At some future date, an intrepid scientist will announce that he
has made a discovery: there is a correlation between heroin and
liberal outrage. Apparently, when a leftist goes off on a tirade
against conservatives, religion, or Evil America, it triggers an
opiate release in the brain that causes a blissed-out high. Thus,
as the addict must hunt down smack, the liberal must have a
constant supply of outrages to feed his jones. If none are
available — if, indeed, our modern age is criminally short of
witch hunts, McCarthyism, religious intolerance and racism — then
one must be made out of smaller things. Thus the almost ardent
obsession with George Bush. Thus the depiction of the Catholic
Church as a tsunami of fascism. Thus Cindy Sheehan. Of course, as
is the case with addicts, truth is often a casualty.
Which brings me to Damon Linker. Linker was once an editor at
First Things, the neoconservative journal edited by Father
Richard John Neuhaus. Linker recently left First Things,
and has landed a book deal with Random House, and a cover spot on
the New Republic. Linker’s book, called The
Theocons, is about “secular America under siege” by people
like, well, Richard Neuhaus. According to Linker in the New
Republic,
In Neuhaus’s view, what was happening in the United
States could only be described as “the displacement of a
constitutional order by a regime that does not have, will not
obtain, and cannot command the consent of the people.” Hence the
stark and radical options confronting the country, ranging “from
noncompliance to resistance to civil disobedience to morally
justified revolution.”
That is the America toward which Richard John Neuhaus
wishes to lead us — an America in which eschatological panic is
deliberately channeled into public life, in which moral and
theological absolutists demonize the country’s political
institutions and make nonnegotiable public demands under the threat
of sacralized revolutionary violence, in which citizens flee from
the inner obligations of freedom and long to subordinate themselves
to ecclesiastical authority, and in which traditionalist
Christianity thoroughly dominates the nation’s public life. All of
which should serve as a potent reminder — as if, in an age marked
by the bloody rise of theologically inspired politics in the
Islamic world, we needed a reminder — that the strict separation
of politics and religion is a rare, precious, and fragile
achievement, one of America’s most sublime achievements, and we
should do everything in our power to preserve it. It is a large
part of what makes America worth living in.
It’s like an alcoholic’s first shot of bourbon. The problem is —
like all addicts — Linker is a bit paranoid, not to mention
unreliable.
It’s pretty simple: like a lot of conservatives, Richard Neuhaus
wants to arrest judicial activism. In 1996 First Things
ran a symposium called “The
End of Democracy? The Judicial Usurpation of Politics.” It
argued that when judges start ordering our lives, democracy suffers
— and taken to an extreme can be lost. The most stark example of
this is abortion.
In fact, Neuhaus was arguing the exact opposite of what Linker
claims. Linker writes that Neuhaus sees an America “in which moral
and theological absolutists demonize the country’s political
institutions.” He was, in fact, calling for a revitalization of
those very institutions. Linker says Neuhaus wants a public able to
“make nonnegotiable public demands under the threat of sacralized
revolutionary violence.” No, he was calling for the negotiable
demands of a democracy that arranges its public life through
debate, not judicial fiat. In Neuhaus’s dystopia, warns Linker,
“citizens flee from the inner obligations of freedom and long to
subordinate themselves to ecclesiastical authority.” In fact,
Neuhaus was calling citizens to precisely exercise their inner
obligations of freedom — obligations which have been purloined by
judges. As for a world in which “traditionalist Christianity
thoroughly dominates the nation’s public life,” this is just a
mindless abstraction. What, exactly, does Linker mean by this?
Leftist Christians like Linker — and leftists in general - can
easily get away with their prevarication; the high of a rhetorical
blast like the one Linker delivers above is just too sweet to let
the truth get in the way. Linker will no doubt find a home in the
mainstream media, and among liberal Christians suffering from
similar addictions. In a recent issue of the New York Review of
Books, liberal Catholic historian Garry Wills, author of a new
book about Jesus, revealed that there is a conservative Catholic
fringe group that is pulling the levers of power in the church and
the government. Specifically, there are four men: George Weigel
(whose terrific new book God’s Choice is required reading
for serious Catholics), Joseph Fessio, Michael Novak, and (cue
scary music) Richard John Neuhaus. Perhaps suffering from a Da
Vinci Code-like fever dream, Wills charges that these men,
well, run the country. They are connected with Karl Rove (natch),
and guide their nefarious neocon policy from the fringe. They are,
that is to say, an anti-democratic oligarchy imposing its will on a
public that does not support them.
The problem is, aside from his paranoid style of politics, Gary
Wills is a liar. In his piece he claims that the Catholic cabal,
realizing that most Americans disagree with them, have formed their
own little revolutionary government. As a primary example, Wills
cites the 1996 symposium, “The End of Democracy? The Judicial
Usurpation of Politics,” that was sponsored by First
Things. The symposium’s point was that an activist judiciary
had overtaken the role of politics, subverting — even eliminating
— democracy itself. As a result, Americans might have to refuse to
obey immoral laws, change the constitution and possibly engage in
civil disobedience.
Wills offers the symposium as exhibit A of the right’s desire to
undemocratically take over politics. He does so by selectively
quoting, for example, Judge Robert Bork’s piece “Our Judicial Oligarchy.” In it Bork argues that
activist courts can and should be reined in by the democratic
process. But it’s useful to let Bork explain and then show Wills’s
deception. Bork:
On the evidence, we must conclude, I think, that this
tendency of courts, including the Supreme Court, is the inevitable
result of our written constitution and the power of judicial
review. Even in the depths of the Warren Court era some of us
thought that the Court’s performance, though profoundly
illegitimate, could be brought within the range of the minimally
acceptable by logical persuasion or the appointment of more
responsible judges, or both. We now know that was an illusion. A
Court majority is impervious to arguments about its proper
behavior. It seems safe to say that, as our institutional
arrangements now stand, the Court can never be made a legitimate
element of a basically democratic polity.
The way to fix this, writes Bork, is through democracy:
Only a change in our institutional arrangements can
halt the transformation of our society and culture by judges.
Decisions of courts might be made subject to modification or
reversal by majority vote of the Senate and the House of
Representatives. Alternatively, courts might be deprived of the
power of constitutional review. Either of these solutions would
require a constitutional amendment. Perhaps an elected official
will one day simply refuse to comply with a Supreme court decision
That suggestion will be regarded as shocking, but it should not
be.
Completely clear, right? However, in his piece Wills accuses Bork
et al. of a “quiet extremism” hidden behind “a quiet air of
reasonableness.” They want nothing less than armed rebellion and
the refusal to obey the Supreme Court. Then Wills quotes Bork this
way:
It seems safe to say that, as our institutional
arrangements now stand, the Court can never be made a legitimate
element of a basically democratic polity….Perhaps an elected
official will one day simply refuse to comply with a Supreme Court
decision. That suggestion will be regarded as shocking, but it
should not be.
See how specious this is? Wills complete eradicates Bork’s
contention that any change in the courts must be done
democratically, through a constitutional amendment — just as
Linker obfuscates Neuhaus’s advocacy for democracy. Wills’s
truncated quote makes it seem as if Bork is calling for revolution.
What he is calling for is a democratically fueled restoration. Yet
as Wills proves in his Catholic-bashing later in the piece, he has
things a bit backward. He wants a representative republic, the
United States, to be run by liberal elites like judges. And he want
a hierarchical institution, the Catholic Church, to be a democracy.
He and Linker need to get to rehab.
