Rod Dreher's book on "Crunchy Conservativism" is out. And . . . there's a blog, too. (Scroll down; there's a lot of stuff that's consonant with things we talk about here.) As I've mentioned before:
I cannot help it . . . I am intrigued by, and attracted to, this book (by Rod Dreher) and its thesis (and, I admit, its title): "Crunchy-Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, and their diverse tribe of countercultural conservatives plan to save America (or at least the Republican Party)." I'm too lazy to home-school (even though I think it's probably best), I think "organic" is code for "covered with small bits of fecal matter," I hate the smell of Patchouli (which I associate with Birkenstocks); I love Starbucks, the Cheesecake Factory, and the mass-marketing of good beer; but I think that Dreher is on to something.
Check out also this post over at "Get Religion", which excerpts an essay by George Nash:
In Mr. Dreher’s view, consumer-crazed capitalism makes a fetish of individual choice and, if left unchecked, “tends to pull families and communities apart.” Thus consumerism and conservatism are, for him, incompatible, a fact that mainstream conservatives, he says, simply do not grasp. He warns that capitalism must be reined in by “the moral and spiritual energies of the people.” It is not politics and economics that will save us, he declares. It is adherence to the “eternal moral norms” known as the Permanent Things.
And the most permanent thing of all is God. At the heart of Mr. Dreher’s family-centered crunchy conservatism is an unwavering commitment to religious faith. And not just any religious faith but rigorous, old-fashioned orthodoxy. Only a firm grounding in religious commitment, he believes, can sustain crunchy conservatives in their struggle against the radical individualism and materialism he decries. Nearly all the crunchy cons he interviews are devoutly Christian or orthodox Jewish believers who are deliberately ordering their lives toward the ultimate end of “serving God, not the self” — often at considerable financial sacrifice.
Rick Garnett called our attention to Leon Wieseltier's very critical review, in the Sunday New York Times, of Daniel Dennett's new book. Rick's post is here. Wieseltier's review is here,
Wieseltier's review prompted Brian Leiter to post some very critical comments on Wieseltier's review. Take a look at what Leiter has to say (here).
Now, here's what philosopher Chris Eberle has to say about Leiter's comments:
Wieseltier is a terrific writer and a superb polemicist. He might not
have all of his philosophical ps and qs together, but his rhetoric is
powerful. And since Dennett is, according to Leiter, pursuing a
"rhetorical and psychological" concern to determine "how to get people
to give up on religion," a concern he pursues by appealing to a
historical narrative that seems to be an exercise in rank speculation,
it's hard to see why Leiter would be so terribly upset by Wieseltier's
taking up the rhetorical cudgel for the opposite side.
With
respect to substantive matters, I don't really think that Leiter does
much more than show that Wieseltier isn't a professional philosopher.
What's more interesting is what Leiter doesn't show, or even mention.
He's correct, I think, that facts about the causal origins of a belief
can be relevant to the epistemic status of that belief (though not to
it's truth). That's a pretty standard point in contemporary
epistemology: if my belief that p is generated by an unreliable
belief-forming mechanism (wish-fulfilment, for example), then it's not
the case that I know that p. (Knowledge requires reliability, and
reliability is partly causal.) Hence, if my belief that God exists is
exclusively (mostly?) a result of wish-fulfillment, then I do not know
that God exists. God might exist, but I don't know that.
The
question is what sort of relevance that general reliabilist point has
to religious belief. Apparently, Dennett thinks it has great relevance.
But it can be used to discredit claims to religious knowledge only if
the story Dennett tells about the history of religious belief, and
about its current grounds, is both true and provides reason to believe
that religious belief is formed unreliably. If Dennett's narrative
isn't actually true, then Leiter's repeated reference to the epistemic
relevance of the etiology of belief is itself irrelevant. And Dennett
seems to think that Dennett's narrative is speculative... When you cut
through all the posturing, and the trivial corrections about minor
interpretive points, it's hard to see that Leiter himself has good
reason to endorse Dennett's argument.
Interestingly (to me),
Wieseltier's criticism of Dennett's scientism seems to appeal to
something like the very reliabilist intuition about knowledge about
which Letier thinks Wieseltier's ignorant. For Wieseltier appeals to an
argument, articulated by C.S Lewis a while ago and rehabilited in
whiz-bang, hyper-analytic form by Al Plantinga just yesterday,
according to which we lack reason to trust our basic cognitive
faculties if Dennett is correct about human evolution. ("If reason is a
product of natural selection, then how much confidence can we have in a
rational argument for natural selection?) I'm inexpert here, but I
think that both Lewis and Plantinga articulate this general argument in
terms Leiter would very much appreciate: random mutations and natural
selection is just not a reliable way to shape truth-acquiring cognitive
faculties, and so we have a standing reason to deny that our cognitive
faculties are reliable, and so knowledge-producing. Two can play the! game Leiter want to play.
Well,
there's more, I suppose, but I've said a bit. Those are my reactions.
Oh, and one other: if Wieseltier accurately conveys the sensibility
that animates Dennett's project (about secularists being 'brights' and
morally superior and all that), then he's provided yet another example
of the kind of secular dogmatist that makes me just as skeptical about
the good will and moral sensibility of some secularists as many
secularists are of religious folks like me. _______________ mp
Rick is right about the importance and correctness of today's unanimous SCOTUS decision finding that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) protected a sect's consumption of tea with a hallucinogen in it at their worship services. The opinion, by Roberts, is brisk, clear, and makes all the right points necessary for RFRA to have real meaning in protecting religious freedom. Here's the key passage:
Under the Government’s view, there is no need to assess the particulars of the UDV’s use or weigh the impact of an exemption for that specific use, because the Controlled Substances Act serves a compelling purpose and simply admits of no exceptions. . . .
RFRA, and the strict scrutiny test it adopted, contemplate an inquiry more focused than the Government’s categorical approach. RFRA requires the Government to demonstrate that the compelling interest test is satisfied through application of the challenged law "to the person"—the particular claimant whose sincere exercise of religion is being substantially burdened.
That's the fundamental point: the court should look to whether granting an exemption for the particular exercise of religious conscience would create a serious problem (and thus implicate a compelling interest), not whether undermining the law as a whole would do so. That's how RFRA ensures that there will be a balance between religious freedom and government interests: if the government could define its interest as uniform enforcement of the law, it would always win. (For more expanded version of this argument, see this brief I co-wrote in the case.) The Court nails this point dead center.
And its ruling will have a salutary effect, not only on cases involving RFRA itself (which limits the effect of federal laws on religious freedom), but also on cases involving the federal RLUIPA statute (cases involving zoning or landmarking laws burdening churches, as well as prisoner religious exercise claims), state versions of RFRA (in force in about a dozen states), and state constitutional provisions (in several other states) that have been interpreted to apply the "compelling interest" test.
Today's unanimous decision from the Justices, involving the interpretation and application of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, might be narrow, but it strikes me as important. The Justices recognized, of course, that the Free Exercise Clause does not require exemptions in the way that RFRA does, but they recognized that (a) the Constitution does permit Congress to go beyond the requirements of the Free Exercise Clause in relieving religion from burdens imposed by federal laws and (b) that RFRA really does require some accommodations and is not toothless.
A professor at Notre Dame named Nicole Stelle Garnett -- who is clearly thoughtful and witty, and likely charming and beautiful as well -- has published some interesting thoughts about academic freedom, Catholic identity, and diversity in the marketplace of ideas.
UPDATE: Some students at Notre Dame have set up a blog, dedicated to the "academic freedom and Catholic character" discussion.
I'm not sure this deserves a whole post (maybe this is one benefit of comments, which I generally don't like). But I think Rob and I are more or less in agreement about the importance of concscience in professional life. I'm just not sure this death penalty case raises the issue. In the news story I read, the personal views of the physicians did not play a role. They were just complying with their professional obligations.
I appreciate Eduardo's point about the relevance of professional standards to the interplay between an individual provider and the state. These standards, however, do not seem to be having much impact, much less a dispositive impact, on the pharmacist debate. The American Pharmaceutical Association supports "the individual pharmacist's right to exercise conscientious refusal and supports the establishment of systems to ensure patient access to legally prescribed therapy without compromising the pharmacist's right of conscientious refusal." Granted, a statement of support for conscience is different than the AMA's explicit prohibition on certain conduct, but it still warrants deference that has not been afforded it (at least in Illinois and Massachusetts).
To be clear, I do not support a legal right of conscience for individual pharmacists, but I fully support the integration of faith with professional identity as long as one does not expect the integration to be costless. And I welcome an active mediating role for professional associations in staking out moral claims on behalf of their members and in resisting efforts by the state to trump those claims. I just hope that such associational claims will be given the same deference when they create tension with our embrace of unfettered autonomy for the individual consumer as when they are arrayed against state power.
I suppose one difference might be that doctors are part of a profession whose norms prohibit their participation in executions but not their distribution of contraception. See, for example, the following statement by the AMA:
An individual's opinion on capital punishment is the personal moral decision of the individual. A physician, as a member of a profession dedicated to preserving life when there is hope of doing so, should not be a participant in a legally authorized execution. Physician participation in execution is defined generally as actions which would fall into one or more of the following categories:
(1) an action which would directly cause the death of the condemned; (2) an action which would assist, supervise, or contribute to the ability of another individual to directly cause the death of the condemned; (3) an action which could automatically cause an execution to be carried out on a condemned prisoner.
Physician participation in an execution includes, but is not limited to, the following actions: prescribing or administering tranquilizers and other psychotropic agents and medications that are part of the execution procedure; monitoring vital signs on site or remotely (including monitoring electrocardiograms); attending or observing an execution as a physician; and rendering of technical advice regarding execution.
In the case where the method of execution is lethal injection, the following actions by the physician would also constitute physician participation in execution: selecting injection sites; starting intravenous lines as a port for a lethal injection device; prescribing, preparing, administering, or supervising injection drugs or their doses or types; inspecting, testing, or maintaining lethal injection devices; and consulting with or supervising lethal injection personnel.
"The use of a physician's clinical skill and judgment for purposes other than promoting an individual's health and welfare undermines a basic ethical foundation of medicine — first, do no harm. Therefore, requiring physicians to be involved in executions violates their oath to protect lives and erodes public confidence in the medical profession.
As I understand this situation, doctors are prohibited by the ethical guidelines of their profession (whatever their personal or religious views) from participating in executions. The refusal of these doctors to participate in an execution therefore did not involve a personal decision to impose their religious values on the people who rely on them for treatment, but a decision to act in a manner consistent with the ethical norms of their profession.
