On GZ Mosque, Obama and Ghettos: The Challenge of Difference in a Liberal Society

I have been engaging in email exchange with Eric Dondero, Publisher, LibertarianRepublican.net. Yesterday, I posted a blog showing our back and forth conversation (http://libertyandcapitalism.blogspot.com/2010/08/is-engagement-futile-progressive-and.html )

I’m not sure I’d call it a respectful conversation yet, but it is at least a conversation between people who fundamentally disagree with each other. I for one welcome engaging Eric and other libertarians directly.

I wanted to pick up on Eric’s last email to me:

From: Eric Dondero
To: Howard Schwartz
Sent: Sat, August 14, 2010 11:46:43 AM
Subject: Re: Howard, Liberty is all about Individual Rights
Yes, you may quote anything I said, but not as Anonymous. As Eric Dondero, Publisher, LibertarianRepublican.net

And most certainly do quote my comments about pro-life and marijuana.

I think we are dangerously close to Civil War in this country. Obama's actions yesterday with the GZ Mosque have royally pissed a lot of people off. This guy truly hates America. I mean there's no dancing around it any more for liberals. I'd have a lot more respect for your side if you just admitted that yes, our guy Obama, does really hate America, hates Americans, and wants to see this Nation destroyed.

Why is it so hard for your side to come clean on that? Just admit it for gosh darn's sake.

Again, the only "compromise" I see is through private property rights. You all set up a bunch of Kibutzes for your collectivist strategies, isolate yourselves, and leave the rest of us real Americans the hell alone.

Problem is liberals don't want to do that. They want to jam their communism down the throats of the rest of us.


My reply:

Eric,
There are several points I would like to respond to in this email. Each of them probably deserve their own blog.

Your comment:
Obama “truly hates America”….Why is it so hard for your side to come clean on that? Just admit it for gosh darn's sake.

My response:
I completely disagree. And the issue I think is whether someone you fundamentally disagree with necessary “hates America”. I fundamentally disagree with you but I think you love America. We just have very different visions of what America is. The fact that you have a very different vision than me doesn’t mean you hate America. Nor does it mean I hate America. The same is true of Obama. He loves America just like you do. Only he has a different vision of America than do you. My vision happens to be much closer to his.

In fact, I guess, a vision of freedom is ultimately about how we live in the same country with people who make us feel hate and who have fundamentally different views.

Your comment:
Obama's actions yesterday with the GZ Mosque have royally pissed a lot of people off.

My response:
I can understand why many people feel very vulnerable and emotional over a mosque close to ground zero. Many Americans still associate any form of Islam with the attack on America. But I believe there are various forms of Islam. There are militant forms of Islam that are trying to destroy America and that feed the ideology of Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, among other militant Islamic groups. But I also believe there are more moderate, ethically oriented forms of Islam as well. Religion definitely has the capacity to produce intolerance and hate. But that is true, not just of Islam, but of Christianity and Judaism too. Take the Christian crusades in the middle ages and the number of Jews and witches burned at the stake. Christianity had its violent side as well until the enlightenment in the seventeenth century when thinking about the nature of religion fundamentally changed. The idea of liberty, incidentally, was born in the same period and I would argue was closely tied in to a new understanding of religion that made it more tolerant. I would agree that Islam needs that kind of encounter with enlightenment, but I worry as much about fundamentalist Jews and Christians as about fundamentalist Muslims. In my view, there are only two forms of religion in the world, those who are fundamentalists and those who are not.

So back to the GZ Mosque. I can see why the Mosque being built near ground zero is painful to so many people. But I also believe that enlightened and reflective Muslims can be a part of America just like Christians and Jews. Yes, I am a Jew and have special sensitivity to minority people’s and religions because of the history of my own people.


Your comment:
Again, the only "compromise" I see is through private property rights. You all set up a bunch of Kibutzes for your collectivist strategies, isolate yourselves, and leave the rest of us real Americans the hell alone.

Problem is liberals don't want to do that. They want to jam their communism down the throats of the rest of us.

My reply:
Hmmmm….I hope the statement about Kibutzes is not intended to be anti-Semitic. I am in fact a Jew and the reference to putting us in kibbutzim (plural for Kibutz) can stir up anti-Semitic fears of ghettos in Europe. I’m going to assume you didn’t want me to feel you were saying that because accusations like that they don’t get us anywhere. I’ll assume you mean that you want to put liberals into their own political communities but not allow them to vote and therefore impose their views on libertarians.

But how is that a liberal society, Eric? Are you saying that all non-libertarians should not be able to vote? Isn’t that the opposite of liberty? Isn’t liberty by definition the running of government by the people and isn’t the structure of the legislative branches to enable diverse viewpoints to express themselves and ultimately come to resolution. Isn’t this the vision of the founders? How do you reconcile your with freedom of speech? I get it that you feel that your liberty is being compromised when liberals win the election and get to impose more taxes than you like, or want to support seat-belt rules, or limit guns, or impose non-smoking rules. You feel like the Communists or Socialists have taken over.

The real question, Eric, is how should a liberal society define where the boundary between individual rights and government. You assume liberals are embracing Communism because we want to enforce more taxes than you like, we want to support seat belt rules, and non-smoking rules, and have regulations on the oil companies and the financial markets. But there is a huge spectrum, in my view at least, between libertarian views and Communism. There can be many regulations in a society without it being Communist or Socialist. Indeed, I would argue that the notion that government should regulate society was at the heart of the liberal vision defined by John Locke and other early advocates of natural rights. What differentiates regulation from Communism or Socialism is the right of representation. The rules imposed by government grow out of a political process that allows Americans to weigh in through voting. It is through representation that the founders believed ensured that taxes and regulations would be by the people.

I am sometimes as frustrated as you by the outcome of the political process. When Republicans are in office I also feel they shove down our throats policies that I find offensive. When George Bush led us into war with Iraq, my money was spent on a war that I could not understand or defend. And when Republicans or Libertarians defend the lack of regulations that can lead to disastrous oil spills such as we recently saw in the Gulf, or lack of regulations that in my view generated the housing market bubble burst and the ultimate economic melt-down, I too feel sickened and angry.

But it seems inevitable that in a liberal society some group or groups always feel that the majority are imposing their views on the minority (within the limits set by the Constitution and the court). Is that not what representation is ultimately about. One side winning and another losing.

I don’t yet want to go as far as you and imagine putting Republicans or Libertarians into Kibbutzim or Ghettos. Ultimately, of course, if both sides feel passionate enough, the political process could simply break down. We could end up in Civil War (I hope not!). Perhaps we will have to divide America into Liberal and Libertarian States. I live in California so I’m safe I guess. But then it is going back to the days before the Constitution of 1787 when each state was its own autonomous political unit. And if we do that, then America as a country will not be able to act as a unit and will lose the dominance in the world and be more like Europe a bunch of countries that have an alliance. Perhaps that is the inevitable outcome, and perhaps the consequences will be good for the world. Otherwise, we have to learn to live together.

Religion and Freedom, Separation of Church and State and Natural Rights

One of the classic liberties protected by the constitution is religion. This protection appears in the Bill of Rights as the first amendment to the constitution. We have taken the separation of church and state for granted since the Bill of Rights, although there was recognition of the need to protect religion from government before this. But it is interesting to ask what particular status does religion have as a right that is protected? Is it a special kind of right?
Typically religion is lumped together with freedom of consciousness and freedom of the press, at least that is the way the constitution categorizes these rights. But behind this categorization that seems so self-evident to us now is an interesting theoretical puzzle and historical story. At issue is the question of whether religion should have any special status as a right over other rights? In other words, if the rights of life, liberty and property are taken as natural rights, what is the right of religion?

On the classic notion of natural rights of course, the basic right is the right to life and the other rights are derivative, such as the rights to property and liberty (right not to be enslaved), which are fences around and extensions to the right to life. But religion is not mentioned as a natural right in John Locke's Second Treatise on Government for example or even in his Letter on Toleration. Locke clearly thought that the state should not get involved in matters of religion. But he never said that this protection was a natural right. Instead, he presented it as a strong recommendation about how the social contract should be put together. The social contract should stay out of people's religious business because government should be focused on civil ends and religion is focused on salvation, which is not the business of civil government. Thus on one reading of Locke, religious freedom is strongly recommended as a foundation for a social contract, but it is not a natural right. It is a strongly recommended civil right, but civil rights derive from decisions at the social compact, not from nature.

But it is not immediately clear why religion should have this special status? After all, when the social compact is made, soccieties have to come to agreement on how their government is to be structured and put in place a process for governing that takes account of the people. Thus the social contract was understood as an agreement that represented the majority of the people's views about how to be governed, as long as the basic rights of life, liberty and property were not sacrificed. And it was understood that in agreeing to enter into society a person's freedom was going to be curtailed because the majority would agree to a set of rules which would limit the freedom of individuals.

It is here that the question about religion arises. On a theory of natural rights, why should freedom of religion have a special status over other types of freedoms that a society considers. In other words ,if at the moment of the social contract, a group considered all the different freedoms to embrace, why should religion have special consideration? There are a vast number of freedoms that a society does not allow, for laws are intended to limit behavior in a way that protects the rights of others. And so by definition there is not total freedom in a society, but only a specific set of freedoms that have been endorsed by a given society with its social laws. For example, there are rules about how fast we can drive or how loud we can be in public or about how to transfer property or what constitutes a contract and so on. Why should religion not be regulated by law of a society when so many other activities are regulated?

One answer is probably historical. The whole notion of natural rights and of the social contract arises in a century that had witnessed religious wars among groups of Christians. It is arguable that the theories of the state that emerge in the seventeenth century were at least in part an attempt to decide how Christians of various varieties could live together in one state, without the rulers imposing religion on the members of society. Thus, religion gets a special exemption for its ability to generate social conflicts. And this is due arguably to the fact that religion is a symbolic system of ultimate meanings. Because people believe religious commitments are about ultimate matters, they are willing to go to war to protect those commitments. On this reading, then, religion is a special kind of protection because of its nature as an ultimate system of meaning that can rip a society apart.

There is a second answer that is coupled with the first. Those who wanted to separate Church and State conceived of religion in Proestestant terms. If one reads Locke's definition of religion, for example, religion tends to be a set of beliefs about salvation. Now this notion that religion is beliefs (a view of religion that still popular in the States for example) rests on a Protestant conception of religion. For what Luther and subsequent Christians did is argue that religion was an inward matter, not a matter of practice or outward works. Their aim in making those arguments was against the Roman Catholic Church. But in shifting the definition of Christianity to inner life, and not works or practice, they shifted the definition of religion. It is this definition of religion that is guiding the assumptions of Locke when he writes about religious toleration. Religion tends to be inward and not external. Because it is internal, Locke can more easily argue that it is a matter between a person and God and not a civil matter. The same assumption is evident in the first amendment. Separation of church and State is categorized with freedom of press and ability to express diverse views.

But had religion been thought about differently, and many scholars of religion for example see religion as not just a set of beliefs, but a whole social system with ways of life and pratices, it becomes much harder to argue that religion should be separated from government. For if religion is a set of practices, and not just beliefs, then the question of how my religious practice, as an act in the world, can affect your freedom becomes much more profound. As examples consider for example the following: my religion tells me to slaughter goats in my home, but society may think this is a health hazard. Or my religion tells me to take drugs that society has banned as harmful to society. In other words, if religion was thought to be a set of practices aimed towards salvation, the potential conflict between my religious practice and the rules that the majority wanted to implement is much more of a potential issue. The debate about whether Darwin should be taught in public schools or a mandatory part of education is an example where specific religious beliefs come in conflict with a more general social practice. Can jews be fired for not working on Saturday when the rest of the business works on Saturday?

I am not arguing that the separation of Church and State should be abandonned. I derive from a people who have been persecuted from religious persecution. But I am suggesting that the issue is more complex than most people think. For it is always possible that some religion has religious beliefs and practices that are or come into conflict with other laws and rights that others want to protect.

For example, one can coneive a religion that arises that has a law that says one much drive at 80 mph. But society in general has set the speed limit at under 65 mph for safety reasons. Does religious practice always get to override the general rules implemented by the majority. I would argue that it does not, for there are always new forms of religion that can emerge and contest the norms.

While it seems simple to protect the diversity of religious belief, it is much more complicated to protect the diversity of religious practice. Any practice can always come in conflict with the established norms and not every practice of everyone can be protected, for that would mean no laws, as the theorists of liberty understood. We need therefore at least two different theories of the separation of church and state. The first that treats religion as belief, has no real issues. We shouldn't be telling people what to belief-that's easy. But the question of whether we allow any religious practice is a different matter. I'm not arguing that we should abandon the separation of church and state in this sense, only that it presents a different problem. And it presents the problem of majorities and minorities. Can majorities legislate against minorities? In what situations should majority decisions be accepted and in what conditions should majority deicsions be limited and examined. This is another whole topic that goes to the core of the debate over what the Constitution was trying to see. One can argue that religious practice is one area where society should have a higher standard than "majority rules" to override the minority. But whether that means that "minority rights" always trump the majority is another tricky question.