| 摘要 | Two things surprise me about the Democratic Left’s public response to their bitter election disappointment–and the shattering of their illusions. The first is how little they know about Christians and Christian faith; the second is the ugly stereotypes that govern their descriptions of Christians.
At the same time, two things please me. First, they are repeating the same mistakes they made before the election, virtually guaranteeing themselves still more shattered illusions; second, they are verifying that voters were not mistaken about the Left’s distorted moral vision, a vision they try to force on us. The redoubtable Michael Kinsley, for instance, has declared his own moral superiority over religious people in a tone of faux self-abasement.
In a column, he wrote, “People on my side of the divide want to live in a society where women are free to choose abortion and where gay relationships have full civil equality with straight ones.” Full civil equality: Now there’s a weasel expression if I ever heard one. Marriages? Civil unions? Which?
Look, he further explains, my values “don’t involve any direct imposition on you. We don’t want to force you to have an abortion or to marry someone of the same gender, whereas you do want to close out these possibilities for us. Which is more arrogant?” Well, it would be a lot less arrogant if he did not put words in our mouths. After all, there are a lot of us with a wide variety of religious and moral views, even on the two questions Kinsley highlights. So let us suppose instead that his side would not be so extreme about abortion–would admit openly that what is killed in an abortion is an individual human being with an individual genetic code different from that of its mother. And that this unique and irreplaceable individual, if given ordinary care, would develop into a full-term human being. It would be a start.
Maybe, too, his side will back off from its present barbaric extremes, such as sucking out the brains of a fully formed baby just at the moment it begins to emerge from the womb. Maybe they will not be so extreme as to prohibit parents from knowing and consenting when their teenage daughter is to undergo an abortion (as they would, say, for an appendectomy or removal of tonsils). Maybe they would even permit abortions only up to the sixth month, and forbid them thereafter as every civilized state in Europe does (since liberals claim to admire European standards so). Maybe they would go so radically far as to require that the choice of abortion be fully informed, carefully deliberated upon, and consented to with full reflection — perhaps after a mandatory review of basic information and a specified brief period for looking into alternatives.
With each one of these steps back from extremism, reliable polling data show that the narrow circle of extreme pro-abortionists would attract more moderate citizens and begin to widen, and then widen some more, until it equaled, or even began to surpass, the number of voters on my side of the current debate. In other words, moderation of abortion extremism might turn the red tide blue. For myself, I would still argue that slavery is slavery, even if only a minority are sold into it, and that abortion is still killing a human being without that person’s consent. But my side of the argument would not, in a democratic society, have the numbers on its side at this time.
So, if Kinsley truly had the voice of reason, and moderated his views accordingly, he could easily persuade most voters to his side. But his views, as stated and without qualification, are simply too extremist to do that.
As for pretending innocently to demand marriage for gays without imposing anything on anybody else, surely even Michael Kinsley knows better. That could be done now only by changing the definition of marriage for everybody. For if marriage is no more than a social contract between any two individuals, it is no longer marriage in the sense in which the state has any interest in it. Why should the state involve itself in the personal choices of individuals, particularly in regard to something so intimate as sexual union? There are only two reasons: It recognizes the traditional religious meaning of marriage specifying that marriage includes the presence of God and His blessings on the covenant between man and wife (which lifts marriage into a realm beyond the total control of the state, and which the state by tradition and for its own reasons respects), and the procreative promise of such permanent covenants for the birthing and nourishing of future generations.
Personally, I think it morally preferable for gays as well as married straights to have permanent, exclusive relationships with each other. Unions of these two essentially different kinds have two essentially different ontological statuses, and ought to have two different legal statuses, and certainly two different names. If we could trust the courts, we might even want to call permanent, exclusive relations between two, and only two, partners of the same sex “civil unions.” But the courts do not give us much reason for confidence that we can leave such matters in their hands. And these matters, in any case, properly belong to the consent of all the governed. To reach that consent, we will need to reason together, as we have at long last begun doing, with the advantage now moving (from my point of view) in the direction of the strongest arguments.
Another Kinsley point is equally offensive. “We on my side . . . don’t . . . believe that our values are direct orders from God. We don’t claim they are immutable and beyond argument. We are, if anything, crippled by reason and open-mindedness, by a desire to persuade rather than insist.” But why, then, do liberals evade open, democratic public argument, and seek the easy way out through the courts and edicts from above? Where is your trust in your vaunted powers of persuasion and irrestistible reasoning? Where?
It is simply not the case that believing Jews and Christians are bereft of reason; their reason remains every bit as intact as Michael Kinsley’s, and without his self-contradictions. In a world without God, reason alone means that the personal preferences of the thugs rule wherever the writ of their power runs.
The Democratic Left, especially in its non-believing wing, simply does not understand that for believers, reason itself is the Divine Light within each human being, and faith nourishes in us trust in that reason, and also in human experience, down many long centuries of reflection and careful argument. Not many ethical formulations have been “immutable” in the way they have been understood by people trying to be faithful to the Light given them by God. Jews and Christians have, in fact, made great progress in understanding their moral obligations, in many different fields of thought–in religious liberty, for instance.
In fact, it was the “theocratic” Baptists of what is today Jerry Falwell country who insisted on the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, the amendment that extended religious liberty to every other conscience–even that of “Mahometans,” Jews, atheists, and others.
Really, fire-breathing members of the Democratic Left might be wise to cool down, and begin to meet their fellow citizens, to learn something about them. Maybe even meet them halfway. Come on, Michael, climb down from your thinly disguised elitism and arrogance, and give those on “the other side” a little respect. Just a little, please?
Michael Novak holds the Jewett Chair in Philosophy, Religion, and Public Policy at AEI. |
