Can secularists and atheists lead the West?
Here from April 2005 is an exchange with a reader on my view that America and the West are not secular, and cannot be adequately led by secularists and non-believers.
The reader writes:
You have argued that the West must define its identity around its traditional Christian roots as it gears up for the post-9/11 civilizational struggle against Islam. You contrast this with the outlook of Robert Spencer, who advocates an identity defined more around the modern secular character of the West. [See VFR discussion of Spencer’s definition of America as “secular.”] Are you really claiming, then, that only religious-minded people are capable of recognizing and defending their own interests?
LA to reader:
The issue isn’t simply about “defending one’s own interests.” The issue is about maintaining and defending our whole civilization. Since our civilization is based to a significant extent on Christianity, non-believers cannot adequately explain, defend, or maintain it.
Could people who are ignorant of, and hostile to, military traditions, maintain West Point?
Reader to LA:
Thanks for the reply. What I actually meant was recognition and defence of civilizational interests, in the sense that you’ve described in your writings.
Let me say upfront that I was deeply fascinated with your essay “The Search for Moderate Islam.” It struck me as one of the most cogent discussions about the implications of 9/11 that I’ve encountered. I found myself in agreement with almost everything you said and felt, indeed, that the essay gave expression to many feelings that I have had.
However, I’m troubled by your answer to my question and your West Point riposte. The implication is that your conception of Western societal identity is some kind of macrocosm of the Boy Scouts, in which non-believers and “post-religious” types like me need not apply. One does not have to be a pro-Republican Christian conservative to recognize the grave existential threat posed to our civilization by the blood-gurgling reptiles who assaulted us with deadly force on September 11. It is plainly absurd to claim that only people who take the Biblical story of creation as literal fact, and who oppose contraception, can be considered properly equipped and trustworthy to take the helm of political and cultural stewardship for the present-day western world.
You have pointed out the tendency of neoconservatives and liberals to define America as an abstract set of ideals and principles, rather than as a concrete and particular country. I concur with you on that, yet I would submit that you are lurching in that direction by calling for a doctrinal litmus test on theological lines. Of course, we have to appreciate the Christian roots of Western civilization and wake up to the realization that Islam is an altogether different animal (I’m all on board with you and the new pope about “dictatorship of relativism”—in particular, the insidious notion that anything that can be said about religion A can be said about religion B, and vice versa). I would add, making no pretense of speaking for anybody other than myself, that my sense of American civilization is no less concrete, physical, and particular than is yours.
Also in your essay, you speak of what might happen, in a Hobbesian scenario, were Americans to demand a “disproportionate response” to another massive terror attack on the homeland. I would tend to argue that Christianity, with its emphasis on compassion and moral restraint, would inhibit delivery of the kind of lethal counterpunch that you envisage.
Cheers
LA to reader:
I said:
“Since our civilization is based to a significant extent on Christianity, non-believers cannot adequately explain, defend, or maintain it.”
I am not saying that non-believers are enemies. I am not saying that non-believers are to be excluded by law from any aspect of political life. I am not saying that non-believers cannot be loyal citizens who love our country and defend it. I am not calling for a litmus test.
What I am saying is that non-believers cannot give a full account of our civilization, cannot appeal to the deepest moral sources of our civilization, and therefore their ability to defend it is somewhat defective. Not totally defective. Not defective in all respects. But defective in a certain key respect. (Sen. Kerry, for example, was noticeably defective in any ability to articulate the religious/moral basis of our society, which clearly was a mark against him as a candidate.) People can be defective in all kinds of ways, in relation to all kinds of competencies. For example, I have a very poor grasp of economics. Therefore I should not be put in charge of explaining economic policy. I am dependent on people who do understand economy to fulfil that function. In the same way, non-believers will always be dependent on believers to maintain the religious element in the society which in turn is the real source of the moral element.
Now I hear you rushing again to say that “Auster is saying that non-believers cannot be moral.” That’s not what I’m saying. Individual non-believers can be more personally upright than individual believers. But, once again, non-believers are limited in their ability to explain, defend, and justify their moral principles. For this, they are dependent on the religious element of the society.
West Point was only an illustration. I could have used any illustration to make the same point. A person who knows nothing about, say, computers, who cares nothing about computers, is not the sort of person you would want to put in charge of a computer company.
The same is true, in its own sphere, of a nation that calls itself a nation under God.
George Washington said in his first inaugural:
“… in these honorable qualifications [i.e. the character of the members of Congress] I behold the surest pledges that …the foundations of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality …. I dwell on this prospect with every satisfaction which an ardent love for my country can inspire, since there is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists in the economy and course of nature an indissoluble union between [private] virtue and [public] happiness; between duty and advantage; … since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained … “ [G. Washington, April 30, 1789.]
Washington began our national government with the unqualified assertion that its success depended on obedience to objective moral truth which in turn comes from God, the “eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.” Now you are free to disagree with Washington’s view that human happiness depends on man’s efforts to turn himself toward a higher truth. (Indeed, if you were a contemporary liberal, you would see this man of the 18th century as a bible thumper and an incipient Christian fascist.) You are free to say, “Well, we can all know morality by the unguided use of our own secular reasoning.” But if you did so, it is evident that you would be less qualified to explain, defend, and preserve the government he helped create.
This is true inherently, but it is also true as a political, external matter. If you ran for president, calling yourself a “non-believer and a post-religious type,” do you think a majority of the people would regard you as a plausible candidate for president?
So, while there is not a “litmus test,” there are criteria that matter both inherently and politically. And the reality is that in a country that has been Christian since its origins 170 years before the Constitution, a country in which Christianity is still formative of our ethos and public and private attitudes (though it is being challenged as never before), an explicit secularism such as yours would disqualify you in most people’s minds for the presidency . That doesn’t mean you can’t serve the country in all kinds of other ways. I’m not qualified for the presidency either, for different reasons.
Also, the subject here is not the presidency. I chose the presidency as an illustration, since the presidency epitomizes leadership. It’s leadership that is our actual subject, specifically, the articulation and representation of the community that one leads.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 07, 2006 09:00 AM | Send