"Values" Bandwagon: Part II

I’ve heard from quite a few readers of Sunday’s piece, “Let’s not jump on the ‘values’ bandwagon.”  I’d say maybe half are in agreement, with the other half split between those dissenting over a particular point made and those declaring its author, yours truly, an utter moron.

Not that plenty of reasonable arguments can’t be made against the piece – and commentary wouldn’t be very interesting if it didn’t invite attack – but there was, perhaps, some confusion over where I stood on the question of any values being injected into politics.

I thought when writing that it is “undeniable … that strains of the Social Gospel influenced” the modern Democratic Party that I was acknowledging strains of the Social Gospel having influenced the modern Democratic Party. I further thought I was rather approving in said acknowledgment, and that that would suffice. After all, it was column-length commentary, not a dissertation on Reinhold Niebuhr (who, by the way, happens to be a near saint, in my book).

Nevertheless, some found the piece to be a call for “values”-less politics, which, of course, isn’t at all what those in my camp espouse, but precisely what religio-Republicans would like huge swaths of America to believe.

To be sure, the values of caring and conscience are progressive ones – out of many, many others – to which any decent human being would subscribe, whether religious, per se, or not. But it is how we go about caring for others and how we execute our conscience as a nation that are the questions legitimately open on a broad public policy level to pure, pragmatic politics.

Why just politics? Because it, as Bismarck observed, is the art of the possible – whereas religion, or, more precisely, theology, is the art of the absolute. And there are no more absolutes in politics (unless you count Tom DeLay’s aptitude for corruption) than in physics. 

By definition, absolutes don’t lend themselves to compromise, which is the flipside to the coin of the possible – politics.  One cannot purport to know what God wants and pledge to do only God’s absolute bidding and then compromise on one’s divine orders. And I should think we’ve all had enough of folks who have tried injecting what they see as God’s Absolute Will into secular affairs – from the Eric Rudolphs of this country to al Qaeda recruits.

Moreover, the interjection of prescribed “religious values” into public policy results in policies of narrowly prescribed interpretation; that is, the imposition of a sectarian view of “moral codes” into politics.  This is not always pretty, to say the least. Protestants and Catholics have had a half-millennium to agree on what’s moral, not to mention Muslims and Christians. Care to review – or worse, relive -- those ancient histories?

But chiefly, even debating this “values” question shows how successful social conservatives have been at framing national debates and dividing and conquering.  Rather than uniting we’re at each other’s throat at the drop of an article, suspicious of his values, her values, his purity on the matter, her ecumenical take on things or the lack of it, and so on. 

Politics, tied to a discussion of values as religious values, is a loser for progressives in the short run and a loser for the nation in the long run. That’s all I was saying, indeed that’s what the Founding Fathers were saying – and on that much I think nearly all of us could agree.

Now let’s get back to George and Tom and their merry band of God-fearing swindlers, plutocrats and demagogues.

Comments

[JoAnne Krieger]

Reinhold Niebuhr flirts with sainthood? By what standard when Earl Doherty has written an excellent critically thought-out book and website which sucessfully challenges the historicity of Jesus himself no less. Go where you fear to go and do the reading. Query the clergy and expect reasonable answers where answers are reasonable. Truth is a value too:www.jesuspuzzle.org

[SqueakyRat]

I didn't see anything in your comment thread that described you as a moron. Is that what you meant?

[SqueakyRat]

I didn't see anything in your comment thread that described you as a moron. Is that what you meant?

[JoAnne Krieger]

In "Values: Bandwagon II", don't you think your use of the term "social conservatives" is a good example of the success by the radical right at framing their own identity? What is conservative about some within that group who espouse overthrowing members of the judiciary, or social about another who wants to empale them? What is conservative about yet another who wants not only a smaller government, but who wants one so small that he can ball it up and throw it down the bathtub drain? Certainly not all Republicans are that far out, but as of now "social conservatives" have been too cowed by their own to eject those who refuse to live up to their collective name. Somone recently aptly reframed their name to: REGRESSIVES. Gutsy to use, but I think it works.

In my response to "Values: Bandwagon II", thanks for posting www.jesuspuzzle.org Not everyone would.