The Dish

A reader writes:

Only one thing puzzles me about your blogging, which is why you continue to say that Bush, Cheney, Robertson, and vitually the rest of the Republican party are not the real conservatives. I mean, Edmund Burke’s been out of the picture for quite some time, now. Your position is a bit like saying that the jihadists and their supporters in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the West Bank and so on aren’t the real Moslems, despite their own statements of religious conviction. There’s some disagreement over the core teachings of Islam, sure, but it’s a bit polyannish and even disrespectful to say of tens of millions of people that they don’t know what their own beliefs are.

In terms of American conservatism, I’m 40 years old and throughout my entire conscious life, self-labeled conservatives in the United States have been for regulation of the individual (anti-sodomy laws, anti-abortion laws, flag-burning legislation) and deregulation or (more accurately) empowerment of corporations. They’ve been for greater secrecy in government, too – more classified documents, notably. The liberals (or progressives or, simply, Democrats) have been for deregulation of individual behavior, coupled with greater controls on corporations and more transparency in government (e.g., declassification of documents under both Carter and, especially, Clinton).

It may be that the liberals are acting like conservatives, while the conservatives are acting like liberals, but accepting that takes a sort of through-the-looking-glass intellectual contortionism. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that, in the era in which you live, you are actually a moderate lefty?

Well, we can argue about these labels indefinitely. I don’t think a moderate lefty favors a flat tax, means-testing Medicare and social security, or abolishing agricultural subsidies, for example. But it’s a fair point that my own position is obviously no longer the mainstream Republican one. My book is an attempt to say: forget the labels. Here’s an actual argument. I think it’s conservative and has a proud conservative lineage. But maybe I’m wrong. The real point is whether you agree or disagree, not what label you put on it. Maybe my position is now more appropriately held these days within the Democrats, or, more plausibly, among Independents. Fine. I endorsed Kerry last time, as the lesser of two evils. But I don’t want to lose a genuinely conservative tradition – or rather cede the term "conservative" to the religious right without a little struggle. That’s the book, in a nutshell. Some of you moderate liberals and liberal conservatives may be surprised by how much you agree with it. And some evangelicals may be surprised by their own overlaps as well.

"Apparently, these anticipated conservative non-voters are annoyed with Republican imperfection. They are disheartened, disappointed, disillusioned, distempered, and dismal – and thus plan to dis the party that better advances conservative principles in government.

They appear to have fallen victim to the false syllogism: 1) Something must be done; 2) not voting is something; therefore, 3) I will not vote. Of course the fallacy of the syllogism is that the second category could be anything. For example, No. 2 could as well read "eating dog excrement is something."

I rather suspect that they will feel about the same afterward, whether they chose the non-voting option or the scatological one," – Tony Blankley, RCP.

He begs the question: do the Republicans actually better advance conservative principles in government? Given rampant spending, accumulating debt, reckless warfare, unchecked executive power, legalization of torture, and the suspension of habeas corpus, this question is at least debatable. And it’s worth more honest discussion than Blankley’s condescension suggests.

The outing crusade gains momentum. Look: I loathe the closet. I despise the hypocrisy in the Republican party. But a witch-hunt is a witch-hunt. If the gay left thinks it will advance gay dignity by using tactics that depend on homophobia to work, that violate privacy, that demonizes gay people, then all I can say is: they are wrong. They will regret it. It will come back to haunt them. And they should cut it out. The fact that their motives might be good is no excuse. Everybody on a witchhunt believes their motives are good. But the toxins such a witchhunt exposes, the cruelty it requires, and the fanaticism of its adherents are always dangerous to civilized discourse. What you’re seeing right now is an alliance of the intolerant: the intolerant on the gay left and the intolerant on the religious right. The victims are gay people – flawed, fallible, even pathetic gay people. But they are still people. And they deserve better.

Hanover, New Hampshire, 3.30 pm.

"The maintenance of a free society is a very difficult and complicated thing. And it requires a self-denying ordinance of the most extreme kind. It requires a willingness to put up with temporary evils on the basis of the subtle and sophisticated understanding that if you step in to try to do them, you not only may make them … worse, but you will spread your tentacles and get bad results elsewhere …

The argument for collectivism, for government doing something is simple. Anybody can understand it. If there’s something wrong, pass a law. If somebody is in trouble, get Mr. X to help him out. The argument for a free – for voluntary cooperation, for a free market is not nearly so simple. It says, you know, if you allow people to cooperate voluntarily and don’t interfere with them, indirectly through the operation of the market, they will improve matters more than you can improve it directly by appointing somebody. That’s a subtle argument, and it’s hard for people to understand," – Milton Friedman, back in 1975.

I cannot imagine what he thinks of a president who said: "We have a responsibility that when somebody hurts, government has got to move." But then there are many things that this president seems to find hard to understand.

It’s back up, selling books. Here’s the link.

"It astonishes me to find … [that so many] of our countrymen … should be contented to live under a system which leaves to their governors the power of taking from them the trial by jury in civil cases, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce, the habeas corpus laws, and of yoking them with a standing army. This is a degeneracy in the principles of liberty … which I [would not have expected for at least] four centuries," – Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Stephens Smith, 1788.

Yesterday, president Bush signed into law the suspension of habeas corpus for people he alone decides are "enemy combatants." It is a dark day for freedom. And for America.

The history of rock and roll – in animated album covers.

He makes his point about the separation of church and state in an argument about – yes! – marriage:

The Christian conception of marriage is one: the other is the quite different question – how far Christians, if they are voters or Members of Parliament, ought to try to force their views of marriage on the rest of the community by embodying them in the divorce laws. A great many people seem to think that if you are a  Christian yourself you should try to make divorce difficult for every one. I do not think that. At least I know I should be very angry if the Mohammendans tried to prevent the rest of us from drinking wine. 

My own view is that the Churches should frankly recognise that the majority of the British people are not Christians and, therefore, cannot be expected to live Christian lives. There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage: one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens, and the other governed by the Church with rules enforced by her on her own members. The distinction ought be to quite sharp, so that a man know which couples are married in a Christian sense and which are not.

It’s from "Mere Christianity." I should maybe point something out here about my own writing on the subject. I have always been very clear that I am in favor of civil equality in marriage. I am not at all sure that the religious sacrament of matrimony ought to be open to gay couples. My instinct, in fact, is that it should not. The Roman Catholic church’s view of marriage is so linked to heterosexuality and procreation that including gay couples within the same sacrament might violate its theological meaning. I’m open to debate on this theologically. But I make the same distinction Lewis makes: the civil and the religious spheres are very distinct and we need to make the distinction "quite sharp". The great blasphemy of Christianism is that it wants to erase the boundary altogether.

There’s a fascinating open letter to the Pope, posted at Islamica Magazine here, that grapples with the question of Islam’s relationship to reason, warfare, religious compulsion, and other hot topics. I am struck by the unequivocal statement by a phalanx of leading Muslims about the importance of no compulsion in faith. One is even from Saudi Arabia, where the death penalty for apostasy is still in place in Afghanistan, Iran, Mauritania, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudia Arabia, Sudan, and Yemen. The discrepancy is unaddressed. Are these countries anathema to Islam? Here is the argument about war and Islam:

The authoritative and traditional Islamic rules of war can be summarized in the following principles:

1. Non-combatants are not permitted or legitimate targets. This was emphasized explicitly time and again by the Prophet, his Companions, and by the learned tradition since then.

2. Religious belief alone does not make anyone the object of attack. The original Muslim community was fighting against pagans who had also expelled them from their homes, persecuted, tortured, and murdered them. Thereafter, the Islamic conquests were political in nature.

3. Muslims can and should live peacefully with their neighbors. And if they incline to peace, do thou incline to it; and put thy trust in God. However, this does not exclude legitimate self-defense and maintenance of sovereignty. Muslims are just as bound to obey these rules as they are to refrain from theft and adultery.

If a religion regulates war and describes circumstances where it is necessary and just, that does not make that religion war-like, anymore than regulating sexuality makes a religion prurient. If some have disregarded a long and well-established tradition in favor of utopian dreams where the end justifies the means, they have done so of their own accord and without the sanction of God, His Prophet, or the learned tradition. God says in the Holy Qur’an: Let not hatred of any people seduce you into being unjust. Be just, that is nearer to piety (al-Ma’idah 5:8). In this context we must state that the murder on September 17th of an innocent Catholic nun in Somalia ‚Äî and any other similar acts of wanton individual violence ‚Äî ‘in reaction to’ your lecture at the University of Regensburg, is completely un-Islamic, and we totally condemn such acts.

I presume they also condemn the bombings of mosques, rampant Muslim-on-Muslim violence in Iraq and the murderous violence of al Qaeda. But they do not use this occasion to do so. I fervently hope that the arguments of this letter are indeed what Muslims believe. Given the empirical evidence in many Muslim countries, I fear this is not the case.

(Photo: Antonio Melina/Agencia Brasil.)