Huckabee and the social conservatives
Tuesday August 12, 2008
Writing on the First Things blog, Ryan Anderson faults Mike Huckabee for failing to make a case for socially conservative values in language that makes sense outside of church circles. Excerpt: So one lesson learned from the Giuliani and Huckabee...
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Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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This is an experiment. I'm going to see if I put an html end italics sign, whether that will stop the whole blog from being italicized below this post.
Didn't work. Rod, please fix. You need an "" somewhere above.
Lifestyle liberalism is not a liability in and of itself. The liability is hypocrisy. Of course hypocrisy cuts across party lines and it seems that the social conservatives tend to get caught at it the most.
The main problem that lifestyle liberals have with the electorate is that they tend to be against things that the public likes, like guns, tax cuts, sound economic policy that favors people making more money and keeping it themselves instead of throwing it away on people they do not care about.
But the problem with Huckabee and his brand of politics is that the folks who espouse it are, well, crazy. You get outside the Bible Belt and say that something is true because it is in the Bible and people will just twiddle their fingers around their ears because they know that if it is in the Bible it is probably not true. (They don't know how they know that, they just know it.) There are 30 million Evangelicals, which means that there are 270 million who aren't and you cannot win an election with those numbers.
Anderson, quoted by Rod: Lifestyle liberalism has always been a liability for the left in America.
This is very much true, but also very weird. If you look at rates of divorce, adultery, out-of-wedlock children, alcoholism, and so on, the region in which they are highest is in the South, the Bible Belt (being from there, I know this from looking around, not just from surveys and studies). These rates are lowest in the horrible, liberal Northeast. Go figure.
[M]ost people, whatever they say, function at the level of "the heart wants what it wants,"
I agree one hundred per cent, which not only puts rational argumentation at a disadvantage, but I think leads to a sort of doublethink that partly explains why people who are certainly not leading a conservative lifestyle still vote for socially conservative candidates.
True anecdote: I was teaching high school science a couple of years ago, and when evolution was mentioned, a particular student, let's call her Suzy, went off on how awful it was that evolution was taught in the public schools, how no one who disagreed with evolution should have to be taught it, how anyone who believed in evolution should be in their own schools, how all this was because they took the Ten Commandments, prayer, and the Bible out of school, how she was not going to send her kids to public school, and on and on and on.
A few days after this rant, near the end of class, I heard Suzy talking to some of her friends. She was talking about her boyfriend and how she thought it would be so cute to be pregnant at her wedding and how neat that would be. Sure enough, the following semester, she was pregnant. Not married at that time, of course. I don't know if she did get married or not, or if so, if it was before or after the child's birth. I hope it works out, although the statistics on teen marriage aren't good. The point is, internally I wanted to yell at her, "You're talking Ten Commandments this and Bible that and you're not following it? And you're working part-time and not even out of high school or married and you're having a kid that my taxes will support? Do you have any self-awareness? Do you even see the contradictions between what you're saying and what you're doing??!!" Of course, I couldn't do that, and I'm not saying our taxes shouldn't help out single parents or teens or such--although it is often the same people who rail against welfare that seem to produce large amounts of illigitimacy (Once again, where I'm from, I don't need studies to prove this--I just look around).
Another anecdote: A kid I was teaching the year after that told me on one day that he wanted to go to Bible college to be a youth minister and a few days later that he'd started a fight in a restaurant with a kid from a rival school over remarks about the football team. Cognitive dissonance, anyone?
I'm not saying that people are perfect. None of us are, and we're all inconsistent, even hypocritical at times. But the sheer and total unsefconscioness and total lack of awarness of inconsistency or irony of the students in these cases still blows me away.
By the way, Rod, I think Pascal was talking about something much more sublime than Woody Allen was.... ;)
Obviously, Anderson is wielding the cudgel against Huckabee on behalf of FT's pet project of making natural law the basis of public discourse in the United States. This is all very laudable in many ways, but there are some tensions, mostly, I suspect the result of Anderson working with a post-Enlightenment understanding of reason and assimilating natural law to that. The problem with his understanding of natural law is pretty obvious when he writes things like "human reason can know the moral law, the natural law, because human reason participates in eternal reason, the eternal law." The eternal law is God's Providential governance of the universe, a theological concept if ever there was one. Citing JP2 isn't terribly helpful either. He argued against abortion based on human dignity, dignity grounded in our supernatural vocation.
I suspect what Anderson is getting at in his piece is that we need a virtue-based understanding of ethics that encourages rational consideration of the human good (even the possibility raised by Aquinas and others that the human good might not be achievable in this life) as opposed to a command approach to ethics (this is the way things must be, end of discussion), which he sees Huckabee embracing. This view I agree with, though (to get back to the actual piece) I don't think Huckabee is the irrationalist that Anderson makes him out to be.
I didn't like Ryan Anderson's piece. I think the notion that 'it is wrong because it is against the natural law' is just as unconvincing to non-theists as 'it is wrong because the Bible says it is wrong.' I've never met anyone who believed in natural law as a basis for morality who was not a theist. 95% of those I've met or heard who talked about natural law were RCs talking about questions in sexual ethics, abortion, homosexuality, contraception. It's just as much a private theist language as 'the Bible says so'.
You're correct that reason per se does not sway people. But reasons offered over a generation in creative and attractive ways seep in and change souls.
My chief objection to Ryan's comments is that he seems to embrace a diminished view of "reason." It seems to me that if someone believes that he or she has warrant to accept the Scriptures as authoritative, then I don't see on what grounds it would be wrong to offer the Scriptures as a reason why a particular policy may advance the common good. Of course, strategically, in my many communities, this sort of approach would not work. But, philosophically, people who accept lifestyle liberalism, as you call it, are no more armed to engage criticism and offer reasons as is your typical church-going lifestyle conservative. The lifestyle liberal, however, has the advantage of having much of elite opinion on his or her side. So, it sometimes appears to the lifestyle liberal that "reason" is on his or her side, but in fact, like everyone else, the lifestyle liberal approaches the public square with a cluster of assumptions about human nature and morality that he or she believes are "obviously true" and for which he or she has no real persuasive reason other than the mindless mantra of "choice."
I'm firmly convinced that if lifestyle liberals were held to as a high level of scrutiny as lifestyle conservatives to prove their point of view, fewer of them would look down on the latter as if they were benighted morons hypnotized by superstition. But like the religious fundamentalist who is petrified to look critically at Scripture, the lifestyle liberal fundamentalist simply cannot concede the possibility that the hated "religious right" may actually have a point, and one that may be rationally defensible. The facade of being the "keepers of reason" must be held up at all cost, for the most important secular sacrament, getting laid without benefit of clergy, hangs in the balance.
Evangelicals aren't all that crazy. When evangelicals say that something is true because it's in the Bible, that's just a kind of religious shorthand for saying that truth comes from outside human imagination, that truth transcends human power, and that ordinary human beings can know it directly through some kind of revelation. A lot more than 30 million Americans would agree with that basic idea, at least when they find out some politician's been lying to them. Batman may say that the people of Gotham deserve something better than the truth, but that's just postmodern foolishness--truth is a fundamental human right.
FB: But like the religious fundamentalist who is petrified to look critically at Scripture, the lifestyle liberal fundamentalist simply cannot concede the possibility that the hated "religious right" may actually have a point, and one that may be rationally defensible. The facade of being the "keepers of reason" must be held up at all cost, for the most important secular sacrament, getting laid without benefit of clergy, hangs in the balance.
Oooh, true! Well said.
I disagree with this article's critique on Governor Huckabee's campaign and I believe he made GREAT sense to those outside the church group. As a member of Hucksarmy, I can tell you his support base was just as diverse as the population itself. He talked of the idea that this is a country that respects life, not just in the womb but all the way thru and including those in the nursing homes. He had MANY common sense ideas that appeal to the mainstream American crowd, such as the Fair Tax, his health care and education reform ideas. I believe it is the MEDIA that has tried to label Governor Huckabee's campaign as one that appealed only to a secular group. This man did more with less than most ANY candidate could have hoped for. Yet, instead of giving him credit for getting more delegates on less money than ANY candidate, getting to 2nd place in the Republican race, with little money, a mini-organizaton, and few big name endorsements, the media wants to try to downplay what he accomplished. His success has NOT been lost on the American people as evidenced in the Rasmussen polls just taken 7/25-27/08 showing Huck helps McCain's ticket a full 8pts. while Romney the media pick actually HURTS McCain's ticket 6 pts. Reagan was another great communicator who was hated by the press but loved by the people and he came back 4 yrs. later to win in a landslide! Watch history repeat itself!!
Huck is a gifted speaker and a pretty able politician in many ways. He needs to learn to organize and he needs to learn to study and be prepared on the big issues. He did not expand much out of the evangelical vote when the votes still counted.
If Huck could learn to speak to all Christians, not just Evangelicals, he could probably win. It was pretty clear that he was often speaking just to evangelicals. That may guarantee him 30% of the Republican primary vote, but not a general election. All of this assumes that the people who who have the most sway in the Republican party (Rush, Hannity, Savage, etc.) can get over the idea that a Republican governor may have to make compromises and raise taxes when in office. It just is not the end of the world. Constant deficit spending is bad also.
Steve
I definitely agree with the idea that Huckabee needs to change his rhetoric somewhat. Having said that, he did marshall a pretty amazing campaign, given where he started from. I did find him sloppy and clueless in a few areas, but I think this was MOSTLY disappointing to me simply because I was so deeply and passionately supportive of him, and it is always hard to see imperfections in a candidate, of which you are a "true believer" in- other politicians that I am not as supportive of or passionate about, I tend to be more forgiving of.
However, the people that I really had a difficult time with was a lot of his supporters. If you think Obamas' campaign is cult-like, anyone who visited Huckabee's website, knows that the comments were down right scary and freakish at times. As a supporter of his, and one who is Mormon (one of very few), and not Evangelical, I found it outright disgusting, how frequently, supporters, made comments to the effect that it was God's will that Huckabee be elected, that he was his messenger, etc., etc., etc. It wasn't just the comments in and of themselves, but their intensity, frequency and consistency; the comboxes were saturated and drowning in it. All I kept thinking, as a fellow religious believer, was "You know if these people really want Huckabee to catch on, they will drop this rhetoric, because I can't see how anyone who is interested in Huckabee, but maybe unfamiliar with him, or just not as passionate about him, and maybe is a little more cool-headed, about this stuff, can't be driven away from his website, and likely him, by these comments." I know it sure was hard for me to swallow. Though I claim to try to follow God as best I can, I find it very presumptuous, for people to be claiming that such and such politcal campaigns, events, etc. are the will of God.
And having mentioned that I am a Mormon, before anyone else mentions it, yes I apply the same standard to any comments that were made about Mitt Romney. I found my fellow Mormons willingness to support him, indiscriminately, off-putting. I supported Huckabee for two reasons, in this order: 1) He seemed to me to be of higher moral character than Mitt Romney or other candidates. And given that we have no idea, what is going to occur during a four-year term, to me this trumps, in a lot of ways, the importance of many stated policy positions.
2) I liked his positions much better (with the dramatic exception of the fair tax.)
At this point I think, I am bordering on rambing.
-Brandon Chase Bell
2)
Brandon, I don't believe you are a Mormon. No Mormon would overlook the blatant anti-Mormon play Huckabee made, in which he tried to divide the party and alienate the most conservative voting block in the GOP. Huckabee's behind every one of the "no Mitt for VP" efforts.
Wake up and look at what is happening to not only your party, but your country. Evangelical leaders better wake up, too, because Huckabee is leading them right over a cliff into the land of permanent irrelevance.
Um, why exactly would I claim to be a Mormon, if I really wasn't?
I attend the Logan, Utah 4th ward, in the chapel on the corner of 1st East and 3rd North, in Logan. We meet at 12:30
I obviously interpret events, a little differently than you, in regrads to Huckabee's campaign. But now I can't even be a Mormon, because I supported Huckabee? I wish someone would have let me know that before I decided to support and donate to his campaign. And I don't need you to tell me that it was a very unpopular move among Mormons, living as I do here in Utah, where Huckabee, recieved a whole 2% of the vote in the Republican Primary.
Please write my Bishop, and tell him, to release me from my calling in the Sunday School, as I just found out I am actually not a member of the church I thought I belonged to all these years. I guess somehow I was able to serve a two-year mission, in Washington, D.C. for a church that I don't really belong to, as well. Hmmm...
I don't ascribe the motives, that you obviously do to Huckabee, but I am just trying to figure out what reason I would have to lie? What exactly would my motive be?
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