conservative lives in peace.

The first derives from the fact that the theory is not going to get off the ground unless the basic moral principles protecting us from being murdered etc. are uncontroversial. The whole idea here is that liberalism can contain a wide range of views by allowing each person the freedom to do what they want as far as their 'substantive conception of the good' is concerned: to devote oneself to painting, collecting stamps, meditating on a cushion, making money, having as much pleasure as possible, or whatever. (It excludes, of course, the conceptions which actually harm others, such as those which stop homosexuals getting married, pregnant women getting abortions, unmarried couples sharing a room in the B&B of their choice: those conceptions are unreasonable.) We can all agree - they say - on the basic things which make a common life possible.

The problem is that their basic principles are not uncontroversial at all. When you look at them in detail, they are clearly derived from certain specific moral theories - how could they not be? - and there aren't any non-controversial moral theories out there. The claim is often made by liberals that these basic ('thin') principles derive from rationality, but exactly what rationality implies is also hugely controversial, and the way rationality is understood has varied enormously over time. (A good place to see arguments about this is Alasdair MacIntyre's book Whose Justice? Which Rationality?)

Leo XIII: one of the “chief duties” of rulers
is to 'favour religion, to protect it, to shield it
under the credit and sanction of the laws,
and neither to organize nor enact any
measure that may compromise its safety.' 
(Immortale Dei, 1885)

The interesting fact is that issues which liberals regard as 'substantive' are often less controversial than issues which liberals call 'thin'. It is much easier to get the saloon bar to agree that children should be taught the three Rs or that incest is disgraceful than to get them to agree that it is rational to seek to make the worst-possible future outcome as good as possible, rather than to take a risk with that for a higher chance of getting a much better outcome. This has real political implications. Liberals like to claim that they can cope with multi-culturalism better than conservatives, but this is not so. Muslims, Jews, Hindus and Christians disagree on fundamental issues, but we actually agree on many substantive issues, such as the need to limit sexual licence and support the stability of the family. There are historically many examples of multicultural societies run successfully on conservative lines - it is true of all the great empires of history. They way they do it is to make policy on the basis of widely agree aspects of the substantive good, just as Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland agree to restrict abortion there. As the radical implications of liberalism are worked out, it is increasingly clear than a consistent liberal state could never co-exist with a large body of, say, Muslim citizens.

The second exploitable problem with liberalism is that it implies a very radical freedom for each person to do what he likes with his life, as long as it does not harm other people. The horrible consequences of this principle are such, however, that even liberal states can only apply it selectively and inconsistently.

Pius XI: ' these manifold evils in the world were due to
the fact that the majority of men had thrust Jesus Christ
and his holy law out of their lives; that these had no place
either in private affairs or in politics: and we said further,
that as long as individuals and states refused to submit
to the rule of our Savior, there would be no really hopeful
prospect of a lasting peace among nations.'
(Quas primas 1925)

For example, serious liberals have long wanted to permit the consumption of all kinds of drugs. And they have long wanted to legalise prostitution. But after some experimentation in these directions, the consequences so socially ghastly that debate inevitably swings back against it. It turns out that, perhaps indirectly, the free pursuit of grossly immoral ways of life have negative consequences for others: it is not victimless. Having legislated a free-for-all for prostitution in Germany, Sweden and France and now taking effective measures to suppress it. But then you start to realise that almost no vices are truly victimless: think about suicide, for example, or adultery.

Health policy has currently swung so far back against liberal principles that I begin to wonder whether my body is my own, or a tool of the state to improve the efficiency of the economy or to lower the costs of the National Health Service. But of course the health fascists, like feminist opponents of prostitution, have a point: it is just not a liberal point. The state has, perfectly reasonably, a substantive conception (shared by pretty well everyone) of what is good for us in terms of physical health, and, perfectly reasonably, wants to encourage (not necessarily compel) us in that direction. The state has an interest in the health of its citizens: liberals should logically deny this but it is obviously true.

To conclude, liberalism as a theory cannot cope without basic, 'thin' moral principles being accepted by (pretty well) everyone: to point out that their chosen principles are actually accepted by almost no-one (this is indeed the case with the most influential account of rationality in liberal theory, that of John Rawls) check-mates the whole theory. Again, the theory cannot do without a nice clear distinction between what harms others (to be forbidden) and what is a legitimate pursuit of a private, perhaps controversial, conception of the good life (to be permitted). To point out that this distinction collapses in practice is to show that the whole theory is untenable. If all the things we'd expect to be optional conceptions of the good turn out to be required or forbidden by justice to others (because they affect other people), liberal freedom simply disappears.

Vatican II: 'Indeed, since people's demand for 

religious liberty in carrying out their duty to 

worship God concerns freedom from compulsion 

in civil society, it leaves intact the traditional catholic 

teaching on the moral obligation of individuals and 

societies towards the true religion and 

the one Church of Christ.' (Dignitatis humanae)

So liberalism is not unassaible: in fact it is weak. On the other hand, a conservative alternative to liberalism isn't a dystopia: it is just a set of compromises between people with much in common, but disagreements as well, about what makes for a good life, negotiated by perfectly ordinary political means.

We don't hear the arguments I've outlined much because, to repeat, the mainstream so-called conservative parties don't actually have the courage to criticise liberalism as a system, and the same is true of the bulk of so-called conservative Catholic apologists. When they come across issues related to these problems they use them only to score minor points on specific issues, such as fighting back against the legalisation of prostitution. It isn't a problem about prostitution, however: it is a fundamental flaw in liberalism.

--------------------

Oh and did I mention that political liberalism is also against the teaching of the Church? For more on 'religious liberty', which is in fact only partially relevant here (it is not primarily religious liberty which is at issue), see here. 

The Eich affari: why conservatives are wrong, Part 3

In my last post I explained why the conservative backlash against the ousting of Brandon Eich as head of Mozilla was confused. It may, of course, still have some success; it may force the liberals to pull back a bit, at least for a time, because of the strength of feeling. But the liberals have logic on their side.

What opponents of Same Sex Marriage are doing is trying to stop other people from pursuing what those other people consider a good life. This is never allowed in the liberal, tolerant, neutral system. Conservatives - neoconservatives - who proclaim loudly that they are at ease in a permissive liberal state are being hypocritical when they demand the right to restrict the freedom of others. It really is as simple as that.

Here are some more examples of the same thing.

Liberals regard it as intolerable that anyone doing any kind of job should refuse to engage in immoral behaviour at the request of a client. Registrars who don't want to serve same-sex couples, pharmacists who don't want to dish out the Morning After Pill, doctors and nurses who don't want to take part in abortions, B&B owners who don't want to give double rooms to unmarried couples, and now companies which don't want to pay for abortions for their employees: the same logical pattern is present in each case. The conscientious professional is attempting to stop another person doing something, or at least potentially make it more difficult, which is part of that person's free pursuit of the good-as-he-understands-it.

Conservatives often try to make the argument that the obligation on the professional to do what he is told is itself an infringement on the professional's freedom, that is, his ability to have a good life as he conceives it. The argument does not work. There is no parallel between wanting to do something which harms no one else and wanting to stop people doing something which harms no one else. When there is a clash between them, of course the liberal state is going to side with the first and against the second. What else could it do?

Remember the distinction I made in the first post of this series about one's desires for oneself, and one's desires for other people. These conscientious professionals are concerned ultimately about other people's behaviour. If the liberals allowed each person to have a conception of the good which included the behaviour of other (non-consenting) individuals, you'd have endless clashes between different people pursuing their conceptions of the good. So they tend to assume - and arguments for this can be found in the philosophical literature - that only a person's desires about him or herself should count: egocentric desires, not allocentric desires.

I'm just passing on here what seems obvious to many mainstream political theorists, the people who provide the theoretical backing for the liberal political system in which we are living. The conservative response which I have been describing is something which would be laughed out of the room in ten thousand graduate seminars across the English-speaking world.

That is not to say that political liberalism in unassailable: far from it. The difficulties and alternatives to liberalism as a political theory are hotly debated in academia. It is only Catholic apologists and neo-conservative political commentators who believe it is the only game in town. Remember, liberalism denies that the state should take a view on the relative merits of different 'conceptions of the good' / ways of life, once it has ruled out certain unacceptable (intolerant) ones. It is, perhaps, a minority view in political theory, but still one which is taken seriously, that the state should after all gently steer people away from clearly worthless ways of life like those of counting blades of grass or soaking oneself in whisky, even if the state should be open-minded between ways of life which have serious supporters, if only for reasons of practical politics. Such views have, pretty obviously, a good deal of intuitive plausibility. But they imply the rejection of the 'neutralist' liberal project.

But before you can assail something, you must want to assail it. Before we are going to make any progress, we must free ourselves from the desire to present ourselves in every debate as liberal. And this presentation is exactly the strategy which has been adopted by our clever-clever Catholic apologists, and for that matter by the conservative political class as well.

Oh how brilliant they think they are being! To be electable or listened to, every conservative political party and think-tank must show it is essentially liberal. To have a place at the table, every Catholic school and charity must show it accepts the principles of liberalism. To get a hearing for the Gospel, every bishop and every apologist must make it clear that he, of course, accepts liberalism. We are all in favour of free speech! We all abhor laws which discourage private vices! We all condemn the crusades! We all condemn the persecution of heretics in the past, even when carried out by canonised saints! We all accept educational theories which ignore Original Sin! We all accept theories of psychology and medicine which regard well-being solely in terms of desire-satisfaction! We all, in short, will bend over backwards to ridicule the awful old conservatives of the past, the ones who were foolish enough not to accept liberalism.

One of the headlines generated by the conservative backlash against the persecution of Brandon Eich was 'Error has no rights' (see picture above): some conservative (Rod Dreher, in fact) thought it would be clever to use the classical liberal attack on the Catholic conservatives of the past as a stick to beat the liberals of today. How clever is that? These conservatives quite literally want to present themselves as more liberal than the liberals. It is just a pity they don't have the brains to understand how the theory of liberalism actually works.

For heaven's sake, guys, take stock a little and see what idiots you are being! Liberalism is not some kind of perfect theory which cannot be criticised. Of course the liberals will hit back if you attack them, but if you stop to think you will realise that liberalism has grave weaknesses, and you can actually land some punches on your opponents if you stop being a liberal yourself. I will consider some of these in the next post.



Photos: top and bottom, the Oxford Pro Life Witness.

The Eich affair: why conservatives are wrong, Part 2

I my last post I explained that the liberal state to which conservatives are now appealing against the persecution of Brandon Eich for opposing Same Sex Marriage, has a certain logical structure which these conservatives, as far as I can see, do not understand. The whole purpose of it is to allow each person to pursue a conception of the good without conflicting with other people doing the same thing. This 'pursuit of happiness' is even written into the American Constitution.

To be exact, this is understood as the pursuit of one's own desires for oneself (and consenting partners). Barriers to the fulfillment of these desires, ie barriers to happiness, should be demolished. They are unjust. Those who maintain such barriers are being hypocritical, enjoying the benefits of the liberal system (since they are free to pursue their own happiness) while trying to stop others doing the same thing, or doing so as successfully as they might.

As I have explained before at greater length, it was always just a matter of time before liberals moved on from the demolition of the more concrete barriers to pursuing the fulfilment of one's desires, such as laws prohibiting certain persons from entering certain professions, or company policies which effectively do the same thing, to the less concrete barriers which come from attitudes. It is perfectly true that hostile attitudes can make life a misery for the misfit. Everyone with socially conservative views is about to experience this personally, if they don't already. So attitudes hostile to the 'gay lifestyle' - yes, we are talking about sexual behaviour - should logically, in the liberal system, be prohibited, if not by law then by social pressure, in order to allow homosexuals to pursue their chosen lifestyle without being shamed. There you have it.

Is this a paradox? That social conservatives are shamed about their views so that progressives need no be shamed about theirs? Not really. Each person has the right to pursue his own lifestyle. The conservative is trying to stop other people from pursuing the gay lifestyle. That's wrong. The gay campaigners are trying to stop other people from trying to stop people from pursuing their chosen lifestyle. That's right.

Yes, it is simple, it is coherent, it is consistent. To allow conservatives to attack the gay lifestyle would be inconsistent with the liberal project in just the same way, and for the same reason, as allowing people to beat up gays in bars. Everyone is protected equally: everyone can pursue their own conception of the good as long as they don't stop anyone else doing the same thing.

American (neo-)conservatives and Catholics, especially, have fallen into a trap which should have been obvious, by going along with the liberal / neutral state / free speech system. They thought that if they conceded the free speech of others, their own free speech, including the freedom to proclaim the Gospel, would be protected. Sorry, guys, you were fooled; it was never going to work. A system of 'tolerance' cannot tolerate intolerance. Because Christianity wants to change people, because it holds up a higher ideal than the impulses of the belly and the groin, it is intrinsically intolerant. It has no secure place in a system of tolerance, any more than fascism.



Countless popes warned us that rather than concede the public realm to a liberal theory of 'liberty', we should strive to have society organised on Catholic principles. They were right. The problem I have outlined is what Pope Leo XIII was talking about in his condemnation of Americanism, it is what Pius XI was talking about in calling for the reign of Christ the King over societies, it is what St Pius X and Pius IX and many others were talking about in condemning the establishment of the state on 'natural' principles rather than on Catholic ones. Our anger today should be directed not at the liberals: they are just being consistent. It should be directed at the useful idiots who stopped Catholics from opposing liberalism itself, especially in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, and are still whinging about freedom of expression and religion as if these phrases are going to protect us.

Those 'conservatives', in fact, are nothing more or less than conservative liberals. They get annoyed at the more radical liberals from time to time, when they 'go too far'. But they are part of the problem, not part of the solution, because the more things go wrong the more they cling to the liberal principles which are actually causing the damage, instead of criticising them.

Today, what we need to do is not - except tactically, in the very short term - appeal to our right to free expression, but do our best to persuade our fellow citizens that original sin is not such a stupid idea, and that the life of grace yields genuine joys: in short, to counter the basic assumptions of the liberal system which are contrary to the Faith. To the extent we can do that, we can wear down the principles underlying the coming persecution. It is nothing more nor less, in fact, than a genuine proclamation of the Gospel.

In another post I will talk about some implications of what I've just argued.

The Eich affair: why conservatives are wrong, Part 1

Something quite scary happened the other day. Brandon Eich, the newly appointed head of Mozilla, the internet company responsible for the Firefox browser, was forced to resign, on the grounds that he had contributed money to the campaign for 'Proposition 8', a referendum which opposed same-sex marriage in California back in 2008.

He was forced because of a public outcry and the beginnings of a boycott against the company. There was no suggestion that his views would affect his running of the company. Rather, it was felt by our new political masters that it is unacceptable that a person holding those views should be in a position of responsibility. He should be run out of town.

What do they want social conservatives to do? For one thing, they certainly don't believe the old myth that persecution and censorship never works. Of course it works. Many people soon give up opinions which make them despised and poor. Others suppress them to the point that after a while they can simply forget they ever had them. Even highly principled people adopt a degree of self-censorship that prevents their condemned opinions spreading. Cases of persecution and censorship not working are cases where it was not, and perhaps couldn't be, carried out in an effective way. There's no danger of that in this case. The new censors and persecutors know their job very well.

The internet has lit up with condemnations by conservatives of the intolerance shown by Eich's critics, and the hypocrasy of progressives who demand freedom but deny it to their opponents. This may shame some, perhaps many, on the left into saying that the persecution of Eich went too far. But at the level of principles it is muddle-headed and wrong. It is not the case that liberalism has turned on itself or betrayed itself or given way to fascism or anything like that. What has happened is perfectly coherent, and is easily explained. However, I admit that I appear to be the only person in the world saying this (from a socially conservative perspective), so I will take this and another post to explain myself.

It is really very simple, and comes down to the principles of political theory and ethics.

1. Any kind of liberal, tolerant, free-speech-loving 'neutral state' theory has to rely on a set of basic, agreed moral principles. We all know you have to keep your contracts and not murder, steal, rape and so on. Indeed, we all know that you can't shout 'fire' in a crowded theatre. All these things harm people, and stop them pursuing happiness.



Just let that sink in. All the talk over the last fifty years about moral relativism has been about what liberals call 'substantive theories of the good', not the basic principles of justice. They've never advocated a free discussion of whether arson-rape-and-bloody-murder are morally ok (except the really loopy ones). They've only ever wanted a discussion about what kind of life leads to happiness, so that, with the basic moral principles secure, we can all choose our own path in life.

2. The basic principles have to come from somewhere, and since a liberal non-confessional state can't get them from Christianity, or anything tainted by association with Christianity like Aristotelianism, they have been coming from Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment moral theories. (What did you expect?)

3. These theories reject the notion of original sin, and equally the idea in ancient philosophy that we should have a conception of a good person and aim to transform ourselves into that. Instead the use the desires people happen to have as the basis of the moral life. The more desires you can fulfil, the better your life is going. The more of other people's desires you help fulfil, the more of a good person you are. The more desires the state can facilitate being fulfilled, the more enlightened the state.

Again, let that sink in. The basic principles of justice in a liberal state obviously overlap with common sense - we can all agree that you mustn't go round killing people for fun and so on - but the underlying principles are actually incompatible with the Christian revelation, and even the classical tradition. Plato said that we should be careful to desire the right things. St Paul told us that we have desires in us which lead to hell. These views are rejected by the liberal state.



4. The purpose of the liberal state is to facilitate each person pursuing his chosen conception of the good. The choice is up to him, but the only kind of consideration which liberals really understand is what he happens to like. Obviously our desires can clash, so the state needs to deal with clashes. A handy way to start doing this is to say that our desires for other people don't count, only our desires for ourselves. We may all have desires that other people behave in certain ways, but trying to fulfil those is going to lead to endless conflict. We should focus on want we want for ourselves: for the most part, this can be the basis of conceptions of the good each of us can pursue without treading on each others' toes.

I should think my readers will realise by now where this is going. But come back tomorrow to read the rest.

Photos: Liberals doing what they do best: stopping other people exercising their freedom of expression. Oxford Pro-Life Witness.