Expanding the Secular Square

There has been a lot of thoughtful commentary on the HHS Mandate the last couple of weeks. Ross Douthat and Yuval Levin argue that Obama levels the ‘little platoons’ of civil society in favor of expanding the power of the state. Here is Levin:

“In this arena, as in a great many others, the administration is clearly determined to see civil society as merely an extension of the state, and to clear out civil society—clearing out the mediating layers between the individual and the state—when it seems to stand in the way of achieving the president’s agenda. The idea is to leave as few non-individual players as possible in the private sphere, and to turn those few that are left into agents of the government.”

Our Tea Party and Libertarian friends will see this as further evidence of Big Gov’t getting bigger, and they’re right, but it important to note the President thinks of himself as the true champion of individualism. The mandate is in the service of freeing the individual from her biological bonds. The proper distinction here is not individual v. state, but the state v. intermediary institutions.

David Brooks says the plurality of the little platoons is being replaced by the uniformity of technocratic administration, a topic dear to our Ivan the K.

On a different note, Carson Holloway says the HHS mandate reveals the logic of liberalism as a creeping and creepy secularism: “…for an older generation of liberals religion had to be kept private in the sense that it could not try to control the government for its own distinctively religious purposes. A more ambitious set of liberals then came to claim that religion had to be private in the sense that religious believers should not bring their moral convictions to the political and legislative process. Now, much more ambitious liberals hold that religion must be private in the extreme sense that it must not be allowed to engage, in its own way, with the society at large. Religious institutions may enter into and interact with society, but only if they leave their religiosity behind in doing so.”

Jefferson’s famous “Wall of Separation between Church and State” has been used to prevent the influence of religious belief on public policy. Now that wall is being further expanded to separate belief from action. Feeding the hungry, healing the sick, and instructing the ignorant were once considered Works of Mercy and thus matters for the private sphere. In the latest stage of liberalism, such actions must conform to secular standards of morality as dictated by the state. The next step in the privatization of religion is to make it a matter of the mind and nothing more. And in this particular case that means keeping Catholics in the closet.

Executive Order: What is it good for? Absolutely…a year or two

The last post dealt with how Obamacare will make it EASIER to obtain abortions through private insurance companies. This post will focus on the newly created Community Health Centers. Rep. Stupak and other Pro-Life Democrats withheld their approval of the bill until recently because they were worried Obamacare will pay for abortions. The Bill stated that “health services” will be provided, but did not specify what constituted such a service. The controversy was whether abortion would be covered. President Obama won over Stupak and Co. by promising to issue an Executive Order that would forbid CHC from providing abortions. An Executive Order is a written pronouncement by the President telling officials in his branch how to enforce an ambiguous law.

The problem with this arrangement is someone will sue the CHC on the grounds it is denying a woman a basic right and it will have to be resolved by a Federal Court. The existing precedent (Beal v. Doe) states federal funds can cover an abortion UNLESS there is a law that forbids it. The question then becomes: Is the Executive Order a law? It is not because a law passed by anyone other than Congress would be a violation of Separation of Powers. The Executive Order will be struck down and tax dollars will DIRECTLY pay for abortion.

Nudge-ocracy at work: Obamacare on abortion

Last year, The New Republic labeled President Obama as neither a pragmatist nor liberal; instead, it identified him as a “Nudge-ocrat.” Here is what that means: “Rather than force markets to conform to his wishes, he shapes their calculus so they conclude (on their own) that their interests coincide with his wishes.” Obama sees “…the appeal of manipulating incentives and altering the context in which we make decisions.”

The TNR piece focuses on economics, but I found him speaking this way on abortion too. During his campaign, he said he wanted to see the number of abortions go DOWN, but he wanted to do that by creating conditions in which women would CHOOSE life; he did not want to directly restrict abortions.

One week into office, Obama put his philosophy into practice, but not in the way he promised. The President reversed the Mexico City Policy so federal tax dollars could pay for abortion overseas i.e. he created the conditions in which it would be EASIER to choose an abortion.

The latest debate is what Obamacare will mean in regards to abortion and here again I think you can see Nudge-ocracy at work. This is what will happen to Private Insurance Companies:

In a section entitled "Prohibition of Use of Public Funds for Abortion Coverage," she [Rep. Lois Capps (D) of California] proposed that insurance companies set up two separate accounts -- one filled with money from the federal government, and one with money from consumer premiums. When a consumer sent in her premium check, it would go into the premium account; when the federal government kicked in its share, the money would land in a different pile. Insurance companies would then have to guarantee that abortions would be paid for only by money in the account made up of premium dollars, not from the account filled with taxpayer dollars.

The following analogy illustrates what is going on above: Imagine a man who wants to purchase a firearm, but doesn’t because he has to pay his monthly mortgage payment. He asks you to lend him the money so he can make the purchase, but you refuse on the grounds of pacificism; nevertheless, you do lend him the money to pay his mortgage payment. He subsequently buys the gun. What just happened? Technically, he bought the gun, not you, but you INDIRECTLY made it possible.

In the abortion case, the insurance company will have money freed up to pay for abortions due to government subsidies. Conditions are created to make the choice for abortion EASIER. Ross Douthat explains this point well:

“And yes, the health care bill, as passed, effectively tilts public policy in a more pro-choice direction: The fact that women are required to write a separate check for abortion coverage means that public money isn’t literally paying for abortion, but it doesn’t change the fact that federal dollars are being spent in ways that make it much easier to obtain abortion-covering insurance.”

The Nudge-ocrat strikes, albeit indirectly and subtly, again.

Dreams from my Theologian

David Brooks and President Obama both claim to be fans of the great Protestant Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. Their proclamation has caused renewed interest in his work and so the New Republic has posted several of his old articles.

In “Liberalism: Illusions and Realities” Niebuhr reviews Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind. Being a fan of Kirk’s work myself, it is fun watching Niebuhr examine his own liberal views in light of the book.

Niebuhr gives a short summary of the history of liberalism:

Thus in every modern industrial nation the word "liberalism" achieved two contradictory definitions. It was on the one hand the philosophy which insisted that economic life was to be free of any restraint. In this form it was identical with the only conservatism which nations, such as our own, who had no feudal past, could understand. It was the philosophy of the more successful middle classes who possessed enough personal skill, property or power to be able to prefer liberty to security. On the other hand the word was also used to describe the political strategy of those classes which preferred security to absolute liberty and which sought to bring economic enterprise under political control for the sake of establishing minimal standards of security and welfare. It has been rather confusing that both of these strategies go by the name of "liberalism."

Niebuhr is unabashedly a liberal in its second stage of development. The Welfare State provides a safety net for the contingencies of a Modern Technical Society. President Obama’s Health Care Reform reveals a similar logic.

Niebuhr moves on to discuss another strand of Liberalism, the French Enlightenment:

The French Enlightenment was "liberal" …..But it also had a total philosophy of life based on confidence in the perfectability of man and on the idea of historical progress. These two ideas were basic to all the political miscalculations of the Enlightenment and were the source of its errors. "Liberalism" acquired a special connotation as a philosophy of life which did not take the factors of interest and power seriously, which expected all parochial loyalties to be dissolved in more universal loyalties; and which was indifferent to organically or historically established loyalties and rights under the illusion that it would be simple for rational man to devise more ideal communities and rights.

Here he agrees with Kirk’s diagnosis of the French school of thought: “The liberalism of the French Enlightenment was thus based upon illusions as to the nature of man and of history.” Niebuhr ends the review by arguing that one can hold the liberal positition in regards to the Welfare State, but still disavow the utopian visions of the French Enlightenment. This is what he calls a “realistic liberal.”

Again, one can find Niebuhr’s position underlying President Obama’s thought, specifically his Nobel Peace Prize Speech. To the consternation of those who subscribe to the French Enlightenment, President Obama said the world being what it is, force is sometimes necessary. Moreover, his open endorsement of Just War Theory and its assumptions about a flawed human nature fly in the face of the thesis of the perfectiblity of man and a world of perpetual peace.

But just don’t take my word for it. Check out links on this topic here, and here.

Replacing the Declaration with Darwin

Carson Holloway has an article on Darwin in the Public Discourse. We’re all aware of Herbert Spencer’s Social Darwinism, which was a political philosophy of the right. What is more interesting is Darwin’s influence on the Left, in this case, John Dewey.

Holloway explains that Dewey welcomed Darwin’s views because it allowed him to reject the fixed standard of “the law of nature and nature’s God” which was enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. Like President Obama, Dewey could now stress “change” and “hope” in the future. But Holloway goes on to state the following problem:

Dewey’s politicization of Darwinism, however, seems to lead him into incoherence. For him, we must not concern ourselves with “the good” or “the just” in any ultimate sense, but should merely seek incremental progress in goodness and justice. But how can we speak of improvement, or betterment, without some sense of “the good”—without implying that we have some knowledge, however imperfect, of what is simply good? How can we speak of “increments” of justice without some intuition of “the just”?

I would say this is where Darwin’s influence on Dewey ends and Hegel’s German Idealism begins. The moral standard for Dewey is fixed, just as it was for the Founders. Unlike the Founders, however, Dewey does not find that standard in Nature, but History. The Absolute Moment, which will be realized in the future within human history, provides the measuring stick for our practices today.

Obama and Brooks: disciples of Edmund Burke?

Gabriel Sherman discusses the Obama-Brooks bromance in the New Republic today. It turns out both of them are fans of the political philosopher Edmund Burke. (Sam Tanenhaus drew a connection to Obama and Burke in his “Death of Conservatism” article also.) This is surprising because Russell Kirk had crowned Burke the father of modern conservatism. What is it about Burke that could attract these three very different figures?

Burke’s most famous book, Reflections on the Revolutions of France, disavows abstract principles in favor of ‘prescription’ or what we would call tradition. Kirk buys into all of this. Obama and Brooks, on the other hand, are probably interested in the first part-disavowal of principles. President Obama prides himself on being post-partisan and a pragmatist. David Brooks has made a name for himself for NOT being a doctrinaire conservative. Peter Lawler has said about Brooks, “He has the ambiguous title of being the most conservative columnist at the NY Times.”

Burke’s (and Kirk’s) disavowal of principles is the reason why Harry Jaffa has argued against this particular vision of conservatism. Practices presuppose principles and their divorce leaves the former without a guide. The result is the reduction of Burke’s prescription to our current President’s pragmatism. Orginal Burkeans like Kirk opposed innovation; today's Burkeans demand change.

A Meeting over Life and Death

Pope Benedict reflects upon the Culture of Life, while Michelle dresses up for the Culture of Death.

Let the experts handle this, sir.

Last week President Obama dissolved the Bioethics Council commissioned by President Bush. This is just another step in a series to put “restore science to its proper place.” The previous step was to federally fund embryonic stem cell research, something his predecessor had forbidden.

Ivan Kenneally, in an article in The New Atlantis, has worked out the presuppositions of the current President on these matters. Obama is, what Keneally calls, a technocratic populist. I’ll explain these terms in reverse order. He is a populist because he believes special interests, in this case the Christian Right, has highjacked the issue of stem cell research. This is why the Bioethics Council had to be dissolved. In the eyes of many, the council was simply a cabal of Catholic conspirators who were trying impose their extreme views on the rest of the country. (Peter Lawler, who was on the Council, has pointed out there was no such conspiracy because not everyone was Catholic and the group came to no consensus on any of the issues they discussed.) Obama’s removal of this ‘faction’ for the sake of the common good makes him a populist.

Why is he technocrat? More importantly, what is a technocrat? They are a group of “hyper-educated elites with specialized politico-scientific expertise [who] are singled out to manage the benighted rest of us.” Now, how can this be since we just learned the President favors the many over the few. This is the tension within Obama’s thought, a tension which Kenneally says goes back to the Enlightenment itself. For Enlightenment thinkers wanted to achieve two goals: equality and base politics on the model of the natural sciences. The belief in the latter is because of the success of the natural sciences in the modern era. If politics could be made more scientific, it was believed, then we could achieve prosperity and perpetual peace.

While the theory began in the Enlightenment, it only became actualized in American Politics in the 20th century. It begins with Woodrow Wilson and his essay, “The Study of Administration” and continued with subsequent Presidents. Patrick Deneen has a quote from JFK discussing the shift:

Most of us are conditioned for many years to have a political viewpoint -
Republican or Democratic, liberal, conservative, or moderate. The fact of the
matter is that most of the problems … that we now face are technical problems,
are administrative problems. They are very sophisticated judgments, which do not
lend themselves to the great sort of passionate movements which have stirred the
country so often in the past. [They] deal with questions which are now beyond
the comprehension of most men….

All the themes of the technocrat are on display here: “political viewpoints” are irrelevant because today’s problems are “technical” and require “administrative” solutions. These problems are “beyond the comprehension of most men.” Here is the tension with populism. The 20th century is the century of the common man AND the century of enlightened administration. Modern Liberals, like Plato, believe in monarchy-the only difference is his field.

Now we can understand what President Obama means by putting “restore science to its proper place.” It means letting the scientists make the call when it comes to questions like stem cell research and cloning. David Brooks has pointed out that this Obama’s strategy when it comes to health care also:

Which is why you have MedPAC. That’s the Medicare Payment Advisory
Commission that you want to turn into a health care Federal Reserve Board — an
aloof technocratic body of experts that will make tough decisions beyond the
reach of politics. You can take every thorny issue, throw it to MedPac and
consider it solved.

Notice the decision will be made “beyond the reach of politics.” The problem raised by living constitutionalism, judicial activism, occurs here too. A small, elite group of unelected officials will decide our most important issues for us. But the perennial question which has dogged Plato’s philosopher-king, rears its head: Who guards the guardians?

Robert George debates Doug Kmiec

C-SPAN televised the debate between Princeton's Robert George and Obamacon Doug Kmiec on whether Pro-Lifers can support President Obama.

Kmiec, who thinks the answer is yes, debated Hadley Aarkes on this same question which I discuss here.

Justice v. Empathy

This is the traditional image of justice which you can see in front of most court buildings. The Greek Goddess Themis is blindfolded so her judgment will not be biased.

Judge Sotomayor, who has been nominated to the Supreme Court by President Obama, wants to replace this traditional notion of justice with 'empathy'. In this account, Lady Justice should take off her blinfold and render an openly biased judgment. And who should Lady Justice be biased in favor of? This is where it gets tricky becasue her empathy turns out to be selective. For example, in Ricci v. DeStefano a group of white firefighters were denied promotion despite having made the requisite score on their exams. The reason? Judge Sotomayor, along with the two other Federal Judges, said it was because a group of black firefights had not been able to make an equivalent score and be promoted also.

Who deserves our empathy in this case? It seems like emotional appeals could be made on both sides. Which is why Lady Justice may be better off keeping her blindfold on.

Obamacons on Abortion

I found this debate to be really insightful. Both of them are Pro-Life Catholics: Arkes is a political philosophy professor at Amherst who helped draft the Born Alive Act while Doug Kmiec worked in the Reagan and Bush I administrations.

Kmiec is an 'Obamacon' who believes the President's argument that improving the economic conditions will decrease the # of abortions since the indigent have a greater likelihood to make such choices. This is a clever argument because it has a pro-life ring behind it. Like the Pro-Lifer, the Obamacon wants to see the number of abortions go DOWN. Like the Pro-Lifer, the Obamacon sees the choice of abortion as 'tragic.'

The argument would be compelling if the President had not reversed the Mexico City Policy a week into office. By doing that, federal tax dollars are going to pay for abortion overseas. How are we going to get the number of abortions down by paying for them? Moreover, if abortion is a private choice then why are public funds being used for it anyway? But I digress.