From the Crunchy Con: P.Z. Myers and the future of democracy

Not as interested in Mr. Dreher's application of James Davison Hunter's lecture to this controversy as the lecture itself.

The thesis of the lecture was that the cultural conditions that brought about the founding of the American Republic no longer exist. Hunter explained that even though American at the founding contained people who believed religious faith was the source of ultimate authority for the government, and those who believed pure reason was, the American settlement was sufficiently opaque to accomodate both sides. The reason? A shared commitment to a broad understanding of what constituted the common good. Whether you believed an understanding of the Good derived primarily from religious dictates, or natural reason shorn of the distorting lens of religion, there was broad agreement on where society ought to be headed.

That's over, Hunter says. The Enlightenment dream that Reason alone can disclose authoritative truths to live by has been shown to have been empty. All Reason alone gives us is radical subjectivity. It has shown us how and why to doubt everything, but does not show us why we should believe in anything (other, I suppose, than the truths disclosed by science -- which aren't moral truths at all). Hunter says the students he teaches at UVA have never read the postmodernist philosophers, but they, by virtue of living in contemporary America, are as postmodern as any Derrida.

What does this mean for the future of democracy? Hunter says that we're at a pretty risky time right now. We've lost a shared understanding of the Common Good; and moreover, we're getting to the place where we don't have the civic conviction that life in a pluralistic democracy demands a certain degree of mutual respect, and respect of the forms we've developed for working out our differences in public.

He told a story at the beginning of the lecture that illustrated the crisis, as he sees it:

Back in the 1990s, during the Congressional fights over arts funding, Hunter says he was invited to a top-secret meeting in NYC, in which the heads of various arts groups and foundations, as well as an ACLU lawyer, gathered to strategize. They invited Hunter to speak to explain the conflict from a sociologist's point of view. Hunter said he began by saying that in a pluralist liberal democracy like ours, how you say and do things is as important as what you say and do. His point was that given human nature and human passions, we have to be very careful to watch how we say and do things, because it's very easy to spark unnecessary conflict. Preserving the political order that guarantees us individual freedom, including freedom of speech, requires a certain standard of behavior, especially when you share the public square with people who believe things radically different from what you believe.

Hunter said after he spoke, Sidney Blumenthal, then in the Clinton White House as an adviser, came to the podium to give his advice to the group. Hunter quotes him as saying, "You know how to deal with this? Seize power!"

Hunter-CultureWars-TheStruggletoDefineAmerica (Google Books)
Mars Hill Audio, vol. 1; vol. 8; vol. 44

Discussion of the P. Z. Myers incident has been the ugliest (and most fruitless and hence pointless) I've seen on the internet, with Christians and non-Christians failing to reach an agreement as to how it should be judged and what consequences there should be, if any. Secession for those areas that want to remain committed to Christianity sounds better with each passing day, though even those areas will need to renew themselves by better conforming to Divine Commandments.

Those who are militantly opposed to religion because it is not 'rational' often fail to recognize how many of their certitudes are actually beliefs they have accepted on the basis of the authority of others. Once again, our 'institutions of learning' have failed to teach the citizenry basic logic so they can recognize the difference between knowledge and opinion.

Before the Shooting Begins, by James Davison Hunter
CJR - Before the Shooting Begins, by James Davison Hunter
James Davison Hunter on The Paula Gordon Show
The Death of Character (Google Books)

The education of character is dependent upon a well-functioning community--this is something to consider when one is entering the debate on sex education. Telling teens that they need to use protection, without giving them norms to which they can strive to follow, is a disaster. But who is willing to defend marriage and its purposes, and the 'traditional' family? Not public schools here in California--though it may be different in other regions. Moral education, education in virtue, requires accountability, both on the part of those being educated and on the part of those who are supposed to be educating.

Related Links:
Cornerstone Values Website
Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn History Dept-Maxwell School