[MD] Theocracy, Secularism, and Democracy

[david buchanan]

Steve said to all:
 ... Jeffrey Stout agrees with Sam Harris that theocracy is a threat to democracy, but he sees secularism, the notion that religion needs to be stamped out and has no place in political discourse, as equally anti-democratic as are any imposed limits on the sorts of justifications that are permissable in politics.

dmb says;
I have to stop you right there. Secularism is the notion that religion needs to be stamped out? According to my dictionary, that's just not what the word means. "secular, adjective 1 denoting attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis : secular buildings | secular moral theory. Contrasted with sacred .2 Christian Church (of clergy) not subject to or bound by religious rule; not belonging to or living in a monastic or other order. Contrasted with regular." The definition you've used as a premise for all that follows is actually quite biased. It is not really a definition so much as a paranoid distortion and a slanderous attack. I'm guessing Jeffery Stout is a religious man and you're getting this distorted view from him. Further, democracy is portrayed as the reasonable middle ground between theocrats and secularist. But take a look at the obvious similarity between the actual definition of "secularism" and your description of democracy: You said that "democracy holds that political power ought to be shared equally among all citizens and not denied based on religious affilitiation or the lack of religious affiliation" and my dictionary says secularism denotes activities "that have no religious or spiritual basis" and are "not subject to or bound by religious rule". 
In other words, in politics secularism simply means the separation of church and state, NOT the view that religion needs to be stamped out. In fact, the notion that secularism is somehow at odds with democracy will seem fairly ridiculous the moment you recall the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." Notice how nicely that basic right comports with the actual definition of secularism? For all practical purposes the first amendment defines our government as a secular government. 

Steve said:
... But there has certainly been an upsurge in the sentiment (or at least public awareness of the sentiment) that Christians ought to dominate non-Christians. ...It seems to me then that the way to attack theocracy is by promoting liberal democracy rather than secularism. We Pirsigian anti-theists have to be wary of the appearance that we represent a threat to religious ways of life in general and seek to impose a secular worldview on all. Since we are anti-essentialists we don't think that religion is _essentially_ anything.  It isn't essentially good or  bad any more than technology is. Both can certainly be used for evil as well as for good.


dmb says:
Since secularism and liberal democracy both mean freedom of religion, it doesn't really make much sense to say secularism is a "threat" to religion. In effect, the claim would be that freedom of religion is a threat to religion. That could only be perceived as threat to a theocrat, who doesn't agree with such freedom, who thinks church and state ought not be separate. By definition, the theocrat wants "a system of government in which priests rule in the name of God or a god". That's not consistent with democracy or religious freedom.


Steve said:
When religious traditionalist complain that they are being handicapped by the demand that they restructure their political arguments in secular terms before they can be aired in the public square, they blame secularism while it is in fact religious liberty that requires this restructuring. ... Atheists have never had such political power and numbers to be able to enforce a moratorium of religious language in political arguments. It is not because an external imposition by secularists that religious traditionalists must do such restructuring of their arguments. ...

dmb says:
Handicapped by the demand that they make their political arguments in secular terms? Are you kidding? The opposite has always been true, actually. Instead of there being anything like "a moratorium on religious language", American politicians can never talk like an atheist. Never. Politicians, for all practical purposes, have to pay some kind of lip service at the very least. Hell, go on Youtube and listen to a couple of George Bush's speeches. He stood on the Capitol steps and defined freedom as a gift from God and told a national TV audience that Jesus is his favorite philosopher. What President ever failed to end a speech without saying "God Bless America"? The USA is by far the most religious nation in the West. Can you think of a single atheist who was ever elected in this country? I can't. If there ever was such a creature, he was real good at keeping it under wraps. I think the notion that the vast Christian majority is somehow being persecuted by secularists is quite a grotesque distortion of our political reality. The religious right has totally dominated American politics for as long as I can remember. In that context, the demand has always been FOR religious language.


Steve said:
... I have become convinced by Stout that atheists and Pirsigian anti-theists should not identify as secularists, since imposing any limits on what sorts of arguments can made in the public sphere is as anti-democratic as the theocratic vision that secularists seek to oppose. While we should see the process of secularization as a positive consequence of religious liberty toward a more inclusive society, we should not justify the bigotry we experience by posing as though we are somehow responsible for the secularization of political discourse.  Also, by lumping all religion as a theocratic threat to democracy we lose the allies we need among the American religious people who are committed to democratic ideals and identify more with the democratic reform of Martin Luther King than with the theocratic vision of Pat Robertson.


dmb says:

I think there is no call for the change you're calling for (secularization as a positive consequence of religious liberty), not least of all because that's already what secularism means. The first amendment separated church and state and established religious freedom a couple of centuries ago. Secularism doesn't mean imposing limits on speech. Quite the opposite. It says any such limits are illegal. Again, I think the idea that secularism means anti-democratic constraints on speech or religion (or the imposition of a vision) is not much more than a paranoid delusion and it amount to baseless slander. Being opposed to theocracy is to oppose bigotry and oppression and yet you're construing the secularist as the bigoted oppressor. That's pretty warped, my friend.  



Steve said:
What do you think? Do you see a theocratic movement gaining momentum in the US? How is it manifested? How can it best be opposed? Hasn't anyone noticed that while the politics of difference, identity, recognition of the disenfranchised has dominated public debates in recent decades the plutocrats have seized the opportunity to consolidate even more wealth and power? Don't the friends of democracy whether religious or secular need to enlist one another's help to confront the plutocrats? If so, an agenda of secularism is not at all what is needed in the US.


dmb says:

Actually, this whole long period of conservatism is predicated on getting people to vote against their interests and for the Plutocrats and this is very much a part of the rise of the religious right. This has been widely documented. As Wiki says:

"What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America" (2004) is a book written by American journalist and historian Thomas Frank, which explores the rise of conservative populism in the United States through the lens of his native state of Kansas. Once a hotbed of the left-wing Populist movement of the late nineteenth century, it has become overwhelmingly conservative in recent decades. The book was published in the United Kingdom and Australia as What's the Matter with America?.

According to his analysis, the political discourse of recent decades has dramatically shifted from the class animus of traditional leftism to one in which "explosive" cultural issues, such as abortion and gay marriage, are used to redirect anger towards "liberal elites."Against this backdrop, Frank describes the rise of conservatism and the so-called far right in the social and political landscape of Kansas. He finds it difficult to understand the overwhelming support for Republican party politicians, given his belief that the economic policies of the Republican party do not benefit the majority of people in the State. He also claimed that the party fails to deliver on the "moral" issues (such as abortion and gay rights) which brought the support of cultural conservatives in the first place -- in his view deepening a cycle of frustration aimed at cultural liberalism.

The notion that American politics has been transformed because of defection from the Democratic ranks of working-class social conservatives is not a new idea:As far back as Richard Nixon's first year in the White House, Kevin Phillips published The Emerging Republican Majority (1969).Everett Carll Ladd Jr., with Charles D. Hadley in Transformations of the American Party System: Political Coalitions from the New Deal to the 1970s. (1975) proclaimed "an inversion of the old class relationship in voting" due to "the transformations of conflict characteristic of post-industrialism."Robert Huckfeldt and Carol Weitzel Kohfeld in Race and the Decline of Class in American Politics (1989) argued that "race served to splinter the Democratic coalition" because the policy commitments of the Civil Rights era provoked "[r]acial hostility, particularly on the part of lower-status whites."Thomas Byrne and Mary D. Edsall in Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics (1991) argued that "[w]orking-class whites and corporate CEOs, once adversaries at the bargaining table, found common ideological ground in their shared hostility to expanding government intervention."All of these works, and many others, suggested that the class basis of New Deal voting patterns had given way to a new structure in which conservative ideology and cultural issues brought large numbers of working-class whites into the Republican camp.[2]


dmb continues:
As I see it, the Plutocrats and the bible-thumpers have been in bed together for a long time now. Even here in our little MOQ world, the people who defend free-market capitalism and the people who defend theism are mostly the same people. Actually, I'm a bit stunned that you, Steve, would buy into this nonsense. I's not saying Stout is a slack-jawed hick but jeez. This whole picture is seriously warped and the central points turn historical facts on their heads. What planet does this guy live on?