The Theology of the Romance Novel

I confess that I have a fondness for reading the descriptions of romance novels and I occasionally submit myself to the sadomasochist act of reading the books themselves. What intrigues me about romance novels is that they function essentially as frum novels (fruvels) with a clear theology and theodicy that make them utterly predictable.

Consider some sample texts from books descriptions:

Together, they journey through everything Quinn's been too afraid to face, and along the way, Quinn finds the courage to be honest, to live in the moment, and to fall in love. (Excuse Me While I Ugly Cry by Joya Goffney.)

She's had enough of playing the good wife to a husband who thinks he's doing her a favor keeping her around. Now, she's going to take some time for herself ... she's going to reclaim the carefree girl who spent lazy summers sharing steamy kisses with her first love on Sullivan's Island. Daring to listen to her inner voice, she will realize what she wants ... and find the life of which she's always dreamed. (The Last Original Wife by Dorothea Benton Frank.)

She can only trust her heart…and hope it won't lead her astray. (The Bookstore on the Beach by Brenda Novak.)

If she can dare to let go of the life she thought she wanted, she might discover something even more beautiful waiting for her beneath a painted moon. (The Vineyard at Painted Moon by Susan Mallery.)

Violet is tempted to take the ultimate step to set herself free and seek a life of her own conviction with a man whose cause is as audacious as her own. ... Violet's story of determination and desire unfolds, shedding light on the darkness of her years abroad...and teaching Vivian to reach forward with grace for the ambitious future - and the love - she wants most. (The Secret Life of Violet Grant by Beatriz Williams.)

These stories are all framed by a particular worldview. The goal of life is to gain self-fulfillment in the form of romantic love. As Nietzsche understood, in our modern world, God is dead (i.e. irrelevant). This leaves man as the only standard of moral value. Since we can no longer expect to find fulfillment in a relationship with God, the alternative is to find fulfillment in the self.

Romance novels, like much of what comes out mass media, takes this concept and gives it a populist twist. The average person cannot plausibly expect to be able to come into themselves by becoming a great artist, writer, or philosopher. That being said, the average person can imagine having sex with someone and that this will lead to a relationship that will lead to them feeling fulfilled. The fact that the sex may violate traditional communal norms, rooted in religion, helps make the sex an act of self-fulfillment. The protagonist is able to choose themselves over the demands of society, demonstrating that their personal happiness is more important than following the expectations of the community.

At the beginning of the story, the protagonist should be someone living under comfortable circumstances but lacking romantic self-fulfillment. This serves to demonstrate the all-importance of love. You can have everything but your life will still be worthless if you do not have romance. If the protagonist does find themselves in a difficult situation at the beginning of the novel that difficulty should clearly arise out of the fact that they were already living without romantic love. For example, the housewife finding out that her husband has been cheating on her and is going to divorce her, leaving her with nothing, has an economic problem that is really a romance problem.

Our protagonist, having lived their lives by the rules of society and now coming to recognize that this has not worked out for them as well as they might have hoped, is suddenly confronted with someone who presents some sort of challenge in the real world that should reflect the raw sexual desire they awaken in the protagonist. After an obligatory round of saying no (the equivalent of the Campbell hero initially turning down the quest), the sex should happen, leading to a heightening of the conflict, which will clearly be resolved by the protagonist deciding that choosing to "follow their heart" is more important than anything else in the world. At this point, the problem will melt away and a happy ending is to be presumed.

As a work of religious fiction, a romance novel will contain some form of theodicy where the believer confronts some challenge to their faith which they must overcome to emerge as stronger believers. For example, a person prays really hard that God should cure his mother's cancer and it does not work; how could God let this happen? The believer will eventually learn that God had a plan for him all along, allowing him to develop a deeper relationship with God as something more than a genie who grants wishes.

In romance novel theodicy, the protagonist will have been burned before in romance, a teenage romance the did not work out or a divorce. After given up hope of true love, an opportunity comes their way, if they are "bold" enough to "believe" once more and take it. As with conventional religion, the believer has been given real evidence that their faith does not work, yet they are supposed to believe anyway. It takes a truly genuine faith to ignore evidence and believe anyway.

This use of theodicy is really a smokescreen. Like most works of religious fiction, romance novels suffer from a lack of real conflict. The point of a Christian novel is presumably about the protagonist choosing Jesus, which needs to be something simple enough that the reader can expect to be able to imitate. An exception to this rule would someone like John Bunyan. As a Puritan, operating within the salvation through grace tradition, Bunyan wanted to make the opposite point that accepting Jesus was something so difficult that no person could ever hope to succeed through their own efforts without active divine assistance. Good religious fiction requires an author who can truly imagine following a different path and get the reader to take that alternative seriously. This makes for good fiction but is totally counter-productive as religious propaganda.

Similarly, there can be real conflict in a Jane Austen or a Bronte sister novel. An Austen or a Bronte heroine is not free to follow her heart. She has a navigate a world in which she has limited economic opportunities and, if she is cast out by her family and community, death by starvation or tuberculosis is a real possibility. By contrast, the conflict of a conventional romance novel needs to be solved by the protagonist deciding that romance is all they care about. The point of the romance novel is precisely the fantasy that life's problems can be solved so easily. A good romance novel would require readers to seriously grapple with the struggle between duty to society and personal fulfillment without taking it as a given that the latter should take precedence. This would make for a good novel but would fail as propaganda for the religion of self-fulfillment.   

It might be interesting to, following the logic of Pride Prejudice and Zombies, to take a conventional romance novel and make it about accepting Jesus. A highly successful career woman has her life overturned when her godless husband cheats on her and demands a divorce. Moving back home, she runs into the handsome former high school sports team captain that she lost her virginity to as a teenager. Desperate to feel valued, she flings herself at him. The guy confesses that he really wants to sleep with her but he cannot because he has accepted Jesus. The woman is so impressed by the guy's self-control that she decides to go to church to accept Jesus. The night before, the husband returns and apologies. Now we have "drama." Will the woman still accept Jesus and will she dump who no good husband for her "true love?" She tells her husband that she can forgive him because there is someone who died for her sins. The two of them go to church to accept Jesus together and run into the other guy. Will our male hero fight for the woman he loves? No, the two men shake hands as brothers in Christ and the woman drives off with her husband, having turned down the really hot guy.  

 

 

 

 

The Buckeye Christian Political Club

 

Zayid and Umar live in Columbus, OH. They hear that on Saturdays in the Fall, a group of cool people meet in their secret club to drink beer and yell at a television screen. These cool people are keen to make sure that only other cool people join their club. As such, they only allow people who wear the right kind of clothes and say the correct password to enter. Zayid wears scarlet and grey and says something very ungentlemanly about a woman named Ann Arbor. As such, Zayid is deemed to be cool enough to enter. Umar wears blue and maize and sings "Hail to the Victors." He is chased away.  

It turns out that the cool people also have a meeting on Sundays where they sing songs and listen to a sermon, followed by cake and socializing. Zayid makes sure to wear a cross and tells the people that Jesus is his Lord and Savior. Umar wears a turban and says "Allah Akbar." Once again, things go well for Zayid and poorly for Umar. 

The following Tuesday, these cool people have their biannual go into a booth and fill in the circle next to some politician get-together. Zayid wears red again and tells the people that we need to ban critical race theory. Umar wears blue again and declares that the year 1619 was the true founding of America. Perhaps Umar's luck finally turns around.

It is clear that the cool people hanging out in the first instance are simply fans of Buckeye football. There is nothing ideological about their opposition to Michigan. Even if Umar was the world's greatest expert on football and could talk for hours with charts about the superiority of Wolverine football, it would do little good. If anything, Umar's intellectual defense of Michigan would backfire and convince the Ohio State fans that Michigan represents empty intellectualism rather than the instinctual embrace of the "soul" of football. 

If pressed, the Ohio State fans would likely concede that there is nothing intellectual about their choosing of Ohio State over Michigan. It is equally reasonable for Michigan people to choose Michigan. That being said, they will still want Michigan people to stay in their place "up north" and not force Ohio State fans to hang out with them. Michigan people may only be pretend stink but that pretend stink still carries a whiff to it. 

Once we understand that fandom exists as something real where people are incredibly passionate about something completely vacuous, it is hardly obvious that the fandom model is not in operation in areas that make intellectual claims that sound like they should be taken seriously such as religion and politics. Do the Buckeye Christians really have a well-thought-out theology that allows them to reject Islam or does their clubhouse serve the same function as a church on Sunday as it did as a Buckeye hangout on Saturday? It is hardly obvious that there is a meaningful difference between the claims “Jesus is Lord” and “Ann Arbor is a Whore.” The fact that people around the world might proclaim the former with enthusiasm and without the benefit of alcohol should matter little. If the Buckeye Christians do not talk about Jesus with a greater level of enthusiasm than their denunciation of Ann Arbor, why should we not assume that both of them are equally meaningful to them?     

The same goes for politics even though politics deals with objective facts as opposed to metaphysics and there are real-world consequences to politicians of one party or the other winning elections. (This is distinct from whether your vote actually matters.) Despite the fact that people regularly make statements in politics that should be subject to refutation, we should not take these claims seriously as something the people actually believe. Their claims likely function not as truth statements but as signaling devices to show what team they root for.

From this perspective, the more a claim is clearly false, the more politically useful it becomes as a signaling device. Claiming that Trump really won the election or that American police are the moral equivalent of the Gestapo are both ridiculous. But the fact that they are ridiculous makes them good signaling devices. Only a true-believing Trumpist or leftist, who had no interest in being accepted by mainstream society, would ever say such things. 

Peter Boghossian engages in a useful exercise where he has people line up along a spectrum indicating not whether they support a statement or not but how strong their position is. One of the things that comes out strongly from these exercises is that people who take the most extreme positions are not there because they really have done significant research into the topic. Instead, their positions are marks of their identity. This causes them to take challenges to their positions very personally and lash out when someone questions them. It is almost as if they were sports fans confronting fans of the opposing team.  

A Club That Yeshiva University Can Reject

 

Recently my alma mater, Yeshiva University, has been in the news over the issue of an officially sponsored LGBTQ club with the court ruling that YU is obligated to allow it. To be clear, I am opposed to YU probing into the personal affairs of students. I do not want any guys expelled for being caught having sex with their girlfriends. I do not wish to be accused of being inconsistent so it only seems reasonable not to expel guys caught having sex with their boyfriends. 

A major part of the culture of YU is that many students do not personally live the kind of life that YU endorses. This is important if YU graduates are going to take leadership roles in the broader Jewish community. The practical goal here is to create a world in which even those Jews who personally do not practice Orthodox Judaism, see themselves as Jews and see Orthodox institutions as representing them. Chabad is a good example of this kind of thinking. There are thousands of Jews in this country who drive to Chabad shuls because Chabad makes them feel welcome. For all my disagreements with Chabad, it needs to be said that Chabad has a genius for loving Jews even the completely unobservant. 

Whether you are YU or Chabad, one's ability to be welcoming requires a balancing act where one still recognizes that there are lines that cannot be crossed. For example, I would expect a Chabad rabbi to welcome people who they knew were active homosexuals. I would not be surprised if Chabad rabbis were even willing to acknowledge a couple as husband and husband or wife and wife. That being said, any Chabad rabbi who performed a same-sex wedding would need to be expelled. Failure to do this would mean the end of Chabad. If Chabad could allow same-sex marriage then what redlines would be left that would stop us from simply thinking of Chabad as Conservative rabbis in funny hats?

It is hardly obvious that YU would lose its ability to claim to be the flagship institution of Modern Orthodoxy in America if a rabbi with YU ordination agreed to perform same-sex marriages as a personal decision. An institution like YU may have significantly more leeway than Chabad to allow its rabbis to go off script. That being said, even YU must have its redlines. I am less concerned about where precisely those lines are than the fact that they really do exist.     

I recognize that there are practical reasons for there to be an LGBTQ club at YU. I have no doubt that there are LGBTQ students at YU trying to figure out how to balance their identity with their Judaism. I honestly want such people to feel that they can attend YU. Having a club is likely to strengthen their connection to Judaism. That being said, one needs to ask the question of whether there can be a club that crosses a redline. Is there a club that would be perfectly reasonable to expect at a regular campus but would destroy YU's claim to be an Orthodox institution if it ever officially agreed to recognize it?

While likely far fewer than LGBTQs in the Orthodox community, I assume there are Jewish teenagers who have privately accepted Jesus as their personal savior and are struggling with how to balance their desire to live observant Jewish lives while being true to their Christian faith, knowing that most people in the Jewish community would react with extreme hostility if these kids ever came out of the closet. 

If I knew that my roommate was in the closet about Jesus, I would not out them or try to have them expelled. If people began to suspect that he was really a Christian perhaps because he shokeled when reading the New Testament a little too intensively for mere academic interest, I still would not support any action being taken against them. Things begin to change the moment our Jewish Christian steps out of their closet and actively proclaims that they believe in Jesus. By doing this, they would be putting YU in a bind, either take action against the student or implicitly acknowledge that faith in Christ is not as absolutely contrary to Judaism as one might have thought. If YU feels that it has to choose the former then so be it. 

Clearly, YU should not allow there to be a Campus Crusade for Christ club on campus. I believe that USC should allow Campus Crusade for Christ on its campus even though they are a private university. The difference is that Campus Crusade for Christ does not present a head-on challenge to USC's mission while YU exists precisely to be a space for people who reject Christ. 

I believe that YU should not be hosting Christian missionary attempts to convert Jews on campus even though it is hardly obvious to me that Christian theology is less heretical than hardline Chabad messianism. I would be willing to allow a messianic Chabad club on campus even over the objections of Prof. David Berger. In truth, there are large numbers of non-Jews in YU's graduate schools. If non-Jewish Christians in graduate school wanted a Christian club, I would support them. For that matter, if a group of Christian undergrads from South Korea enrolled at YU to learn about Judaism and America, I would welcome them and allow them to form an official Christian club even if it crossed the line into missionary activity. What would be the point of these students coming to YU if they were not allowed to discuss religion? 

If you want to argue that YU should have an LGBTQ club, I am not going to tell you that you are wrong. I am going to ask you, though, to produce a list of clubs that would be perfectly fine on most campuses but should not be on YU. YU should not have a Nazi or Hamas club on campus but neither should USC. I see a Christian club as less of a problem than an LGBTQ club. If we are going to have an LGBTQ club at YU then it would be unjust to keep Jewish Christians in the closet about their chosen savior.               

Harry Potter and the Acceptance of Death

 

Last night, I finally finished Eliezer Yudkowsky's fan fiction series, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. It truly is a work of genius that should be recognized alongside the original series. It should be acknowledged that Rowling, for all of her talents with comic dialogue, mystery, and crafting a world you would wish to visit, had a weakness when it came to crafting magic systems and thinking through the implications of a power once written into canon. One can think of Yudkowsky as a satire on the original and an attempt to fashion a smarter version. 

Yudkowsky uses his alternative version of Potter as a means to talk about rationalism. It is to his credit that he is able to write a deeply ideological work of fiction without his message dragging down the entire story. It helps that becoming a rationalist superhero is actually something difficult to accomplish. You cannot snap your fingers and become a rationalist even if Yudkowsky's Harry does do quite a bit of finger snapping. Contrast this with accepting the non-Puritan version of Jesus as your personal savior or deciding to "follow your heart." Such ideologies make for boring fiction because there is no real obstacle that readers should take seriously. All the main character needs to do is get over themselves and do what they, deep down, really wanted to do all along.  

Furthermore, Yudkowsky deserves a lot of credit for his handling of Draco Malfoy and Professor Quirrell. Yudkowsky's Malfoy is not simply a bully but a smart kid, who has been raised by a terrible parent, Lucius Malfoy, and the wider society of Death Eaters to believe that non-purebloods are diluting wizarding magic and risk causing magic to disappear from the world. There is something highly relatable about him as he is introduced by Harry to science as something that forces him to think in ways completely contrary to how he is used to operating. Specifically, Malfoy has to come to terms with the notion that there is an objective reality that will not change no matter the rhetorical arguments or threats he makes. I would not say that Malfoy becomes a good person in the end, merely a less evil one. 

Rowling never bothered to develop Quirrel as a character. His function in the Philosopher's Stone was to be the butler, a character sitting off to the side that the reader does not really pay attention allowing them to become the surprise villain. When I first read the book back in 2000, I had to stop to remember who Quirrel even was. Yudkowsky's Quirrel is a brilliant teacher with a clear dark streak who becomes the primary mentor for Harry. Ultimately this also allows for the development of Lord Voldemort as someone with a plausible appeal. (The revelation, in the end, about Quirrel mostly parallels Rowling.) 

There is a major philosophical difference between Yudkowsky and Rowling that I wish to call attention to. Essential to the Rowling version is an acceptance of death. Already in the Philosopher's Stone, we are introduced to the idea that Nicholas Flamel would allow the stone to be destroyed even though it will lead to his death. This sets up Harry's actions at the end of the series where he overcomes the temptation of the Deathly Hallows and ultimately gives himself up to Voldemort to die. Voldemort, by contrast, is someone who flees death (something hinted at in his name). He made Horcruxes to keep himself alive, has Quirrel drink unicorn blood, and tries to steal the Philosopher's Stone. 

Voldemort only cares about his continued existence and therefore refuses to recognize the possibility that there are principles worth dying for. As such, he is unprepared for Lilly Potter being willing to sacrifice herself even though she had no reason to assume that her death would actually save baby Harry. Ultimately, this sets Voldemort up for being unprepared for people being willing to sacrifice themselves in opposing him even after he has taken over wizarding Britain and resistance is futile.  

Voldemort's pursuit of immortality is connected to his lack of any kind of friendship. Voldemort, even as Tom Riddle, is self-sufficient. He does not need or desire other people. The Death Eaters are servants to be used. He does not care about them nor does he rely on them unless forced by circumstances. If Voldemort is someone who is going to go on forever then there is no reason to attach himself to people who might live on after him. By contrast, Harry is distinctly dependent upon others, mainly Ron and Hermoine. There is no pretense that he could succeed on his own or that he is of ultimate importance. This allowed Rowling to plausibly sell Harry's death in Deathly Hallows. It would not have been inconceivable for Ron and Hermoine, helped by Neville, to finish Voldemort off without Harry.  

It should be noted that Rowling was fairly open-ended when it comes to the afterlife. Not even Dumbledore dares to claim that there really is life after death. Rowling's point was that death should be accepted with courage and part of that courage is not knowing that there is anything to look forward to. Nearly Headless Nick expresses regret for hanging on to the sure thing of life as a ghost instead of accepting what lies beyond, regardless of what that might be. One thinks of the example of Socrates agreeing to drink hemlock rather than violate his philosophical principles while not knowing if there is an afterlife or just an eternal sleep. 

Yudkowsky devotes much of that later part of his work to attacking this view. Harry refuses to believe in souls even when confronted with ghosts. The mark of the fundamental failure of the wizarding world in general and Dumbledore in particular in living up to the standards of reason is that, even with all of their power to violate the laws of physics, they have failed to eliminate death. Essential to Harry's ability to fight dementors (who become exponentially scarier in Yudkowsky's hands) is that Harry recognizes them as death and as a blight on the world that should not exist and that he will one day eliminate. This opposition to death eventually sets the ending with the Philosopher's Stone.  

To respond to Yudkowsky, it should first be acknowledged that it is a positive good to extend the human lifespan through advances in medicine. It is reasonable to imagine that future generations of humans will be able to live hundreds or even thousands of years due to superior technology. This is distinct from immortality though, presumably, longer lifespans will delay the development of a true awareness of death. As a kid, I had a difficult time imagining myself as an adult. Part of becoming an adult is an ability to imagine oneself growing old and then dying. 

I do not wish to dismiss immortality as a good thing. If someone were to offer me some, I certainly would not be able to resist the temptation. It may be possible to imagine a morality for immortals. That being said, our morality rests on the deeply rooted assumption that we are mortal. Being mortal forces us to consider whether life might have a higher meaning that will go on after us. This can be as part of the divine mind or the walls of Uruk. 

This affects how we relate to other people. We are social beings who aspire to be part of institutions that will live on after us. Part of being a parent is the recognition that you will eventually grow old and die. Instead of trying to be the main character of your story, your job is to be an important side character in someone else's story. To truly embrace this perspective, you cannot try to live through your children but, instead, must accept that your children will be different from you. Your job is not to create a clone of yourself but to equip another person, with their own identity, with the tools they need to achieve greatness. Perhaps your job is to read Harry Potter to them and then start printing off chapters of Methods of Rationality and reading them as well. 

Choosing Meaning: An Alternative Version of Pascal's Wager

 

The philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-62) famously argued that one should choose to believe in God, despite one's doubts, because there is everything to gain and nothing to lose by making such a wager. If you choose to believe in God and you are right, your reward in heaven is infinite. By contrast, the atheist loses everything if they are wrong. If it turns out that there is no God, the atheist gains nothing for being right as they will be just as dead as the believer who turns out to be wrong. A major problem with this line of reasoning is that it undermines the very notion of belief, turning religion from something one honestly believes into a wager that one makes. If we are going to believe in God then we are going to have to honestly believe in God and not simply in a lottery ticket, a horse, or a meme stock that we buy in the hope that the universe, in all of its randomness, goes our way.  

I would like to suggest an alternative version to Pascal's Wager that maintains some value. Let us step away from the question of whether God exists to offer a heavenly reward and instead ask a different question; does life have any transcendent meaning? Let us also throw in the question, does free will exist? Without free will, we are simply puppets on a string acting out some story. Whether we are central characters in this story or not, we as people, who make choices, cease to matter. To be fair, there are powerful arguments to be made against free will and ultimately against our lives having any meaning. In fact, if I were being truly objective in how I looked at the world, I would have to conclude that most probably free will does not exist and that life is meaningless. I choose to live my life in the belief that my life has meaning and that I have free will, knowing full well that I might be wrong, because, if given a choice, I would rather live my life as if it had meaning and I had free will and be wrong than to not believe in meaning and free will and be right. What is there to gain by not believing in meaning? What is the point of being a Transcendentalist and fashioning my own pretend meaning? I might as well pretend that meaning is real.  

Having taken this leap of faith to accept meaning and free will, I might as well accept that there is a supernatural creator of the entire universe who, through some mysterious process that I am incapable of understanding, allows me to have free will and made the world in such a way that it somehow matters how I make use of the free will. It should be understood that, as we are dealing with an ultimate power to provide meaning, we are dealing with a monotheist God and not simply one of many sources of power that can be tapped into. Clearly, belief in God does not necessitate a belief in free will. I have spent too much time reading Calvinist literature to think otherwise. That being said, I do not see how we can avoid an active belief in God without sinking into the radical materialism of Laplace's demon, rejecting free will and any sense of ultimate meaning.

Belief in God would not have to undermine science. We can embrace science as our primary means of understanding the creator of the natural world. Similarly, my study of history has helped me develop a certain Augustinian sensibility to how I understand human affairs. I am skeptical of human claims to virtue particularly those who achieve positions of power. By extension, I do not expect the creations of those in power, such as countries, to fulfill their stated purpose and not collapse due to the inherent flaws of their designers. And yet there are certain ideas and works of the humble that seem to survive the inevitable collapse of civilization to resurface for a new age. (See G. K. Chesterton's Everlasting Man.) I cannot shake the possibility that there is such a thing as providence. Anyway, I cannot bring myself to worship man so I might as well at least keep an open mind about there being something above mankind.     

Once I assume the God of monotheism in whom I am trusting to provide me with meaning and free will, there seems little point in trying to pursue meaning outside of him. This leaves me a choice. I can try creating my own religion to serve him or I can join a pre-existing monotheistic religion. The advantage of creating my religion is that it is likely to be more rational and avoid the inevitable objectionable features of a religion that evolved through some historic process. Historic religions on the other hand can provide a living tradition to connect to as well as an actual community to interact with. If this religion makes claims about a historical revelation that cannot be dismissed out of hand, all the better. The fact that some things in this tradition might make me uncomfortable and force me to struggle with them might just be for the best. To quote Shepherd Book from Firefly: "You do not fix faith. It fixes you."

Let us agree that I have not provided an argument for God, meaning, or free will; that was never my intention. I choose to take a leap of faith in sanity and live my life on the assumption that there is a God and that my life has a purpose and that he has created me with free will in order to accomplish that purpose. I might be wrong about this but I prefer to believe these things and be wrong than to reject them and be right. If you could convince me, as I am on my deathbed, that God, meaning, and free will had been illusions all along, I will go into the eternal abyss grateful that at least I had the chance to live my life as if these things were true.    

   

Quasimodo in the Classroom

 

Imagine that you are the principal at a school at the beginning of the year and you are given Quasimodo as a student. Quasimodo is a hunchback and incredibly ugly but this is no fault of his own and his loathsome exterior covers a truly decent soul. How far would the administration be morally obligated to go in order to accommodate Quasimodo? Clearly, the school needs to protect Quasimodo from blatant bullying. Quasimodo's teachers need to be prepped before the year starts for having Quasimodo. For example, the teachers need to be conscious of the fact that Quasimodo notices how people grimace at the sight of him and that it does real psychological damage. That being said, there are going to be real limits as to what Quasimodo's two moms, the Notre Dames, can demand from the school. 

Despite the fact that social standards of beauty are largely arbitrary and that they discriminate against Quasimodo, who never chose to look the way he does, it would be unreasonable to demand that the school overthrow conventional standards of beauty in order that Quasimodo no longer be considered hideous. A different standard of beauty, besides being impractical, would simply leave some other unfortunate student as the ugliest kid in school. To eliminate all standards of beauty, besides being profoundly impractical, would harm society. Beauty is foundational to art and to ethics. It is by contemplating mere physical beauty that we come to comprehend the possibility of a higher form of beauty such as the virtuous person. 

Unfortunately, a tragic consequence of believing in physical beauty is that, inevitably, there will exist an ugliest person such as Quasimodo who will be made to suffer even if no one is actively mean to him. While it would be wrong to stare at Quasimodo, he will catch on fairly quickly if people are not looking in his direction at all or if the timing for how long people look at him is different from how they look at other kids. What is the principal supposed to tell Quasimodo when Esmeralda turns him down for the prom and instead goes with Phoebus, the football captain, even though he is a jerk? Before the school accepts Quasimodo, the principal will have to be honest with Quasimodo's moms. If they really want to avoid getting him hurt at all costs, the best option would be homeschooling. 

For Quasimodo to attend school, it will need to be acknowledged that, while there is an obligation to tolerate and be kind to him, he will never be truly accepted. The very act of trying to be kind to Quasimodo will only further his alienation. Why would anyone feel the need to go out of their way to be nice to Quasimodo if it were not for the fact that they have already "Othered" him and, feeling guilty about it, wish to cover up for their moral failure? As such, the Notre Dames would have to agree to let the school off the hook for trying to make Quasimodo fully part of the community even though that is what pure Justice would demand.  

I bring up this example of Quasimodo because it sets an outer limit for the moral obligations of a school to a student. The fact that Quasimodo did not choose to be the way that he is allows his moms to make real demands from the school if it wishes to plausibly claim that they are serving the entire community but there is not going to be any blank check to refashion society to allow Quasimodo to function within it. 

Imagine that, while Quasimodo's principal is talking to the Notre Dames, he has to put them on hold because a call is coming in from Steve Urkel's parents, who want him to do something about the fact that Urkel finds himself socially isolated. Obviously, there is nothing wrong with Urkel dressing like a nerd and the school should protect him against physical violence. That being said, the Urkels cannot expect a higher level of support than the Notre Dames. Fairly quickly, the principal is going to have to point out that Urkel is choosing to wear dorky glasses. Even though it is wrong that kids do not want to be friends with him because of how he dresses, if Urkel wants friends, he should probably change his clothes.    

The moment we start dealing with students who violate social norms out of any religious belief or ideology, the ability of the school to act should constrict even further. Imagine that Quasimodo and Urkel were to come out of the closet as transgender Trumpist Christians and came to school wearing skirts, MAGA hats, and crosses. Clearly, Quasimodo and Urkel have the right to wear such paraphernalia even though it will make many people uncomfortable, particularly as they are likely to strongly oppose the beliefs of transgender Trumpist Christianity. 

While the principal is on firm ground to admonish students for making fun of people for their clothes and certainly for their looks, he is on far trickier grounds when students criticize or even mock the beliefs of other kids. Disagreement is an essential part of a free society. As a public servant, the principal needs to be absolutely neutral in the often brutal ideological discourses taking place around the school. He can protect Quasimodo and Urkel as long he acts in exactly the same manner for all other groups. It must be clear that he is not acting out of any desire to promote transgender Trumpist Christianity as that would violate the rights of all the other students. As this standard would be incredibly difficult to reach, the principal may have no choice but to allow Quasimodo and Urkel to be mocked. 

It will do them no good to argue that they really are women, that Trump really is their president, and that God predestined them from before creation to be part of the elect despite their sins. All three claims are things that their opponents have the right to dispute. Furthermore, it will not help Quasimodo and Urkel to argue that being transgender Trumpist Christians is essential to who they are and that their opponents are rejecting their humanity. They were on better ground arguing that being a hunchback and a nerd was essential to their being and even that offered them little benefit.      

To Be Woke At a Wedding

 

I was recently back on the East Coast for my sister's wedding in Baltimore. On the ride there, I got into a conversation with my stepmother where she asked me for a clear definition of the word "Woke." I found myself struggling to come up with a definition that could pass an ideological Turing Test where it would not be obvious that I am opposed to Woke thinking. Part of the problem is that Woke arguments function dishonestly using motte and bailey tactics, switching back and forth between its innocuous and radical claims when convenient. The actual claims of the Woke quickly veer into Poe Law territory that defies parody. Just as I might have been tempted to invent a Westboro Baptist Church to parody Christian fundamentalism, my parody of Wokeness would have involved white people paying a white woman thousands of dollars to tell them that they are racist. The problem is that Robin DiAngelo is not a work of fiction. The wedding itself ended up providing me with a useful framework with which to explain Wokeness. I noticed that almost all of the waiting staff at the wedding was black. By contrast, the vast majority of the guests were white. What might this mean from a Woke perspective?

First, to be Woke means to notice this fact that the people serving had a different skin color from the guests. As such, one should not be so literally colorblind as to not notice the different skin colors around you. Second, one should know enough about American History in general and about Baltimore in particular to recognize that this is not simply a coincidence. Black people are more likely to be economically disadvantaged to the point that they would find themselves working service jobs like being a waiter at a wedding.

These two aspects of Wokeness are fairly uncontroversial as so far all we have done is state an empirical and a historical fact. We have not made any value judgments about my sister, her new husband, and the hundreds of guests at the wedding. Furthermore, there is no particular course of action to be demanded beyond not abusing the staff or anyone with less money than you do. It is here that the radical nature of Wokeness shows its face. 

From a Woke perspective, the people attending the wedding are guilty of perpetuating systematic racism. It does not matter that the people attending may honestly feel no ill will toward black people, were perfectly civil to the blacks who served them, and never actively helped prop up segregation. Furthermore, it does not matter that most of the people attending the wedding were Jewish and that many of them were actually of Middle Eastern descent and not European at all. The claim that Jews have a history of being persecuted and were even victims of the Holocaust is itself a form of racism as it allows Jews to uphold their white privilege and not do the necessary work of dismantling white supremacy. (Note that Robin DiAngelo actually uses Judaism as an example of a defense mechanism used by people at her workshops to deny that growing up white in America makes you inherently complicit in racism.)

It is precisely when it comes to the question of what should be done that we sink into the realm of the Poe Law and Wokeness becomes a self-parody. Clearly, my sister needs to make more black friends. If need be, she should have hired black people to be her friends and come to the wedding. This could have been a form of reparations. Perhaps, she should have refused to hire black people. The fact that these people would not have had a job would help awaken their revolutionary consciousness to overthrow white supremacy. 

My wife and kids are people of color (POC). If we were properly Woke, we would have denounced my sister for having such a racist wedding where black people served white people. Furthermore, my sister showed her racism by inviting her brother's racially mixed family. Clearly, the only reason why she would have invited her brother to her wedding was so his family could offer some token diversity, rendering her racism less obvious to the not-truly Woke. 

Of course, the fact that I married a POC also makes me racist. The fact that I am attracted to this woman could only be because I objectify black women and wish to pretend that I am not racist. As such, my wife should divorce me and take away my kids to protect them from my racism. Even my wife, though, cannot escape the taint of racism. As a white-passing person, she benefits from white privilege while still being able to point out that she is a POC when convenient. The reason why she married a white man was in order to improve her standing as a white-passing person, thus perpetuating the white supremacist hierarchy with whites at the top and POCs scrambling to gain a higher place in the pyramid by making themselves as white-passing as they can and practicing white supremacist values like the traditional family and punctuality. She has spent her life being nice to white people, who are all racist, allowing them to pretend to not be racist by being friends with her. This has culminated with her marrying into my clearly very racist family, allowing us to pretend to not be racist.          

One of the hallmarks of the Woke version of racism is that white people are constantly going to try to pretend that they are not really racist by doing things that appear superficially tolerant like inviting their POC sisters-in-law to their weddings. This is a play on the Christian doctrine of total depravity. Part of being totally depraved is that even when you follow God's commandments, you are only doing it because you fear Hell and not out of love for God. The sinner loves sin so much that even with the fires of Hell raging beneath them they will not genuinely repent but will try to fool God with sham repentance. As such, their supposed good deeds are even more hateful to God than their sins. In Puritan thought, the believer needs to undergo a process where they almost despair of the possibility of ever being saved but continue to try to be virtuous. They might then find themselves filled with the knowledge of Grace and realize that it does not matter that they are the worst of sinners because God has arbitrarily chosen to save them through the death of Jesus. Similarly, in the Woke religion, being white makes you inherently racist, particularly when you try to not be racist. The only way to be anti-racist is to accept that you are racist and that there is nothing you can do to fix that. Unlike Christian total depravity, in the Woke religion, there is no black Jesus who is going to die to atone for your racism. To expect that of a POC would be, dare I say it, racist.        

Voting Rights for Racists: The Case for Legalized Discrimination in Government Jobs

 

In the past, I have argued that discrimination on the part of private businesses should be a legally protected right. How could an educated person such as myself, who is part of a racially mixed family, support "hate?" I believe that opponents of Israel should be allowed to use BDS despite the fact that it is an anti-Semitic conspiracy designed to discriminate against Jews and ultimately to offer moral cover to people who wish to murder Jews. Universities should be allowed to accept black students over white ones regardless of qualifications. For that matter, schools should be allowed to operate programs and create spaces solely for people of color. I may find these practices to be morally repellent but then again I am morally opposed to Aryan coffee shops and strip clubs. These are examples of social crimes where patrons of a business do not cause anyone physical harm but are encouraged to inculcate values that I believe are ultimately detrimental to a well-functioning society and yet I still believe that they should be legal.  

As a classical liberal, I accept the horrific doctrine that people should be allowed to openly support socially destructive ideas to the point that they cause actual harm. The reason for this is that I assume that the tradeoff is going to be even worse. For example, while strip clubs teach men to objectify women and not get married, they are not going to cause nearly as much harm as government-licensed Puritans armed with a modesty checklist who rely on government power as opposed to articulating a case to society (as well as themselves) why specific modes of dress (or the lack of which) should be opposed. If I can defend the right of businessmen to operate strip clubs, I fail to see how I can reject the notion that businessmen have the right to be racists and openly discriminate in their hiring. 

For a long time, I have accepted a distinction between discrimination carried out by private businesses and that of the government. This distinction increasingly seems strained to my mind. Imagine an election between evil billionaire Monty Burns and Lieutenant Uhura (may the memory of Nichelle Nichols be a blessing). Burns wins the election by openly appealing to the racism of voters. Furthermore, we are able to find enough voters to cover the margin of victory who confess that they voted for Burns not because they supported tax cuts for billionaires and the elimination of government oversight over nuclear power plants over more funding for linguistics and space travel but only because they refused to vote for blacks. As such, it is an objective fact that Uhura was discriminated against based on her skin color. Does this mean that what the voters did was illegal and the election should be overturned?

It is important to keep in mind that voters have the right to be idiots. Democracy is not about giving voters the best leaders. It is about giving them the leaders they deserve and giving it to them "good and hard." The racists who voted for Burns deserve whatever Burns will do to them and the liberals who voted for Uhura do not deserve much better as they agreed to be part of the same country as the Burns voters and have not tried to secede. 

Once we acknowledge that voters have the right to discriminate against political candidates, why not allow their racist elected officials to fulfill the wishes of their racist electorate by discriminating who is hired for government jobs? Why should Burns not have the right to fulfill his campaign pledge of paying for his billionaire tax cut by firing black teachers if that is what his voters elected him to do?

It should be noted that there are limits to this line of thinking. For example, it would not apply to the criminal justice system. If the district attorney would, as his closing argument, choose to lead the jury in a round of singing "kill the n-word," the conviction of the black defendant could be overturned. There is a difference between voters and jurors, mainly that jurors do not have the right to be irresponsible and follow their own bad judgment; they are required to follow a clear set of legal instructions given to them by the judge who in turn is bound by a code of legal ethics. Attorneys, unlike political candidates, are not allowed to use a wide variety of dishonest tactics to manipulate jurors. Defendants, regardless of their skin color, have a right to a fair trial and the burden of proof is on the prosecution and the judge to make sure they get one. Similarly, blacks cannot be kept from voting as they have a right to vote. 

All of this is distinct from a job, whether in the private or government sectors, as no one has a right to a job. By contrast, people have the right to discriminate and hand jobs to people for reasons that have nothing to do with qualifications or actual life choices. Your height and looks are based on your genetics. You never got to choose them and they are unlikely to be connected to your job performance. That being said, the reality is that people are discriminated against due to being short and ugly. It is certainly unfair but that is life. Why should we treat discrimination based on skin color any differently?                

Does Reading Make Someone Less Likely to Be Evil?

 

"I know that having a good vocabulary doesn't guarantee that I'm a good person," the boy said. "But it does mean I've read a great deal. And in my experience, well-read people are less likely to be evil." ...

There are, of course, plenty of evil people who have read a great many books, and plenty of very kind people who seem to have found some other method of spending their time. But the Baudelaires knew that there was a kind of truth to the boy's statement, and they had to admit that they preferred to take their chances with a stranger who knew what the word "xenial" meant, ... (Slippery Slope, p. 95-96).

I confess that would I be more willing to trust someone who knew what xenial meant or, for that matter, had read Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. This is because they have something in common with me. As such, it is plausible to imagine that they would be able to better empathize with me, which would make it harder for them to betray me. Of course, this line of thinking can easily be manipulated by con artists, who know that they can trick people into trusting them by convincing them that they have the same taste in art or religion or belong to the same ethnic group.  

Does reading actually help make someone less likely to be evil? If you are a humanities person, whose life and profession center around books, there is much at stake in being able to claim that this is so. Consider the question, are plumbers less likely to be evil? The issue is irrelevant as society requires plumbers in order to function regardless of their moral quality. If studying to become a plumber had the same effect on one's moral development as spending a year on Korriban communing with the force spirits of ancient Sith Lords then so be it. It is not so obvious that society needs history and literature teachers if we cannot assume that they will contribute to the moral development of students. As such, those of us in these professions need to either be able to make a convincing case that we promote morality or confess that what we do is merely a hobby for people of leisure, much the same as gardening or video games.   

This renders book readers vulnerable to moral hazard. People's actual morality is likely to be inversely proportional to their belief in their morality. The more you think that you are a good person, the more likely you are going to be willing to justify doing bad things to your opponents. If they oppose you, they must be bad people who deserve what is coming to them. Why should a few bad people be allowed to stand in the way of all the wonderful things a good person such as yourself can do for the world? How truly dangerous must a person be whose sense of self is wrapped around books and needs to believe that these books have made them better people? 

The moral hazard goes even further. If people who read are morally superior then it makes sense that they should rule over the plumbers as philosopher kings. This goes to the heart of liberal arts. Historically, liberal meant "free." The liberal arts were those things that could be studied by the wealthy leisure class, who did not have to worry about developing a useful trade. To engage with the liberal arts itself was a justification to rule. The aristocrat, freed from the constraints of earning a living and allowed to study things simply to develop their souls, deserved to rule. Since they did not need to worry about money and personal gain, they could act for the "common good," which they learned through the liberal arts. This aristocratic ethos was later embraced by Roussoueauians and eventually Marxists. Neither of these ideologies are really about empowering the people or the working class. They are defenses for rule by intellectuals.    

There is a plausible case to be made that reading helps people expand their circle of empathy. Reading fiction and history allows one to enter the heads of people who are different from ourselves and recognize their humanity. If you can be emotionally moved by space aliens, perhaps you can be moved by the plight of refugees or even your next-door neighbor. This ability to empathize, though, would still require that the reader not believe that their reading is making them more empathetic. Otherwise, we fall back down the moral hazard hole, leaving us merely with someone who knows how to employ the rhetoric of empathy to claim the moral high ground and the right to rule. 

Has reading made me a better person? I enjoy reading as a means of coming to a better understanding of the world around me. My self-education through books has continued even after I failed to earn my doctorate when I could no longer assume that books would lead me to a position of respect and authority. Perhaps, my reading can be defended on the grounds that it has saved me from the sin of worldly ambition. Regardless, I will return to my joyously Sisyphean quest to get through my ever-expanding reading list.    

Civil War, Surrender, or Secession

 

I am often criticized for being a secessionist. I believe that states should be allowed to leave the United States. For that matter, I think it is a person's right to stand on their roof, raise their flag and declare that their house is now an independent country with the right to not pay taxes or obey regulations on the gambling, drug, and medieval surgery den in operation inside. Granted, there are all sorts of practical problems with actually doing this. I am talking about what a person has the right to do, not whether this is really a good idea. 

What most people miss is the extreme moral price to be paid for not accepting the moral and legal right to secede. Mississippi and California are both states that greatly differ from the rest of the country. Take the state that you sympathize least with. Imagine that the governor of that state got on national TV and declared that unless the Constitution was rewritten to suit them, they will secede from the United States. This would leave us with three options; we could fight a civil war, surrender to their demands, or accept their secession. 

The civil war option becomes deeply problematic if the secessionists have managed to seize military bases, gained the backing of elements of the military, or even the recognition of foreign countries. It is important to keep in mind that the American Civil War was made possible because the South had three months from December 1860, when South Carolina voted to secede, to March 1861 when Lincoln became president, where they could act with complete impunity. Not only did the lame-duck Buchanan administration not begin to call up troops to invade the South but they allowed the South to seize federal forts and armories. This would become important for the coming war as the South lacked the industrial capacity to manufacture the weapons it needed. 

Even if the state had no weapons with which to fight but simply blocked the roads with kindergarteners, could such a one-sided civil war be justified? Are we prepared to call a soldier who ran over a kid with a tank, an American hero who saved the Union? Note that if our opponents know that we have moral qualms about killing children then they will not hesitate to put their kids in danger with the confidence that we will back down and they will win even though they are outgunned. One thinks of the example of the Palestinians, who offer a master class on how to cynically put children in danger in the hope of a propaganda win. 

If we are not prepared to commit mass murder, we can surrender and give the states what they demand in order to remain in the Union. Mississippi might want an end to gay marriage and for abortion to be made a federal crime. California might want to make it a federal crime to misgender someone or impose a green plan on the rest of the country. Are you willing to consent to whichever one you find most distasteful? 

At a practical level, it is absurd to hear liberals and conservatives complaining about what the other side has just done. Take the example of the Dobbs decision. You liberals knew for years that conservatives were the kinds of people who would do such a thing and yet you agreed to be part of the same country as them. By not seceding, you signed a Faustian bargain in which you agreed to allow for the end of Roe in exchange for conservatives not breaking up the Union. If you had threatened conservatives to either pass an amendment to protect abortion or you would leave, would you have been confident that conservatives would have given in? 

By not openly demanding secession, you supporters of abortion demonstrate that your protests are nothing more than political theater. You do not really believe that women are going to be turned into baby-making slaves. If you honestly thought this was the case, you would be demanding secession and threatening total Hobbesian civil war if your demands were not met. 

Extreme anti-abortion antics, while insincere, pose their own risks as conservatives might come to take them seriously as opposed to merely an opportunity to raise money and allow activists to feel good about themselves. If conservatives conclude that civil war with the left is inevitable, they might decide that their best chance of winning lies with starting the war with a preemptive first strike.    

If you find it implausible that states would threaten secession as a weapon to blackmail the rest of the country with in order to get their preferred policies enacted, it is important to recognize that early American history was dominated by the widely recognized fact that the South would only stay in the Union as long as slavery was protected. As such abolitionists operated under the limitation that they could not deny the fact that, if they ever were able to come close to turning their ideals into actual policy, the South would simply secede.

As the North and South developed very different trajectories regarding slavery, the South started demanding that the federal government not only refrain from eliminating slavery but actively work to advance it. For example, the Fugitive Slave Act made a mockery of state's rights when it came to the right of states to not tolerate slavery. Finally, with the victory of Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party in 1860, the South decided that they would not even accept being subject to a party that merely claimed to oppose slavery in the territories and they seceded.

The United States was founded on a Faustian bargain to tolerate slavery in the South. Considering this, what is so implausible about imagining that either allowing red states to ban abortion or allowing blue states to protect it might be a modern version of such a Faustian bargain that is necessary to keep this country together? If you are not willing to openly support secession then you cannot play innocent as to the price you have to be willing to pay in order for there to be a United States. The only America you can expect to have is one run according to the values of your opponents. Any attempt to balk on this reality leads, in practice, to secession if not the truly nightmarish possibility of civil war.     

Once we recognize that the options of civil war and surrender are so morally reprehensible, we are left with only one option, secession. I am not saying that secession is going to be easy. To be clear, my ideal situation would be for the country to remain whole under my terms. As a matter of pragmatism, I am willing to make some concessions to my opponents. That being said, there are people out there whose vision for society is so markedly different from mine that we can make no pretense that they ever will be able to make the necessary concessions to have a united country that would be mutually acceptable. This would leave, as the only options, fighting a civil war or allowing for the United States to be divided into a collection of new countries from the diverse groups, from the left to the right, that currently make up this deeply divided nation. 

Why Conservatism Needs a Classical Liberal Foundation: A Response to Yoram Hazony

 

Yoram Hazony provides a useful example of the importance of the unwritten texts by which we read an author. On paper, there is much that I agree with Hazony. We are both traditionally observant Jews, who have been heavily influenced by Christian thought and therefore greatly respect serious Christians. We believe that religion of some sort will inevitably form the background of any political system and that any claims to be able to completely separate Church and State will prove unworkable or a cynical ploy to bring someone's preferred religion through the backdoor under a different name. (It is important to keep in mind that the various forms of leftism that have evolved since the Enlightenment down to modern Wokism are religions with their own metaphysics and a metanarrative about the interplay of good and evil throughout history and should be held to the same First Amendment standards as any traditional religion.) Both of us wish to protect small traditional communities from the larger forces of modernity. 

One difference between us is that Hazony is clearly more willing to use the power of government against corporations that choose to pursue a leftist agenda. Even here my opposition is somewhat muted. I am torn as to how conservatives should respond to a left that no longer accepts traditional classical liberal norms. If leftists are willing to use government when they win elections to reshape culture in their image, it is only fair that conservatives respond in kind. 

It is the issue of classical liberalism, though, that highlights the key problem I have with Hazony. His recent book, Conservatism: A Rediscovery, is an attack on fusionist conservatives like me who presuppose a commitment to a classical liberal unwritten constitution. Hazony blames the mainstream American conservative movement as embodied by William F. Buckley and Frank Meyer for not being willing to take a harder line in defense of religious values, having already conceded to the left the premise that religion was a private matter with no role in the public sphere. This turned the culture wars into a decades-long negotiated surrender where only the timeline for the secularization of society was ever in question. If conservatism is about preserving something, it would seem that the only thing conservatives have been able to conserve is the power of big business. This might have been a reasonable strategy at a time when it could be assumed that businessmen could be counted upon to support a socially conservative agenda in return for conservatives voting for free-market policies. Today, this is clearly no longer the case as it is corporate America that is the main force pushing for Woke policies. 

To respond to Hazony, it is important to state why a classical liberal framework is necessary particularly for conservatives. For better or worse, we live in a pluralistic society, full of decent people who have a right to live and vote in this country but are far from being conservatives even by the standards of National Review let alone Hazony. Assuming that we are not planning secession (a solution that I would support but Hazony would not) or civil war (which I hope that Hazony would not support), it is necessary to convince such people to vote for the Republican Party or at least not object too strongly when the Republican Party wins an election or a Supreme Court vote. Conservatives need to be able to offer such people certain guarantees that they will be able to live their non-conservative lives in peace. To operate within the classical liberal unwritten constitution is to have a set of values ingrained into you to such a degree that violating the legitimate rights of your opponents becomes unthinkable.   

Rod Dreher provides a good example of this sort of thinking when he challenges Catholic Integralists with what might be called the Edgardo Mortara question. If Integralists, somehow, were to take power, what, in their philosophy, would make it unthinkable for something like the Mortara case to ever happen? For those unfamiliar, Edgardo Mortara was a Jewish kid kidnapped by the Vatican in the 1850s because he had been baptized by a maid. This is a scenario that fills me with fear coming from the left. If you are on the left and you cannot explain to me why it is inconceivable that police will come to my house tonight or in five years to take my boys away because one of them told a teacher that they felt like they were really a girl but I refused to let them wear a dress then you can assume that political cooperation is off. Consistency demands that I respect the right of leftists to think along the same lines. If a political party animated by Hazony's ideals ever came to power what guarantees could he make to homosexuals that police will not come in the night and seize their children?

Democracies are inherently plagued with a variation of the prisoner's dilemma every time a new party wins an election. If Republicans win in November 2024, what is to stop Joe Biden from declaring the election a fraud and having Republicans shot before they can take power in January? This could even be declared a "defense of democracy" on the assumption that the Republicans would do the same thing if they lost in 2028. For democracy to work, not only is it necessary that all major factions respect the results of elections, it needs to be inconceivable to both sides that their opponents, whom they honestly dislike and think are bad for the country, would ever stoop so low as to overthrow an election. (Because of the events of January 6, this assumption can no longer be made about the United States.) 

The same logic applies to Supreme Court decisions. Will leftists, in response to the overturning of Roe, content themselves with mouthing off, marching, and trying to turn out voters for November or will they, instead, send out execution squads with proscription lists against conservatives? Make no mistake; this is the only reasonable option for anyone who truly believes that this country is in imminent danger of turning into the Handmaiden's Tale. Leftists have a plausible incentive to do so now that they can still rely on the protection of the Biden administration as opposed to a Republican administration that might come to power in 2025. What if the Court were to overturn Obergefell? 

It is the responsibility of conservatives like me to talk to the decent liberals in my life like my mother and mother-in-law to convince them that, contrary to what they might be hearing on NPR or MSNBC, there is no plot to establish a Christian theocracy. For good reason, they might not like conservative policies but that is the price of living in a country that has the GOP. For this to work, I need to be able to argue that there are certain lines that would be inconceivable for conservatives to cross. 

Here is where classical liberalism becomes important. It provides a collection of assumed red lines that can be built into the collective political consciousness of a society to never cross even at the cost of some short-term gain. Some hack writer is producing smut. That is their right. It does not matter if it has no social redeeming importance and may even be harmful. By tolerating indefensible junk, I signal to my opponents that I have no intention of coming after them even when they write books attacking me.  

As Hazony recognizes, part of being a conservative is the acceptance of norms, the most important ones being unwritten, that govern a society. One does not attempt to refashion society with a gun in one hand and a philosophy book in the other.  In the United States, a central part of our political norms is classical liberalism. This is an advantage of American conservativism. As Hayek argued, to be a conservative in America still means to be a supporter of liberty. The United States has no living tradition of crown and altar conservatism. Thankfully, the closest American equivalent, the slavocracy tradition of John C. Calhoun, lost all political plausibility in the 1960s with the defeat of George Wallace. When Hazony talks about the Anglo-American conservative tradition, he means Washington, Adams, Hamilton, and Marshall. Even as Hazony denounces the "Puritan theocrats" of the English Civil War, he never suggests that Americans should return to absolute monarchy along the lines of Charles I.   

The United States is a large and complicated country, one that I personally think should be broken up. If I, somehow, was ever elected president here would be my message to my mother, mother-in-law, and all the decent liberals out there who profoundly disagree with me. There will be no more pride flags on federal buildings but the police will not be charging into homes to arrest adults engaged in consensual activities. I may be willing to allow states to ban abortion but I will protect abortion in those states where it is legal. As a guarantee of my sincerity, I will respect the right of every individual property owner to secede from the United States to create LGBTQ/abortion sanctuaries as they wish. 

As a classical liberal, I am willing to make serious good-faith guarantees to my liberal opponents. What can Hazony promise? What lines will he not cross even though it will cost him the chance to build his conservative society? 

 

Brute Textualism For a Diverse Society

 

In any society, there is going to be a trade-off between the physical text of the law and the unwritten assumptions that we bring to the text about what purpose it serves. In theory, it makes sense to privilege the unwritten text as that will bring your legal system closer to the set of values you wish to endorse. The catch is that this can only work in a society where everyone shares the same unwritten constitution and a moral vision for what they want their legal system to accomplish. In a country where this is not the case, the only practical option is brute textual legalism. 

The reason for this is that we have every reason to assume that people have no intention of living under the authority of an unwritten constitution whose moral values they oppose and are likely, if pushed into an extreme enough situation, to reject the authority of the Federal Government, plunging the entire country into Hobbesian civil war. For example, imagine if the Supreme Court were to decide tomorrow that, in place of a right to privacy, the underlying assumption of the Constitution was white supremacy. Keep in mind that Taney made precisely this argument in Dredd Scott. In this reading of the Constitution, man is assumed to mean white men with blacks being given no legal protection. The Court then rules that slavery should never have been abolished and the modern descendants of slave owners should be able to reclaim the descendants of their ancestor's slaves as their rightful property. I would hope that my readers would support taking up arms to kill police officers who agree to round up African Americans even if this will plunge the country into civil war. 

From this perspective, being on the Supreme Court is a lot like being on a nuclear bomb squad. If the justices make a big enough mistake, they risk blowing up the entire country. In 1973, the Burger Court, in its hubris, put the entire country in danger by enshrining the sexual revolution constitution. This forced religious conservatives into choosing between living under a set of laws directly opposed to their values or taking up arms against the government. Conservatives worked for nearly fifty years within the system to overturn Roe. It very well may have been this belief that they could win legally that kept them from turning to violence. Over the years, we have seen individual actors assassinating abortion providers. How many conservatives out there secretly supported these murders at least in principle? If the liberals on the Court had gotten their way in Dobbs and crushed any conservative hope for victory, who knows what conservatives might have done out of desperation? 

Of course, Alito and the other conservatives on the Court are also now taking a risk in overturning Roe. It is possible that leftists will mount an insurrection of their own. We know of one person being arrested for trying to kill Kavanaugh after leading members of the Democratic party pretty much point-blank called for someone to kill a justice to save Roe. It is frightening to consider how close this country came to civil war because of one person. What do you think would have happened if the attempt on Kavanaugh had succeeded? Do you believe that conservatives would have simply accepted this "tragic misfortunate" action of a single "deranged" individual, not the work of the Democratic Party, and now, after coming so close they were not going to be able to overturn Roe?   

This framework helps us understand the value of brute textualism. In a world in which one faction might turn around and try to murder the other half if they think the other half is trying to force their values upon them, the only sane solution is for justices to rule in such a way that it becomes difficult for their opponents to accuse them of simply engaging in sophistry to justify whatever policies they prefer. This can be done through textual style originalism. This allows judges to tell their critics: you may not like the ruling but your argument is not with me it is with the Constitution. Come back to me when you have passed an amendment to the Constitution and I will support you. 

A useful thought experiment is to ask whether a justice's legal philosophy will ever force them to uphold the constitutionality of laws they oppose or overturn laws they actually support. If the answer is no then their philosophy can be dismissed as ad hoc justifications to force their values on you. They have betrayed the Constitution, giving you a plausible moral justification to ignore their ruling or to kill the judge even at the risk of igniting a civil war. 

In a world where all relevant parties share a common set of values, it makes sense to allow a more flexible approach to law. For example, I am going to approach Jewish Law with a specific set of values. In my Judaism, rabbis should not agree to perform same-sex weddings but still insist that it is a sin to lift a finger to initiate harm against homosexuals or even to mock those who struggle with this issue. I recognize that, with this statement, I have likely antagonized Jews on both the left and right and both can plausibly argue that my position is not based merely on Jewish texts but on my personal values. That is ok; such people are free to form their own version of Judaism. I am not trying to force my values on anyone. 

The United States has over three hundred million people living within its borders. Most of them have little in common with each other either culturally or in moral values. It makes about as much sense to have people from Mississippi and Los Angeles in the same country and subject to the same Constitution as to have either of these groups joined to the residents of Islamabad. As such, I think the only practical solution would be to divide the United States or implement such vigorous federalism that the Supreme Court has little opportunity to interfere with States or enforce much of any personal unwritten constitution. 

The next best solution would be textualist originalism enforced with full brutality. This will lead to many horrific conclusions. Ideally, both the left and the right in this American marriage will be left incredibly unhappy. Whenever a textualist decision leads to results that you find obscene, console yourself with the understanding that you are making a compromise with the other side so that they will not feel the need to deliver the first strike in a civil war by massacring your side in the streets. 

The Unwritten Constitution: Why Roe Matters

 

I was at my wife's grandmother's place in New York when I saw a news flash on my phone that Roe vs. Wade had been overturned. Even as I had been expecting this result ever since the opinion leak, this still came as a shock to me. Throughout my life, Roe was one of those facts about American political life. Yes, Republicans dreamed of getting rid of Roe, but there was no way it could actually happen. As someone who has moved around a fair bit along the choice vs. life spectrum over the course of my lifetime, I have long found the passions aroused by abortion to be mysterious. Consider the no longer hypothetical situation we are in now with the end of Roe, what has actually changed about abortion law in America now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe? In truth, almost nothing. Here in California, abortion is as legal as it ever was. For those women living in states that are now banning abortion, what has changed for them is that they might have to spend a few hours on a Greyhound bus. Getting rid of Roe is not going to stop anyone from having an abortion so why did liberals and conservatives spend nearly fifty years fighting over Roe?

The key to understanding the importance of Roe lies in thinking of it in terms of an "unwritten constitution." No one ever interprets a text without a set of assumptions that serve as interpretive lenses for how to read the text. Conservatives are certainly correct in pointing out that, unlike the right to guns which the Court just protected, the Constitution never says anything about a right to abortion. That being said, this does not necessarily mean that it should be easier to buy a gun than to get an abortion. It all depends on what sort of unwritten constitution you believe in. If one does not approach the Second Amendment with the assumption that gun ownership is essential to citizenship in a free society then the right to bear arms becomes nothing more than a quaint text that should not be allowed to get in the way of public safety. From there it is easy to say that the Second Amendment only refers to members of militias carrying Eighteenth-century-style muskets. 

On the flip side, if you assume that the purpose of the Constitution is to allow people to pursue their own happiness in defiance of established sexual mores, then it does not matter if the Constitution never actually says this, this is what the Constitution really is. (Note that the Constitution says nothing about a right to pursue happiness. That is in the Declaration of Independence.) 

As strange as it may sound, it is the unwritten constitution that carries the greater authority. You can argue with a written text and attempt to limit it in all sorts of creative ways. The unwritten constitution is meant to be so thoroughly embedded in the thinking of society that it should be impossible for members to think in any other way. In fact, what is not written can serve as bait to draw out the heretic into revealing that they do not share the fundamental assumptions of the rest of society. For example, do you believe that the First Amendment establishes a "Separation Between Church and State?" If you said yes, you are factually incorrect. The Constitution says no such thing. As with the pursuit of happiness, that was Thomas Jefferson, who was not even part of the Constitutional Convention. If you are of a liberal disposition, this fact should not matter. On the contrary, the conservative who points this out has simply demonstrated that fail to appreciate the "soul" of the Constitution, i.e., they do not accept the unwritten liberal constitution. 

The battle over Roe was never really about abortion but the unwritten sexual revolution constitution that, following in the footsteps of Griswold, it furthered. In essence, the Court was saying that it was an essential right for young women pursuing college and a career to be able to have pre-marital sex without having to worry that, if something were to go wrong, they might have to choose between marrying the father or becoming single mothers. If you are committed to building a society where there is no stigma attached to women pursuing careers and having pre-marital sex then it is going to be necessary to remove the stigma attached to abortion by not just making it legal but enshrining it as a constitutional right in a similar sense as being able to stand outside the White House waving signs.  

When I last visited DC, I made a point of taking my son to see the wide variety of people protesting. It did not matter that I personally disagreed with many of these people. I accept that all of them, even the "smelly weirdos," were doing something positive. It is essential for me that we live in a country where it should be thought of as perfectly normal and uncontroversial to stand outside the White House and say bad things about the president. Note that if you were to tell me that none of this is in the Constitution, which only says that people can assemble to seek redress but not to insult politicians, you would be correct but you would also be demonstrating that there is a larger "soul" to the Constitution that you do not comprehend. 

Being able to publicly say bad things about elected officials (as opposed to strongly implying that you would not be particularly bothered if they were murdered) is part of my unwritten constitution. The idea that the secular state must be backed by a broadly religious society with strong families and a conservative sexual morality is also part of my unwritten constitution. By contrast, the sexual revolution is not part of my unwritten constitution.        

An easy way to see the role of the sexual revolution constitution in Griswold and then Roe is to consider what should be an obvious question. If people have the right to make decisions with their own bodies and in consultation with their own doctors, why is there no constitutional right for drug use or to sell their organs? To accuse people on the left of hypocrisy is, in a sense, to miss the point. There is no deep narrative entrenched within the mainstream left where drug use and organ selling become essential to who people are and to take their place as citizens. By contrast, birth control and abortion have this larger narrative that is more important than any technical legal arguments, which only serve to justify the sexual revolution constitution after the fact. 

Similarly, one can point to the claim of protecting women's rights. The Constitution does not offer special protection for women. The sexual revolution constitution, by contrast, does. In the narrative of the sexual revolution, women are a group oppressed by traditional sexual mores. In order for the Constitution to remain legitimate, it must be read in terms of the sexual revolution. Anyone who argues that the Constitution has no category of women's rights may be factually correct but they have also demonstrated that they are not embedded within the assumptions of the sexual revolution. 

It should be noted that it is possible to want abortion to be legal to a large degree without wanting it to be a constitutional right. I would consider myself to be within this camp. There are lots of things that I want to be legal but not to be expressed directly as constitutional rights. For example, I want adultery to be legal and oppose any attempt by the government to punish infidelity. Similarly, I want marijuana and even heroin to be legal. That being said, I do not wish for them to be declared constitutional rights. To do so would be to accept an unwritten constitution where extra-marital sex and drug use are accepted as positive actions in the same sense as peaceful protesting. 

I am fine with the Supreme Court saying that the federal government has no authority over what people do with their bodies as long as they are not causing physical harm to others. The right of people to pursue their own good in their own way as long as they are not causing physical harm to others is part of my unwritten constitution. This will lead to the de facto legalization of adultery and drug use. Once this has been accomplished, we can discuss whether this constitutional right to bodily autonomy includes abortion or whether fetuses, in some sense, count as living beings with a right to not be murdered.      

Certainly, in the short run, I do not expect the number of abortions nationally to drop. The importance of the Dobbs decision is that it takes away the moral high ground from the left. They no longer have the grounds to claim that abortion is a constitutional right. That being said, I do not expect leftists to back down and soften their rhetoric. On the contrary, we should expect an all-out attack on conservatives for daring to not accept the constitution of the sexual revolution and upon the legitimacy of the Supreme Court for acknowledging that there can be another framework for reading constitutional law. With the overturning of Roe, the stakes have been raised over the sexual revolution constitution. Either we must accept that a group of Gileadists has conspired to take over the Supreme Court and destroy the Constitution in order to enslave women into marriage and motherhood or that the Supreme Court was taken over in the mid-20th century by leftists who rewrote the Constitution in order to enshrine the sexual revolution and that this unwritten constitution has now been rejected. Either way, I expect that there will be little room to make the practical good-faith compromises that might create a workable legal framework for abortion

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