Mirror of Justice

Writer David Hart has this review of Damon Linker's "The Theocons:  Secular America Under Siege," in The New Criterion.  A subscription is required for the full review, but here are some excerpts (sorry for the colored font):

I should first confess that I cannot approach this book with perfect detachment. I am personally acquainted not only with its author, Damon Linker, but with Richard John Neuhaus and the rest of the so-called “theocons,” and I have cause to feel good will towards all parties involved. . . .

But, even if I find detachment impossible, I can still profess ideological disinterest. I am certainly not attracted to the drearily platitudinous liberal secularism that Linker has now apparently adopted as his political “philosophy,” but neither am I an adherent of the “theoconservatism” that Linker attributes—with a variable degree of accuracy—to Neuhaus and his circle (unless mere hostility to the “culture of death” is enough to earn one membership).  So I think I am being fairly impartial when I say that The Theocons is a poor book—on any number of counts. It is frequently badly reasoned; it is marked by a surprising degree of historical ignorance; it is polluted by a personal animosity towards Neuhaus that—while denied by Linker—is both obvious and unrelenting; and it is extremely boring. . . .

According to Linker, theoconservatism is the bastard offspring of the youthful radicalism of Neuhaus and his chief co- conspirator David Novak, transposed into a conservative key, but no less apocalyptic, revolutionary, and fanatical for all that. Its central tenet is that the moral and philosophical roots of the American political order lie not in secular reason, but in Christian theological tradition, which alone can provide an ethical and metaphysical rationale for our liberties, laws, and virtues.  The theoconservative reading of the constitution, moreover, denies that the non-establishment clause was ever intended as a prohibition of participation by religious bodies in political or civil life, or as a call to purge religious expression from the “public square.”

. . .  Now they are poised, perhaps, on the very verge of total triumph, and—if Linker is to be believed—the possible consequences are terrifying to contemplate: our political system in thrall to Catholicism’s moral absolutism, science driven from our schools, economic and technological decline as we sink into a new epoch of credulous barbarism, isolation from the international community, and (naturally) a rise in anti-Jewish prejudice.

All of this, of course, is horrendous twaddle, and I do not know whether Linker actually believes any of it. . . .

. . .  If I follow Linker’s story—stripped, that is, of its bombast—it goes rather like this: There is a group of articulate and influential thinkers in America who believe firmly in liberal democracy and free markets and things of that sort, but who also believe that the principles underlying modern democratic order are derived from a long history of European Christian thought regarding human authority. They are, moreover, convinced that the notion of the inherent dignity and worth of every human being is grounded in something older than liberal tradition. They also think that an impermeable “wall of separation” between public policy and private faith is an extra-constitutional and misguided principle. They believe that the lives of the unborn ought to be protected in law, and that the Supreme Court’s decisions pronouncing abortion a constitutional right are a collection of willful jurisprudential fictions. They regard the traditional family as a desirable institution, believe marriage to be the union of a man and a woman, and are somewhat anxious concerning the drift of modern culture towards an ever greater coarseness and ever more pronounced indifference to innocent life.

Now, whether one agrees or not, none of these convictions is, by any sane measure, “extreme”; they all fall well within one of the broad main currents of American political and social thought. Nor are any of the historical claims involved particularly fantastic (though Linker knows too little of the history of ideas to see this). Nor, surely, is it any secret that persons holding such views have supported George Bush in both of his presidential campaigns, and that some of them continue to offer him advice.  Nor, as far as I can tell, has anyone among the “theocons” made any attempt to keep it a secret. If these men are in fact “radicals,” they are far and away the most unadventurous radicals ever to have appeared on our political horizon. . .

When Linker actually describes the methods employed by the theocon conspiracy, it turns out that they consist principally in encouraging Christians to vote for conservative politicians who will use legislation, referenda, constitutional amendments, and court appointments to frustrate the secularist agenda. Moreover, though Linker speaks of the decade 1984–1994 as the period of the theocons’ “stealth campaign” to seize power, he can only report that they advanced their cause in those years by founding magazines and think tanks, seeking funding for both, associating with conservative forces within the Catholic Church, and forging ties between conservative Catholics and conservative Evangelicals.

This is all very cunning, I expect, but I believe the customary term for such methods is “democratic politics” (though I am prepared to be corrected on this). . . .