Liberalism, Conservatism, and Catholicism
by JAMES KALB
We all talk about liberalism and conservatism, and about liberal and conservative Catholics, but what does it mean?
Some say it doesn’t mean much at all. They say these are labels attached to arbitrary and even contradictory collections of positions. Liberals say they want lots of freedom and lots of regulations. Conservatives say they want a small frugal government and a big expensive military. Worse, the two sides trade positions without telling anyone or explaining the move. Free speech used to be liberal, now it’s conservative. Staying out of other countries’ business used to be conservative, now it’s liberal—except when it’s not.
The relation between liberal and conservative tendencies in politics and in religion is even more unsettled. People accept that there’s a connection, at least in some cases, but don’t agree when, where, or what. Views on the topic get mixed up with substantive disagreements: I live my faith, in politics as in everything else, but don’t see how you can favor X and call yourself Christian. Or to the contrary, I hold my religious views for deep spiritual reasons, so they’re not the same as my politics, while you see God, politics, and everything else through the same partisan lens. At times the claims become a bit surprising, perhaps intentionally so: I’m libertarian or socialist, or support abortion and gay marriage, because I’m Catholic.
The word “ideological” provides a kind of clarity by indicating that a label applies to the other guy but not you. Mrs. A says the Pope’s views reflect Peronist or socialist ideology. Dr. B replies that the Pope’s views come out of the Gospel, and free market fanatics and global warming deniers are the real ideologues. Pulling rank often plays a part in this kind of exchange: I’m an expert, so my views are complex, subtle, and hard to categorize. You aren’t, so yours reflect a crude secularist or theocratic ideology. They’re a collection of slogans from Fox News, or Democratic National Committee talking points.
In spite of such complexities, confusions, and contradictions, the enduring and pervasive use of the terms by almost everyone seems to demonstrate that they mean something, and their political meaning is connected to their religious meaning. But how? Everybody has a view on the topic, so I’ll put mine forward so people can consider it along with all the others.
One’s view of liberalism and conservatism depends on his view of modern society and indeed the human world in general. Mine is that liberalism—or progressivism, which is pretty much the same thing today—is the leading tendency in modern political life, and draws its power and ultimately its content from an attempt to advance the modern aspiration toward clear, comprehensive, and effective system.
That attempt can be seen in the modern state, modern natural science, and modern methods of economic organization. In politics it has settled, after detours into fascism and other violently extreme tendencies, on an attempt to re-engineer social life as a system that maximizes equal individual preference satisfaction, consistent with its own coherence, stability, and effectiveness.
That project has immense appeal under modern conditions. It can plausibly claim to give everyone the best deal practically possible, and at the same time to justify the power of those who dominate characteristically modern institutions like business corporations and expert bureaucracies. After all, without a unified overall system based on rational institutions like global markets and transnational bureaucracies, how could overall efficiency, equity, and stability be secured? How could stubborn popular prejudices be suppressed and kept from affecting social relations? And how could all people be made full and equal participants in the life of society? (The latter goals, it should be noted, are hard to distinguish from the dissolution of all serious social relationships other than market and bureaucratic ones.)
Religious liberalism as it is now can be viewed as the attempt to spiritualize the progressive project. It therefore downplays revelation and the transcendent, instead emphasizing improvements (judged by liberal standards) in the social and economic sphere. So it treats distinctions and restrictions as hateful and oppressive when they relate to institutions, like family or cultural and religious community, that interfere with the free action of global markets and transnational bureaucracies. The resulting suppression of particular connections in favor of a functionally integrated global system is thus idealized as love and inclusiveness; and subsidiarity, which is based on particular connections, gives way in social thinking to solidarity, to be perfected through a unified world order. True religion then becomes a matter of supporting open borders, the United Nations, ecumenism, the battle against discrimination, and comprehensive state social benefits and protections.
................
Read more:www.crisismagazine.com
Some say it doesn’t mean much at all. They say these are labels attached to arbitrary and even contradictory collections of positions. Liberals say they want lots of freedom and lots of regulations. Conservatives say they want a small frugal government and a big expensive military. Worse, the two sides trade positions without telling anyone or explaining the move. Free speech used to be liberal, now it’s conservative. Staying out of other countries’ business used to be conservative, now it’s liberal—except when it’s not.
The relation between liberal and conservative tendencies in politics and in religion is even more unsettled. People accept that there’s a connection, at least in some cases, but don’t agree when, where, or what. Views on the topic get mixed up with substantive disagreements: I live my faith, in politics as in everything else, but don’t see how you can favor X and call yourself Christian. Or to the contrary, I hold my religious views for deep spiritual reasons, so they’re not the same as my politics, while you see God, politics, and everything else through the same partisan lens. At times the claims become a bit surprising, perhaps intentionally so: I’m libertarian or socialist, or support abortion and gay marriage, because I’m Catholic.
The word “ideological” provides a kind of clarity by indicating that a label applies to the other guy but not you. Mrs. A says the Pope’s views reflect Peronist or socialist ideology. Dr. B replies that the Pope’s views come out of the Gospel, and free market fanatics and global warming deniers are the real ideologues. Pulling rank often plays a part in this kind of exchange: I’m an expert, so my views are complex, subtle, and hard to categorize. You aren’t, so yours reflect a crude secularist or theocratic ideology. They’re a collection of slogans from Fox News, or Democratic National Committee talking points.
In spite of such complexities, confusions, and contradictions, the enduring and pervasive use of the terms by almost everyone seems to demonstrate that they mean something, and their political meaning is connected to their religious meaning. But how? Everybody has a view on the topic, so I’ll put mine forward so people can consider it along with all the others.
One’s view of liberalism and conservatism depends on his view of modern society and indeed the human world in general. Mine is that liberalism—or progressivism, which is pretty much the same thing today—is the leading tendency in modern political life, and draws its power and ultimately its content from an attempt to advance the modern aspiration toward clear, comprehensive, and effective system.
That attempt can be seen in the modern state, modern natural science, and modern methods of economic organization. In politics it has settled, after detours into fascism and other violently extreme tendencies, on an attempt to re-engineer social life as a system that maximizes equal individual preference satisfaction, consistent with its own coherence, stability, and effectiveness.
That project has immense appeal under modern conditions. It can plausibly claim to give everyone the best deal practically possible, and at the same time to justify the power of those who dominate characteristically modern institutions like business corporations and expert bureaucracies. After all, without a unified overall system based on rational institutions like global markets and transnational bureaucracies, how could overall efficiency, equity, and stability be secured? How could stubborn popular prejudices be suppressed and kept from affecting social relations? And how could all people be made full and equal participants in the life of society? (The latter goals, it should be noted, are hard to distinguish from the dissolution of all serious social relationships other than market and bureaucratic ones.)
Religious liberalism as it is now can be viewed as the attempt to spiritualize the progressive project. It therefore downplays revelation and the transcendent, instead emphasizing improvements (judged by liberal standards) in the social and economic sphere. So it treats distinctions and restrictions as hateful and oppressive when they relate to institutions, like family or cultural and religious community, that interfere with the free action of global markets and transnational bureaucracies. The resulting suppression of particular connections in favor of a functionally integrated global system is thus idealized as love and inclusiveness; and subsidiarity, which is based on particular connections, gives way in social thinking to solidarity, to be perfected through a unified world order. True religion then becomes a matter of supporting open borders, the United Nations, ecumenism, the battle against discrimination, and comprehensive state social benefits and protections.
................
Read more:www.crisismagazine.com
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario