Is It Time To Stick A Fork In It?
Classical liberalism hasn't failed. We have failed classical liberalism.
Until better explanations filter down to people like us, here is my attempt to explain why Christian nationalism is attracting important admirers.
If you are like me and hate change, you are living in daily disappointment. But one nice thing about change is that you get to see old ideas dressed up in new clothes, putting on airs and cutting a dash - acting as if they have never really been given a thorough hearing because this time, under the proper conditions, these new old ideas will prove to be more than a passing fad. We change-haters are having to live through yet another of one of those cultural upheavals which make change not only inevitable, but nauseatingly messy while culture lurches toward yet another temporary period of quasi-stability.
Common Goodism
None of us can ignore pathological changes to our society: addiction, suicides, dysfunctional families, corrupt institutions. Always looking to fix everything, the political Left in America has been trying for years to create a robust state role in promoting the common good. The Right wants to catch up. “What is the common good?” you ask. How vulgar of you to put your finger on the most delicately draped part of the Old Idea In New Clothes.
But we might as well go ahead and look at what’s really at issue with this innocent-sounding little phrase. Outside of politics, people have been using religion and philosophy to describe the common good for centuries. But when your government identifies a particular moral system that orders all common goods by law, that is “Common Goodism”.
In contrast, America’s original ordering of common goods was noted for its refusal to identify a specific moral system as a basis for law - even though that law was born out of a long tradition of moral beliefs. The Bill of Rights and the Constitution were designed to account primarily for the fact that power tends toward oppression. American laws were made to act as fences to keep the state from making us say things we don’t believe. The framers of our Constitution expected this would create freedom for people to pursue duties to religion, family, neighbors, and the state with a free conscience. But the framers did not legally prescribe a moral system that would police the public square by excluding heretical views or by explaining why certain duties to the law are morally right or wrong. They left all that to institutions speaking into the public square: churches, universities, printed media, public addresses and debates.
What is mainly at stake in our political discussion of Common Goodism is our American public square. The public square is that place where, under the classical liberalism set forth in our American Bill of Rights, we are all able to use persuasion to promote what is good.
Classical Liberalism Is Conservative!
“Common Goodism” rejects that classically liberal conception of the public square as the free marketplace of ideas and replaces it with a governmental declaration of a specific moral standard for what is good for the people. And that specific, declared moral standard for the common good can then be used to censor things that work against that common good. The term “Post-liberal” describes a rejection of a neutrally policed public square in favor of state power to promote a particular religion or a particular moral standard. Post-liberals think the state has a teaching role in making and enforcing laws. Classical liberals might agree that laws teach, but they think that laws naturally teach what a culture sees is the common good, not necessarily what a particular government states is the common good.
So to recap: Classical liberals prefer to do teaching through persuasion in the public square so that laws, definitions, and administration of regulations reflect what the people believe is a moral standard. Post-liberals think that morality is more stable when there is a declared moral standard that dictates laws, definitions, and administrations of regulations.
I Thought America Was Founded By Freedom Lovers…..
Now, it is true that the first American colonists in Plymouth and their descendants in the late 17th century prior to the founding of our Constitutional order were not classical liberals at all. Like post-liberals, they tied all their laws and administration of their laws to a moral framework. Their moral framework was constructed on the Puritan understanding of the Biblical church. Their colonial government operated on the assumption that the Puritan church should spiritually guide the state in its laws and governance. They had laws against breaking the Sabbath. Public office was open only to members in good standing with the Puritan church. The Puritan settlers had no intention of going back to a situation where the Roman Catholic Church or the Church of England could tell them what church they had to go to.
A great many changes had to happen for Christians descended from the Puritans to decide that freedom of conscience was necessary for public virtue. Classical liberalism developed partly as a recognition of the “common good” of freedom of conscience which the 18th century founding fathers saw as natural to virtue. That common good, among many others like life and property rights was baked into our Constitution to bring forth an America which left further articulation of the common good to people and institutions outside of government.
The ”Failure” of Classical Liberalism
If you go to the polls this fall, after having skipped what you thought were irrelevant primaries, you might notice that the two parties engaged in a War to the Death with each other are both in violent agreement about something very important.
They both agree that because The End Is Nigh, it is now possible, nay required, that we adjust our appreciation of that public square protected by the Bill of Rights. It might once have been a nice thing for our Constitution to make a safe space in the public square for just about any and all comers so that no one religion or philosophy got to exclude or silence any other. But now that America is about to be destroyed, a particular religion or a progressive philosophy needs to take over the job of policing the public square. That way our enemies have fewer opportunities to destroy America. It’s for the common good that we will prevent people from speaking in public ways promoting Critical Race Theory, criticizing the CDC, or questioning elections. It’s for the common good that the state should be able to compel social media companies to host content they would rather censor. It’s for the common good that the state should compel a private Jewish school to host an LGBTQ club. Notice that both parties want to make the other side shut up or say something they don’t believe. Both parties have abandoned the belief that moral or logical arguments are of any use in the public square. The answer to the problem of crazy or evil is power, not persuasion.
I think it’s safe to say that while many progressives are religious, their devotion to academic data and “science” drives their self-perception that their perspective about how to promote the common good is objective, and thus more authoritative, than any religious perspective could be. The progressive understanding of the “common good” has usually been tied to a very materialistic understanding of what causes oppression, for example redistribute wealth and oppression will vanish. And while that was the case, it was easier (but still foolish) for those on the right to ignore the problems resulting from asking the government to educate our kids in a “neutral” moral environment. The education of children is never neutral.
Admittedly, progressivism has sometimes acted in appealing ways to address social ills such as red-lining, child labor, or the plight of the mentally ill. But lately, progressivism has taken an emphatic interest in the more abstract feelings of oppression people might get from being judged, or more terrifyingly “unheard.” “Silencing”, in the progressive understanding of things, doesn’t refer to being censored on social media. It refers to not being able to censor others who have opinions which you feel are harmful to your ability to remain unjudged – something that is so blatantly post-liberal it’s positively medieval.
The Left’s Common Good
It's the progressive “common goodism” that led judges in the 20th century to approach our laws based on the idea that our Constitution needs to be a “living Constitution”. Why “living”? Because progressivism sees humans evolving into something that humans decide for themselves. If the Constitution doesn’t live, if it is based on something natural and unchanging about the way human beings are made, then the evolving won’t be autonomous or free of all constraints. The common goodism which guides law-making and interpretation for progressivism is characterized by these two priorities:
The pursuit and prioritization of autonomous freedom of the self.
The reduction of morality to questions of consent.
Progressive laws must transcend restrictive ideas rooted in a “natural law” understanding about the fundamental nature of human beings. All that “natural law” stuff reeks of tradition and authority. Remember that word “natural”. I’m going to come back to it from another direction.
Let’s leave the progressives to their evolutionary treadmill and turn our attention to the “common goodism” on the right. “Oh, I’m sure it must be a much better sort of common goodism,” you might say, “since it is coming from a direction opposite to the one currently giving us the freedom to turn ourselves into newts whilst requiring everyone to affirm our truth.” Now some of you might think that because of my occasional defense of the most hated man on the internet (David French) that I’m going to pull some kind of legal bee out of a bonnet and explain that both sides are equally bad, bad, bad, because they both undermine the classical liberalism of our Constitution. No, I’m not going to do that. That would be getting way ahead of myself. First, I have to convince you that all this matters.
The Line Forming on the Right
To do that I’m going to list a bunch of names which are grouping around the “common goodism” on the right. There are many differing flavors and toxicity levels of the right’s common goodism. Under certain circumstances, I could even see myself acquiescing to a common good form of government. But they would have to be some very extreme circumstances, not the kind of hysterical, “the sky has already fallen”, paranoia-mongering circumstances being manipulated to wrangle eyeballs, donors, and platforming for partisan or monetary power.
Here’s a sampling, from loony, to ill-considered, to thoughtful: Marjorie Taylor Green, Paul Gosar, Mike Lindell, Sydney Powell, Michael Flynn, Matt Gaetz, Steve Bannon, Sandy Rios, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, CPAC, Tucker Carlson, JD Vance, Ted Cruz, The Federalist (not to be confused with the highly effective Federalist Society which has done a yeoman’s job of cultivating originalist judges), The Heritage Foundation, John Eastman at the Claremont Institute (of the infamous memo sanctioning the January 6 shenanigans), Senator Josh Hawley, Patrick Daneen, Sohrab Ahmari, Adrian Vermeule, Doug Wilson, First Things, Yorum Hazony, Ross Douthat, The Davenant Institute.
In my opinion, many of the names at the beginning of this list are merely right-wing hangers-on and political opportunists who find it convenient to attach themselves to the common good narratives. I don’t think they are actually aware of the consequences of what they are doing to our laws, the history of our laws, or even the state of the question. These people are merely useful foot soldiers in service to a political fight, which, if waged as a Fight, is sure to advance their careers/popularity among their tribe. Certainly, a few of them think that their manipulative schemes in the Fight will return America to the land of freedom God meant it to be. But wiser people with integrity are also considering common goodism. Greg Forster has an interesting perspective here on Al Mohler’s flirtation with illiberal theories in the culture war.
Over and against all those thoughtless or thoughtful left or right wing “common gooders” or “post-liberals”, are more classical liberals and institutions who aim to preserve the classical liberalism enshrined in our Bill of Rights ensuring access to a public square. Here’s a short list: David French, Ezra Klein, Jonathan Rauch, Paul D Miller, Ben Sasse, the Dispatch, Bari Weiss, Charlie Cooke, Yuval Levin, Andrew Sullivan, the American Enterprise Institute. Many of these people know America is going to hell in a hand basket but they figure keeping the public square open to all comers has a good chance of eventually weeding out the crazies because the truth loves to be tested. (Some of these people, including the David French, unwisely downplay the fatal disappearance of any unifying moral understanding of the language we all use to speak in the public square.) The more radical, frothing at the mouth post-lib, right-wing populists will try to paint all these people as RINOs, or establishment republicans. But that kind of name-calling is mostly sound and fury. It certainly signifies less than it used to.
So, now we know how the progressives are getting their common goodism. They have their “living Constitution” which means they get to disconnect laws from truth about a nation’s history or human nature so that laws can fit evolving society like rainbow-glitter spandex.
The Right’s Path to Common Goodism: Christian Nationalism
How do common good “conservatives” plan to accomplish their vision of the common good? They are going back to the Past Closet to get out some traditional robes of nationalism, which in the case of America, will be Christian nationalism. (If you’ve heard of “integralism” you can think of Christian nationalism as a more modest form of Catholic integralism which is far more global of course.)
Now everybody who is anti-woke these days needs allies, so “Christian” is being made to fit a wide variety of things by the less thoughtful post-libs/common gooders/integralists. Please stop crossing your eyes like that. It’s not attractive and it’s awfully naïve of you to think things wouldn’t be this confusing. Some of these generic ‘Christian’ folks, are twisting themselves into pretzels to give solace to Putin in his invasion of Ukraine all because he is 1) supposedly ‘anti-woke’, 2) has strongly linked the Russian state to the Russian Orthodox Church, and 3) is religiously pro-Russia. This ambiguously-defined Christian nationalism envisions a happier, gentler Christendom that isn’t so concerned with anything as vulgar as a national Sabbath or world domination by the Roman Catholic Church. They are imagining a stripped-down “Judeo-Christian” kind of moral system, one that focuses merely on practical things like murder, borders, stealing, and sexuality that scares horses. Yet this is the kind of moral “system” that has largely been most powerful in our public square for the last century. And here we are, arguing about whether its ok to torture prisoners, or sanction gay marriage.
(A word about this less thoughtful kind of Christian Nationalism. Much of this exists without the pro-Russia silliness, or the fantasy of a successful revolution. Even though it isn’t well-thought out in terms of how it could possibly exist for more than 15 minutes without unraveling into various religious factions, it still calls out to where most of us wish we were. We know we are living in a post-Christian society. We are the ones seeing what it’s like to have loved ones die from addiction and loneliness. We are the ones who have to pick up the pieces when children are told their meaning lies in their constructed sexuality. We don’t necessarily have to outlaw gay bars or all discussion of CRT. We just want to establish some important moral speed bumps to protect the innocent and strengthen families. Since we have failed so miserably in the public square is it any wonder that we want to interpret law and control private institutions with a state-supported moral authority to teach the nation -gently, of course- reasonable bits of religion?)
Of course, the more thoughtful Christian nationalists recognize that having an ambiguous Judeo-Christian natural-law ‘instinct’ about law won’t solve much. The Doug Wilsonites and some folks at Mere Orthodoxy or the Davenant Institute will look at you long and hard and tell you that it’s really futile to separate out the first table of the decalogue and only use the second, more practical table for laws governing a mixed society of Christians and non-Christians. Mr. Wilson will be quite smug about this and imply that it’s all quite easy, really, to implement the entire 10 commandments, as long as you have manly men in charge. Folks at the Davenant Institute and Mere Orthodoxy include a wide variety of wise people gnawing at the problem with very different solutions so it’s hazardous to paint them all with a broad brush. But most of them are quick to admit that while the entire decalogue must ground natural law, getting people to recognize natural law is a tricky business. They talk a lot about the “pedagogical nature of the law” and imply that incrementally, gradually, Christians can start interpreting American laws with more notice of God’s 10 commandments than originalist interpretations and attention to precedent. They have a very ground-up approach to taking the nation for Christ. One of them, Timon Cline, has considerately distilled his views on Protestant Christian integralism into three tenants which I’ve lifted from a Davenant Hall lecture titled “A Protestant Christendom”:
The rejection of the modern separation of politics from a consideration of the purpose or ‘telos’ of human life. Political rule *must* order man to his final end (for you WCF fans, “man’s chief end”).
Because man has both a spiritual and a temporal nature with concomitant ends, there are two powers ruling over him that correspond to these natures – the temporal and spiritual power. Social order needs to reflect that anthropology.
Since man’s temporal end is subordinate to his eternal end and good, the temporal power (the civil magistrate) must submit to the spiritual power (the church). (But, submission of the temporal to the spiritual can take many forms. In other words, they aren’t going to be out there with big stone tablets and pitchforks at presidential elections trying to make the vice-president substitute his own slate of hand-picked Christian nationalist delegates for the current slate of state electors. Instead, they are going to vote, run for office, and if appointed to a bench will interpret law in accordance with the Constitution in its context: as a document forged by a people still legally sympathetic with the second table of the Mosaic law; and produced out of a culture still morally influenced by a preceding culture in stated submission to both tables of the Mosaic law. Not clear on the details there, but stuff like the Bostock opinion would be unimaginable, while national laws enforcing a Sabbath are remotely possible or prudent.)
In his lecture Timon Cline quoted Thomas Pink, a professor of philosophy at Kings College who Cline says is the best proponent of integralism: “Pink argues that all states are inescapably integralist regimes.”
Mr. Cline bolsters his argument by pointing to the fact that right now, our contemporary American society operates as if it was integralated (yes I know that’s not a word) with progressive dogma about what sort of blasphemy must by policed by the state.
Well, obviously Mr. Cline is talking about the way power is working itself out by means of intimidation and pressure to conform, not necessarily codified law. Right now, laws protecting free speech in the public square have never been so robust. But regardless, I take his point. There is a religious integralism at work in our society which is trying to prevent blasphemous views from upsetting peace and public order as ordered by progressive values. It was Senator Josh Hawley who pointed out (in the wake of Judge Gorsuch’s interpretation of federal law justifying the interpretation of sex as “sexual identity” in the notorious Bostock opinion), "If we've been fighting for originalism and textualism and this is the result of that, then I have to say it turns out we haven't been fighting for very much".
Why I Am Such a Kill Joy
So why aren’t I jumping on the Protestant integralist bandwagon even when it’s so persuasively argued by nice, thoughtful, non-reactionary, non-populist types at the Davenant Institute? Maybe it’s because I’m Baptist. But that’s not a very fashionable defense. And we are concerned here with fashionable ideas all dressed up with no clear place to go as of yet.
I think it’s because I am still not convinced that it is a good thing for the church if we oblige the civil magistrate to submit to the church. Now, I know that Davenant types won’t be so gauche as to advocate trashing our system of laws, checks and balances, as well as our elections just because they have been imperfectly administered and are being attacked by the political equivalent of Morgoth. But I do think that they imagine that the best sort of world possible here on earth prior to the second coming of Christ is one in which the church would guide the state and its laws so well that progressive (or heretical) fantasies would shock and break against the nation’s sure ecclesiastical foundations. (This would best be an established church - all imagined in terms of Richard Hooker, little boys singing anthems at King’s College, and verses from Rudyard Kipling. I have to admit, that sort of world is fetching.)
I’ve heard both Timon Cline and Doug Wilson opine on the traditional roots of Christian nationalism by invoking the Puritans in 17th century New England, as if, but for the loss of a charter from the King, and the tragedy of immigration, the church could have maintained its influence and guided the state past the rocks of secularity. But they both admit that the church would have had to rigorously police its own boundaries to ensure that magistrates and citizens would toe the line on doctrine and morality. At any rate, I expect that even the most stridently consistent Christian Nationalists that aren’t absolute fruitcakes, would agree that in our time, all of that natural 10 commandment-informed law would have to be gently and indulgently applied to all who might like to participate in the Christian nation. Hopefully more gently than our American Puritan fathers whose indulgence encouraged Baptists to attend church (just not their church) excommunicated people who wanted to leave the Puritan church, and instituted fines, imprisonment, and banishment if those same people didn’t manage to get restored to church membership within 6 months. You see, power demands protection in order to remain powerful.
Timon Cline quotes Richard Baxter: “A purely civil or secular society is like a corpse”. And to that I would like to refer back to Thomas Pink’s observation that “all states are inescapably integralist regimes.” There is no purely civil or secular society. That “secular” or religious public square will reflect the moral values of the people inhabiting that public square. Without continual repentance and faith, all forms of government become hopelessly corrupt. That includes church governments.
In the end, every visible church, no matter how well or wisely established, will corrupt itself in pursuit of the power to police its boundaries in such a way as to keep temporal power subservient. That doesn’t mean that nations should never establish churches or pass Sabbath laws (if you believe in that sort of thing). It just means that all that has just as much potential for corruption as our classically liberal public square.
Where We Went Wrong
The significant mistake Christians have made with the opportunities given us by classical liberalism lies in the assumption that that the marketplace of ideas will itself produce the conditions favorable to truth. Like progressives did years ago, Christians are waking up to the realization that common sense isn’t common. They are seeing that a free marketplace of ideas is not sufficient to draw man toward love of God or neighbor. A good number of Christians, traditionally religious people, and even socially conservative agnostics and atheists will want to imitate progressives by using the state to enforce a moral standard.
This is the old idea in new clothes which haunted our American founders. If the stability of a nation depends on the church using the state to enforce a moral system of beliefs, then the church itself is in mortal danger. Regardless, I think that all serious Christians know that if their participation in the public square is only rhetorical or legal - if it is not oriented toward the dirty, physical work of love - we will lose the only kind of power that is truly transformative.
We need this reality check. Cultivating a moral classically liberal public square takes constant work. It requires a great deal of patience as parents train students who can then contribute to rigorous religious academic universities. A small group of pastors, writers, and businessmen need capital and wisdom to start a magazine that reports on the news and culture from a Christian perspective. Business owners who want to protect their communities from post-liberal fairness ordinances have to run for city or county office and spend dull hours talking to voters about zoning and parks. Parents disgusted by corrupt teachers’ unions have to run for school boards. Conservative think tanks argue about what might work to monetize school choice so that chaotic government-run schools are an irrelevant choice for the poor. Pastors again and again point congregations back to the primacy of the Word of God. They might also have to go back to school to get degrees which enable them to push back against new forms of error. Church members who have lost family members to overdoses start up outreach ministries to homeless shelters. Judges and legal scholars work for 40 years forming an institution specifically for the purpose of grooming future judges with a commitment to originalist interpretations of the law.
And that exceptional American, classically liberal public square, suffering from grievous assaults and crippling compromise, still protects our right to express our beliefs and persuade men, giving us a way to redress growing numbers of wrongs, and blessing us with more freedom of conscience than any other system of government on this earth.