There has been a lot of thoughtful commentary on the HHS Mandate the last couple of weeks. Ross Douthat and Yuval Levin argue that Obama levels the ‘little platoons’ of civil society in favor of expanding the power of the state. Here is Levin:
“In this arena, as in a great many others, the administration is clearly determined to see civil society as merely an extension of the state, and to clear out civil society—clearing out the mediating layers between the individual and the state—when it seems to stand in the way of achieving the president’s agenda. The idea is to leave as few non-individual players as possible in the private sphere, and to turn those few that are left into agents of the government.”
Our Tea Party and Libertarian friends will see this as further evidence of Big Gov’t getting bigger, and they’re right, but it important to note the President thinks of himself as the true champion of individualism. The mandate is in the service of freeing the individual from her biological bonds. The proper distinction here is not individual v. state, but the state v. intermediary institutions.
David Brooks says the plurality of the little platoons is being replaced by the uniformity of technocratic administration, a topic dear to our Ivan the K.
On a different note, Carson Holloway says the HHS mandate reveals the logic of liberalism as a creeping and creepy secularism: “…for an older generation of liberals religion had to be kept private in the sense that it could not try to control the government for its own distinctively religious purposes. A more ambitious set of liberals then came to claim that religion had to be private in the sense that religious believers should not bring their moral convictions to the political and legislative process. Now, much more ambitious liberals hold that religion must be private in the extreme sense that it must not be allowed to engage, in its own way, with the society at large. Religious institutions may enter into and interact with society, but only if they leave their religiosity behind in doing so.”
Jefferson’s famous “Wall of Separation between Church and State” has been used to prevent the influence of religious belief on public policy. Now that wall is being further expanded to separate belief from action. Feeding the hungry, healing the sick, and instructing the ignorant were once considered Works of Mercy and thus matters for the private sphere. In the latest stage of liberalism, such actions must conform to secular standards of morality as dictated by the state. The next step in the privatization of religion is to make it a matter of the mind and nothing more. And in this particular case that means keeping Catholics in the closet.
February 16th, 2012 | 10:45 pm
Essentially we’re talking about the ‘immanentization’ of existence and therein the demonic reveals itself in all it’s depravity.
February 17th, 2012 | 8:23 am
pointed out by Stephen Carter in these pages some years ago, liberalism has a serious religion problem. (Liberalism in the broader, enlightenment sense. Politically, the broader definition takes in most conservatives as well.) It boils down to each are in a battle in assigning meaning to the human elements and interactions of the world.
Liberalism is intolerant of other systems of meaning because it sees them as incompatible with its sense of mission. Humility and restraint are not in its bag of virtues.
But clearing the landscape of competitors also presents a grave fault contrary to liberalism’s own vision. With the removal or denaturing of the institutions between itself and the citizen, the individual is left naked before the power of the state.
As most of us have seen or experienced, our present, narrower version of liberalism sees no contradiction in taking away liberty in the name of liberty. Conservatives as well as others are excluded from committees and representative assemblies because they are not “democratic” enough or are insufficiently committed to diversity.
In an atmosphere where the “personal is political”, the privacy in one’s own home will increasingly will become a shrinking sphere of personal freedom.
February 17th, 2012 | 11:42 am
In France, the Conseil d’État fully adopted this limited view of “freedom of conscience,” in l’affaire du foulard (the Headscarf Case), when it said of the ban on the hijab in schools that “pupils’ freedom of conscience, which is an internal freedom, in no way gives them ‘the right to express and manifest their religious beliefs’ in educational institutions, for that involves external acts which improperly introduce religion into the public domain of the school.” In other words, “Think what you like, but do what you’re told”
February 17th, 2012 | 12:37 pm
Jason, thanks for this, and especially the Carson Holloway link. Peter’s extra-secularized interlocutors at BIG THINK could benefit from reading someone like Holloway who swings a bit harder and who presents how things look from the other side a bit more vividly.
February 17th, 2012 | 7:02 pm
I agree with Carl–the Carson Holloway link is hard hitting, and it would be an informative and useful piece for Peter’s “fellow” big thinkers to consider. Thanks for posting this article Jason.
And thanks for your instructive comments that continuing privatization of religious belief will ultimately make religion a matter of mere mind (if even that). Good point.
Regarding Douthat and Levin–let me h/t John:
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/postmodernconservative/2012/01/30/douthat-and-levin-on-religious-liberty-and-community/
Brilliant minds think alike!
February 17th, 2012 | 9:44 pm
John, sorry for the overlap. I’m behind in my reading
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