My Thoughts on Romney’s Religion Speech
Dec 6th, 2007 by Micah Tillman | 2 Comments |
(Text here.)
It’s as good as any politician’s speech on religion that I’ve ever heard, and is far better than most attempts by politicians to deal with religion.
It is evidence of the following fact:
Politics is founded upon — and takes its ongoing motive force from — value judgments. Therefore, political theory and moral-/value-/ethical-theory are inseparable.
The question is, from where should we get our value-theory? Must it be from religion?
Romney’s claim is threefold: (a) the value-theory of all religions is the same, even if their theologies aren’t, (b) this value theory is needed in our politics, and (c) this value theory, at least in part, was built into America through the Constitution.
The only religious group he explicitly excepts from the claim that all religions share the same value-system is “[r]adical violent Islam,” which he distinguishes from Islam proper. What distinguishes the “radical violent Islam” from Islam itself — and from other religions– seems to be what Romney sees as a twofold lack of respect for the dignity/rights of all individuals and for freedom. Respect for people and freedom is the primary topic of Romney’s speech.
I’ll close with a fascinating statement:
[I]n recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life.
The idea that religion is something primarily personal, not social, is exactly what progressive Christians spend so much time arguing against. See Jim Wallis’ God’s Politics. I love it when conservatives and progressives say the same thing. It makes the tension more fun.
I had to read the text; I was happy to see that he didn’t really single out “radical violent Islam” or at least not the way I was led to believe by your post. It’s mentioned before he gets into his religion bit proper as a challenge we must face. Had he singled it out as a religious belief unworthy of respect, I’d find that a bit questionable.
There are, after all, radical violent Christians as well, like Eric Rudolph. (Most famous for bombing the Olympic Games, he also bombed abortion clinics and a lesbian nightclub.)
Oh, the answer to your question “from where should we get our value-theory?” is intuition. All non-revelatory ethical theories must rest on intuition. The justification for this intuition is the Principle of Phenomenal Conservatism. If it seems to you that p, then you are prima facie justified in believing p. (This principle is self-evident. You must use the principle itself to deny it.) Moral intuitions are not necessarily infallible (though I don’t wish to rule out the possibility that some might be infallible), but they are prima facie justified. Of course, you can agree with this and believe, as many atheists do, that the arguments against moral intuitions are so strong as to have defeated this justification (since it is defeasible). Obviously, I disagree, since I find the arguments against moral intuition to be nothing but shop-worn skeptical arguments long ago refuted (in other contexts), or else simply based on personal incredulity that such a thing as moral values could possibly exist. (I am incredulous at their incredulity.)
Romney’s always struck me as a sloppy rhetorician at best, and he certainly doesn’t impress me any more here. Who on earth would make a speech saying all faiths AREN’T of equal value, that religious diversity was a bad thing, or that he WOULD let his private faith intrude on public policy?
First off, there’s a HUGE problem with his notion that “Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom.” What a load of bollocks, from start to finish. Of course, the two can coexist, but in no way is one contingent on the other.
Next, I’m troubled by the phrasing of the statement: “Any believer in religious freedom, any person who has knelt in prayer to the Almighty, has a friend and ally in me.” This seems to imply that religious freedom doesn’t necessarily include freedom FROM religion - as though only the faithful would insist on their right to their beliefs, or all Athiests would prefer to massacre believers by the bushel instead of letting them practice their faith. This is an unfairly narrow view of what belief structures people would predicate their live upon.
Which ties into the third big problem: “the religion of secularism.” Again, how quaintly limited Romney seems to be epistemologically. Would he define any approximate worldview as a religion? Does that make Lacan, or Marx, or David Lynch a prophet? Simply because secularism offers an alternate walk of life to classical religions, that does not mean it’s diametrically opposed or exclusive, like some binary choice between doppelgangers. That’d be like calling fried rice “Chinese grits.”
Romney doesn’t even get his history straight. No land or fealty after WWII? Then how come over a quarter of the land in Okinawa is still occupied by the American military, and Ramstein (Germany) boasts the highest concentration of Americans outside of the US? Let’s not even get started on the trade/development issue…