PROEM
I submitted my response to URI student Gabriel Lugo’s hostile musings on American religion to the student paper of his school, The Good 5¢ Cigar, and Lugo (enlisting the help of a cowriter) replied a couple of weeks ago. Herewith, my further response.
Cigar readers will have to forgive me; as a humbled father of three who must work eighty-hour weeks to afford the king’s ransom of a Rhode Island mortgage, I haven’t the time that Gabriel Lugo has (much less he and a partner) to pore over research journals. Nonetheless, perhaps mere reason will suffice to make response.
I will take Mr. Lugo at his word that he has achieved hatelessness. (I, myself, cannot honestly claim to have managed such a state of grace, although I’m working on it.) Be that as it may, to the extent that Lugo is not hateful, he is certainly callous. He may have rationalized a moral imperative from humans’ natural “propensity toward cooperation within a group,” but his hostile language, mocking a majority of his fellow citizens (recall “the herd mentality” of those who believe in “invisible alpha males”), does not instill hope for that imperative’s practice when it comes to cooperation between groups. Imagine the form of that same impulse in a person who has not conquered hate.
This is what I continue to find distressing: that Lugo fails to acknowledge the sheer diversity of the human race. If everybody would simply be and believe like me, he seems to suggest, then we could do without all those silly theistic faiths. But citing the mild behavior of members of the National Academy of Sciences is no proof at all, because not everybody can or will be made scientists. What is to be done with those who will not — or cannot — be “ingenious at improving [their] ethics”?
Nor does it “support the hypothesis that a religious society does not equate to a moral one” to note that the United Nations thinks “highly secular societies such as Norway and Sweden” are swell places to live. Apart from the inherent subjectivity of such lists, the populations of those nations are drastically less diverse, and their health, as Lugo describes it, may be transitory. According to the CIA World Factbook, in Sweden, there are more people over 64 than under 15; there are more people dying than being born. The country’s meager population growth derives entirely from immigration, and some quick research from the Statistics Sweden government agency confirms that a sizable percentage of immigrants do not hail from “highly secular societies.”
A similar, albeit less dramatic, analysis can be performed within the United States, with secular states and segments of society leaning toward the Scandinavian predicament. Moreover, intra-U.S. comparisons highlight a correlation that arguably precedes the one between religion and “dysfunction” on which Lugo relies: the correlations between religion and “dysfunction” separately with lower income. The question that Lugo and his cowriter (or at least their sources) suppress is whether religion improves lives within groups that are, for other reasons, more prone to dysfunction.
Discussion of these matters becomes quickly mired in fundamental differences of worldview, but the particular markers of dysfunction that Lugo notes, such as divorce, abortion, and the repercussions of sexual license, merit consideration of their source. Which segment of society has been pushing for liberalization in these areas? In contrast, which segment has been resisting the codification of libertinism in the law? In this respect, the correlations that Lugo cites may prove nothing more than that the detrimental consequences of secularization disproportionately affect those outside of the elite that initiates the changes.
Those elites may be inclined to scoff that religion correlates with poverty and ignorance, but such scoffing would elide an important realization: Among those who lack the capacity for or interest in an intellectual construction of beliefs, morality will necessarily be conveyed in religious terms — in terms of faith — even if those terms derive from a science book. How will Lugo’s logicomorality compare with traditional religion when people inclined toward less considered behavior take it as their creed?
Moreover, how will its adherents address a world in which, despite the narrowly conclusive logic, fellow citizens say, “Fair enough, but we still want the Ten Commandments in the park and an opposite-sex definition of marriage”? We’ve evidence of the mechanism that they’ll employ: forcing their beliefs through the courts, trampling what remains of democracy in our nation. And we’ve reason to fear that, if one as unhateful and considered as Mr. Lugo is inclined to lapse into hostile language, then there will be others inclined to lapse into hostilities of a more visceral sort.
Happily, as an intellectually inclined convert to Christianity, I believe theism to be internally rational (not to mention true) if only one has answered “yes” to the basic question of God’s existence, for which either possible answer ultimately relies on faith. As I suggested in my previous letter, the relevant arguments are laid out plentifully in Western literature for those intellectuals able to leave aside their irrational biases sufficiently to read with a willingness to understand.
Mr. Lugo, in particular, might find it edifying to adopt a frame of mind that accepts that, as with civilization, so with religion. That “primitive people,” as he fashions them, misunderstood and misapplied revelation means only that they represented a stage of development of, not the full expression of, religion. Their religion must be seen in context of what they would have been — and more importantly, would have become — without it. The fact that with religion they became us should minimize intellectuals’ stigma against sharing a worldview with the less sophisticated of our day.
Deeply controversial issues like abortion and suicide rights have nothing to do with the Constitution, and unelected judges too often choose to find new rights at the expense of the democratic process, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said Saturday.
Scalia, during a talk on the judiciary sponsored by the National Italian American Foundation, dismissed the idea of judicial independence as an absolute virtue. He noted that dozens of states, since the mid-1800s, have chosen to let citizens elect their judges.
“You talk about independence as though it is unquestionably and unqualifiably a good thing,” Scalia said. “It may not be. It depends on what your courts are doing.”
Scalia added, “The more your courts become policy-makers, the less sense it makes to have them entirely independent.”
Scalia, a leading conservative voice after 20 years on the court, said people naturally get upset with the growing number of cases in which a federal court intrudes on social issues better handled by the political process.
“Take the abortion issue,” he said. “Whichever side wins, in the courts, the other side feels cheated. I mean, you know, there’s something to be said for both sides.”
“The court could have said, ‘No, thank you.’ The court have said, you know, ‘There is nothing in the Constitution on the abortion issue for either side,'” Scalia said. “It could have said the same thing about suicide, it could have said the same thing about … you know, all the social issues the courts are now taking.”
Scalia said courts didn’t use to decide social issues like that.
“It is part of the new philosophy of the Constitution,” he said. “And when you push the courts into that, and when they leap into it, they make themselves politically controversial. And that’s what places their independence at risk.”
Justice Samuel Alito Jr., the newest member of the Supreme Court, agreed that “the same thing exists, but to a lesser degree, with the lower courts.”…
Later, Scalia observed, “It so happens that everything that is stupid is not unconstitutional.”
Why is the approach of allowing social issues to be resolved by appropriately messy democratic processes, instead of imperial judges, so difficult for people to understand and accept?
ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS:
In response to Bobby’s first comment, the posting entitled Moving Beyond Loyalty to the Rule of Law Mixes Law & Politics describes a different view of the judiciary’s role and contains a wealth of further links to other postings that elaborate further:
…That exchange crystallized the fundamental difference between John Roberts and the eight Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Democrats believe a good judge will move “beyond loyalty” to the rule of law, if necessary, and seek to advance certain political outcomes–in Durbin’s question, the expansion of personal freedom. Roberts dissents: He believes a good judge will distinguish between law and politics and stick resolutely to the law, regardless of the result…
Roberts took care on numerous occasions to emphasize the importance of the distinction between law and politics as it relates to judging. For example, in response to Lindsey Graham’s question about what the judge regarded as the biggest threats to the rule of law today, Roberts identified only one threat–the “tendency on behalf of some judges to take . . . [their] authority and extend it into areas where they’re going beyond the interpretation of the Constitution, where they’re making the law”–the province of elected officials. He observed: “Judges have to recognize that their role is a limited one. That is the basis of their legitimacy. I’ve said it before and I’ll just repeat myself: The Framers were not the sort of people, having fought a revolution to get the right of self-government, to sit down and say, ‘Let’s take all the difficult issues before us and let’s have the judges decide them.’ That would have been the farthest thing from their mind.”…
In addition, from Rediscovering Civility and Purpose in America’s Public Discourse:
JUDICIAL ACTIVISM: COMMANDEERING THE PUBLIC DEBATE & VIOLATING THE FOUNDING PRINCIPLES OF AMERICA
Many of these aggressive attempts by liberal fundamentalists to redirect societal practices have been done through a hyperactive judiciary. It has been going on for enough decades now and, with our weak knowledge of history, many Americans do not appreciate how judicial activism is a relatively recent phenomenon, it violates the governmental principles upon which our nation was founded, and it has an insidious effect on the relationship between the government and the governed.
Chief Justice Warren Burger elaborated on this in the 1982 case of Plyler v. Doe:
The Constitution does not constitute us as “Platonic Guardians” nor does it vest in this Court the authority to strike down laws because they do not meet our standards of desirable social policy, ‘wisdom,’ or ‘common sense.’…We trespass on the assigned function of the political branches under our structure of limited and separated powers when we assume a policy-making role.
Subsequently, Justice Antonin Scalia reinforced this point in his dissent in the 2003 case of Lawrence v. Texas:
The Court has taken sides in the culture war, departing from its role of assuring, as neutral observer, that the democratic rules of engagement are observed.
In the case of West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette nearly 70 years ago, Justice Felix Frankfurter also emphasized how judicial activism is contrary to American principles of government:
As a member of this Court, I am not justified in writing my private notions of policy into the Constitution, no matter how deeply I may cherish them or how mischievous I may deem their disregard. The duty of a judge who must decide which of two claims before the Court should prevail, that of a State to enact and enforce laws within its general competence or that of an individual to refuse obedience because of the demands of his conscience, is not that of the ordinary person. It can never be emphasized too much that one’s own opinion about the wisdom or evil of a law should be excluded altogether when one is doing one’s duty on the bench. The only opinion of our own even looking in that direction that is material is our opinion whether legislators could in reason have enacted such a law…
When Mr. Justice Holmes, speaking for this Court, wrote that “it must be remembered that legislatures are ultimate guardians of the liberties and welfare of the people in quite as great a degree as the courts…” he went to the very essence of our constitutional system and the democratic conception of our society. He did not mean that for only some phase of civil government this Court was not to supplant legislatures and sit in judgment upon the right or wrong of a challenged measure. He was stating the comprehensive judicial duty and role of this Court in our constitutional scheme whenever legislation is sought to be nullified on any ground, namely, that responsibility for legislation lies with legislatures, answerable as they are directly to the people, and this Court’s only and very narrow function is to determine whether within the broad grant of authority vested in legislatures they have exercised a judgment for which reasonable justification can be offered…
This is no dry, technical matter. It cuts deep into one’s conception of the democratic process…
In his book entitled The Uncivil War: How a New Elite is Destroying our Democracy, David Lebedoff offers an explanation about the intent underlying the push for judicial activism:
Many who loudly insist on the appointment of activist judges describe themselves as political “activists,” as well. But how can one possibly endorse both judicial and political activism, unless, of course, political activism has come to mean something different from what the label implies? One who believes in judicial activism can be a political activist only if he or she no longer views political activity as directed toward the achievement of majority support. If one believes that the point of politics is to see that society does what is “right,” regardless of what the public thinks or wants, only then can these two forms of activism indeed be reconciled.
Lebedoff then discusses the eventual consequences of judicial activism:
As those of one political philosophy or another seek to write their own notions into law, with no restraint from themselves or the public, the immigrant wisdom of Justice Frankfurter may be recognized at last for what it really is: a timeless warning that if consent of the governed is not our goal, it will become our memory.
In their book entitled Democracy by Decree: What Happens When Courts Run Government, Ross Sandler and David Schoenbrod note how judicial activism undermines government accountability to the citizenry:
Democracy by decree undermines accountability of government to the voters. Democratic accountability is, in our constitutional scheme, not an unalloyed good. The framers of the U.S. Constitution recognized that a democratically accountable government may reflect bigotry or be inattentive to the people’s needs or rights that they should have. For that reason, the Constitution includes rights and authorizes Congress to enact statutes necessary to ensure that state and local government honor them. These are rights, not aspirational goals dressed up as rights.
As long as rights are honored, everything else, including how the rights are honored, is a question of policy to be left to elected officials. The Constitution and its state and local counterparts set up the ground rules for how policy should be made. These ground rules are designed with careful attention to the potential faults of people and those they elect. The guiding principles are division of power and accountability.
Division of power is required because of distrust of both the people and those whom the people elect. Power is divided, first of all, between those who are empowered to govern and those who are governed. Those who are governed retain the power to vote the elected out of office. The power of those who govern is further divided many ways – between the federal government and the states, and within each level of government among the legislature, the executive, and the courts. Inherent in the whole scheme is that elected officials should bear the responsibility for the key policy choices and must retain the power to change policy.
Although the system is far from perfect, democracy by decree makes it worse. It does not substitute the dispassionate rule of judges for the rule of politicians. Decisions by controlling groups are politics in a different form. By hiding ordinary politics behind the robes of judges, democracy by decree makes government less accountable and therefore less responsive. Judicial reason does not supplant politics. Instead, the courts become political.
It is only through the “messiness” of a reasoned public discourse that a broad societal consensus can be achieved on major issues. Judicial activism short-circuits that process, to the detriment of our democratic institutions and habits.
[Open full post]Four student journalists from the University of Richmond (no, Rhode Islanders, that’s Richmond, Virginia,) are covering the ’06 Senate race in our little ol’ state at Rhode Island Senate Central: Voices in the 2006 Senate Election.
[Open full post]From Froma Harrop:
Another reason for the silence [about addressing population growth] is that population has gotten mixed up in the abortion issue. Some abortion foes insist that that Roe v. Wade has produced a sharp population decline. Of course, there isn’t a population decline. Population is surging, and even native-born Americans are replacing themselves. The United States is not Europe, where birth rates have fallen to troubling levels (and where, incidentally, the rates of abortion are far lower).
Huh? I’ve read pretty broadly on abortion, and I don’t believe that I’ve ever come across an abortion foe who made such a point. Does Harrop’s “‘population’ folder” date back to the ’70s or something?
I agree with her that “the thorny immigration debate” accounts for some of the reluctance to discuss population growth. I’d say there’s also an amply justified reluctance to start putting solutions such as one-child policies on the table. (I’ve always wondered, by the way, at Western feminists’ lack of right-to-choose ire at forced abortions in China.)
… but could somebody explain what this paragraph — from a letter to the Providence Journal concerning same-sex marriage — is supposed to imply:
[Open full post]The First Amendment protects the bishop’s right to express his opinion as it protects the rest of us from his opinions. At least it should.
Over in the Corner, Kathryn Jean Lopez takes up the call of pro-Republican conservatives:
You’d just be a punk (I’m just borrowing Mona’s reader’s word ) if you actually care about issues like activist judges, abortion (today there is still not a ban on partial-birth abortion, still held up in court), marriage, but stay home on Election Day. …
Yes, earmarks suck. And I’m not defending Republican congressional performance across the board by any stretch. But not only are we at war but we have core domestic societal issues that are not going away. Don’t expect matters to get better under Democratic leadership. Don’t kid yourself about the impact of staying home or protest voting. As Mona notes, largescale Republican losses will not be interpreted as simply conservative frustration over spending (and Internet gambling?).
Perhaps it is indicative of time’s acceleration as I age, but I simply can’t rev myself to feel as if a two-year, or even four-year, or even six-year election cycle is of dire consequence. With the War on Terror, Social Security, Immigration, and the whole slate of Culture War issues, the best we can hope for — the best we should hope for, especially when the “we” is conservatives — is gradual, long-term change. Democrat victories will not be decisive on any of these matters, but continued Republican control will arguably be dilatory. It is a legitimate, and as-yet unrebutted, conclusion among conservatives that a short-term loss may be in our long-term interests.
I say “unrebutted,” but Lopez and Mona Charon do make allusion. Here’s Charon, from a post with the telling title “But What Will the Pundits Say Later?”:
And yet, of course, though many bitter conservatives may do just that, the post-election analysis — assuming a big Democratic win — will be “rejection of the Iraq War,” push back against Bush’s war on civil liberties, blah, blah. Few will interpret the results to mean Republicans and the Bush White House disappointed the base by failing to hold the line on earmarks.
Personally, I’m much less concerned about what the pundits will say than what the Republicans will believe, and I think they’re much too shrewd to miss the effect of party-base attrition. Circumstances may differ in other states, but in our home state of Rhode Island, a Chafee victory will stand as evidence that he does not need to court conservatives in order to win. A Chafee loss due to “bitter conservatives,” however, will carry the lesson that, while Republicans may not win significantly in this state, they sure as Sheldon aren’t going to without our votes.
ADDENDUM:
Instapundit Glenn Reynolds provides further evidence that American bipartisan democracy has progressed from “least bad” voting to “least nauseating” voting:
As I mentioned before, the Republicans don’t really deserve my vote — though as Bob Corker hasn’t been in Washington that’s not really his fault — but nonetheless the Democrats have blown it again. Not long ago I was thinking that a Democratic majority in Congress wouldn’t be so bad; but the sexual McCarthyism from the pro-outing crowd, coupled with the Dems’ steadfast refusal to offer anything useful on national security, has convinced me that they just don’t deserve a victory with those tactics. That’s not Ford’s fault, either, really. But I just don’t think the Democrats are ready for a majority right now. We’ll see how many other voters agree.
Writing from the land of Chafee/Whitehouse, I have to admit a certain envy of those choosing between Corker and Ford. However, perhaps it is because I believe our Democrat in the race would be so spectacularly uninspiring that I’m inclined to respond to Reynolds’ opinion that “the Democrats are [not] ready for a majority right now” by saying, “exactly.”
The healthiest outcome, of course, would be for the Democrats to undermine the Republicans’ ability to stray so far toward political self-interest by returning to representative sanity. That the Democrats actually appear to moving away from this wide open field, running the political race with two left feet, as it were, suggests that their understanding of the current landscape — of the world, of reality — is fundamentally flawed. Given the long-term nature of just about every issue currently facing us, I’m not sure it wouldn’t be worth letting them drive for a few years in order to inspire more sober minds to refocus.
Alas, another Rhode Island blogger has lost herself in the progressive fever-swamps because of the Military Commissions Act. Now Sheila Lennon of the Projo?s Subterranean Homepage News is claiming that the Military Commissions Act can be used to prevent American citizens from petitioning for a writ of Habeas Corpus…
Yes, anyone can not (sic, I think Ms. Lennon meant “now”) be “disappeared” at the pleasure of the President. This abrogation of the most basic right to challenge the legality of your detention is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court must overturn it.Her fears are based on Keith Olbermann’s inaccurate MSNBC rant against the MCA. But despite Olbermann’s delusions, it is not true that the MCA means that anyone can be made to disappear at the pleasure of the President, because…
- The MCA does not apply to American citizens.
- Everyone — even aliens — detained under the MCA has an express right to be represented by a defense counsel of their own choosing. This is from section 949c of the MCA…
(3) The accused may be represented by civilian counsel if retained by the accused, but only if such civilian counsel
(A) is a United States citizen;
(B) is admitted to the practice of law in a State, district, or possession of the United States or before a Federal court;
(C) has not been the subject of any sanction of disciplinary action by any court, bar, or other competent governmental authority for relevant misconduct;
(D) has been determined to be eligible for access to classified information that is classified at the level Secret or higher; and
(E) has signed a written agreement to comply with all applicable regulations or instructions for counsel, including any rules of court for conduct during the proceedings. - And nothing in the MCA prevents someone improperly detained under the MCA from challenging the claim (with the help of his or her defense counsel) that he or she is not an American citizen in a regular civilian court, outside of the MCA system.
I hope liberals are beginning to realize how much the hysteria over the MCA undercuts the claim that they are the reality-based community. But there is always hope! If bloggers like Ms. Lennon would pay more attention to the right-blogosphere, they would be less likely to make such gross errors of fact. [Open full post]
I’ve so thoroughly checked out of the current RI Senate race that I didn’t even realize there was a debate last night. Ah well….the ProJo has it covered.
I suppose no one can really be surprised that the conservatives hereabouts have taken, at best, lukewarm interest in a race between Patrician “A” and Patrician “B” in which both try their hardest to show how unconservative (ie; “anti-Bush”) they are.
Patrician “A” owes his current electoral viability to the political groundgame orchestrated by the advisors of the President he currently castigates. Meanwhile, Patrician “B” offers no really new ideas and has basically chiseled his whole campaign down to the core theme that a vote for his opponent is a vote for BUSH. It’s politics as a game of “I know you are but what am I?” It’s certainly not a debate over political ideas and is really all about winning political power for its own sake. That’s fine, but it’s not very interesting to me. But, heck, if you’re interested, feel free to comment.
UPDATE: Chuck Nevola is a more intrepid man than I and has more analysis here.
Question 9: Affordable Housing Bonds
Approval of this question will allow for the State of Rhode Island to issue general obligation bonds, refunding bonds, and temporary notes in an amount not to exceed $50,000,000 for affordable housing.
Project Costs – $49,800,000 in principal w/ $37,035,819 in Interest (6% over 20 years) plus approximately $349,000 in issuance costs. TOTAL: $87,184,557. {Source PDF}.
Do we need affordable housing? Most people, including both gubonatorial candidates, say yes.
Urging voters to pass the measure, Republican Governor Carcieri and his Democratic challenger, Lt. Gov. Charles Fogarty, were among more than half a dozen speakers at the kickoff for Vote Yes On 9, a campaign to support Question 9 on the November ballot.
“The goal of Question 9 is to jump-start the construction of affordable housing,” said Armeather Gibbs, chief operating officer of the United Way of Rhode Island, who emceed the event from the back porch of a newly renovated affordable house on Douglas Avenue.
Housing advocates say the $50 million would help Rhode Island to leverage some $450 million in federal housing subsidies and private loans, helping to create up to 2,000 affordable houses, condominiums and apartments over four years.
There are many economic and moral cases to be made for approving this bill (go here as a starting point). But the question must be asked: should current Rhode Island (and federal) taxpayers be asked to foot the bill? What factors contributed to this crisis and how do we correct them so that the problem doesn’t continue? Basically, this isn’t a housing shortage issue as much as it is a tax issue.
There can be little doubt that the governmental policies of “Tax Hell” Rhode Island carry a large amount of blame for the housing pinch. RI’s past tax policy helped convince many manufacturers to move out of state, taking their relatively well-paying jobs with them. The service jobs that have filled the void don’t measure up. To make matters worse, RI’s high tax reputation scares businesses in growing sectors, such as technology or pharmaceuticals, that may offer higher paying jobs.
If young or median-income earning people continue to move out of state, it will only make the fiscal problems–both in RI government and for average RIers–worse. Of course, that may be exactly what is needed before RI politicians and the voters who continue to enable them wake up to the fiscal reality that the current high tax burden is untenable. In short, this bond question asks that RI taxpayers subsidize a problem that was caused because of a bad tax policy.
The politicians are asking us–the taxpayers–to bail them out for their fiscal mistakes instead of getting to the root cause of the problem: they have to lower the tax burden in the state and make it more attractive to businesses. More businesses will make a more competitive job market with higher wages resulting. Subsidizing affordable housing is a case of treating a symptom and not the actual illness. It would be nice to do what we can to alleviate the symptom, but I fear that doing so will allow our politicians to get away with not treating the illness that caused it.
As I was putting together the previous item on Beacon Mutual, I stumbled across a book titled The Politics of Automobile Insurance Reform: Ideas, Institutions, and Public Policy in North America by Edward Lascher. I’m not sure if its table of contents should make Rhode Islanders laugh or make us cry…
[Open full post]
- Introduction: Why We Should Care about the Politics of Automobile Insurance Reform
- Explaining Policy Choices: Pressure versus Ideas
- The Profiteering Story and the Pogo Story
- Reform Enacted: Pennsylvania
- Reform Stymied: Rhode Island
- Different Reform Regimes: Ontario
- The Parliamentary System Difference
- Conclusion: Learning from Automobile Insurance Reform