The Anti-american temptation

...Norman Podhoretz sees it as an outburst of anti-Americanism reminiscent of the anti-Americanism found among left-wing intellectuals in the 1960s...

...Radical revolution is the opposite of the original Conservative Temper...

...Some secular conservatives took the ideals of the free market and applied them to politics...

...Maybe they have become morally deadened, quite untroubled by the fact that 1.3 million abortions are performed every year...

...our contributing editor J. Bottum works full-time as associate editor of First Things...

...The idea for the symposium emerged after years of articles and discussions about the imperial judiciary, and following a three-hour brainstorming meeting of the First Things editorial board in June (Berger, Himmelfarb, and some others were not in attendance...

...by the seditious measures you contemplate and all but advocate...

...Podhoretz, like others, fears the symposium could be seen as bolstering the case of the vigilante militias and other extremists on the right...

...Colson no longer puts much stock in the political process...

...Maybe the people themselves are corrupt...

...The contributors are troubled by several recent court decisions...

...But through American history other branches have historically usurped power...

...Many conservatives still think history is moving in their direction...

...Neuhaus argues this decision, among others, proves the judiciary has chosen to side with moral libertarianism in the culture wars and is busy imposing its will on the nation...

...America is not an academic seminar limited to a few utterly dispassionate and socially disengaged intellectuals interested only in 'the truth'," he declared...

...Some religious conservatives brought their religious beliefs more closely to bear on political issues...

...They note that while the judiciary is headed in the wrong direction on abortion and gay marriage, it has been handing down comforting judgments on school choice and the role of religion in public (and on affirmative action...

...Although just published, the symposium has already generated anger, angst, and controversy...

...Desirable, because the culture-forming institutions cannot be sustained without common effort...

...And they will dwell on when the sovereignty of God demands breaking off loyalty to nation...

...In 1992's abortion-related Planned Parenthood v Casey, the Supreme Court adopted a preference for the radical notion of autonomous individualism: "At the heart of liberty," Justices Kennedy, Souter, and O'Connor wrote for the majority, "is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life...

...Peter Berger and Gertrude Himmelfarb have resigned from the magazine's editorial board, and Walter Berns has resigned from the editorial advisory board...

...The First Things controversy is more than just a tempest in a conservative teapot...

...It is possible, with this distinction, to admire the American people (as Neuhaus does) and still declare the government illegitimate...

...If they decide that the political elites are impervious to reason, or simply ignore reason, then they will abandon reasoned argument and simply deliver caustic commentaries on their opponents' unreason...

...The distinction means that the nation is not embroiled in a culture war, but has instead been the victim of a culture coup in which secularists have simply imposed their will through the courts...

...We are prepared for the charge that publishing this symposium is irresponsibly provocative and even alarmist," his introduction declares...

...They had to argue for propositions that had previously been unquestioned...

...But the word "regime" suggests that government is something placed over the people, in this case by arrogant judges...

...This symposium will look like the last gasp of American exceptionalism...

...That is the trend Washington Times columnist Tod Lindberg noticed in Antonin Scalia's recent dissents...

...But a tone of crisis, a sense that history itself is moving in the wrong direction, does pervade the pages...

...If they find that the revelations about Bill Clinton's character produce no response in a public too deadened to care about certain standards, then they will become more interested in preserving small communities of virtue than in influencing the entire nation...

...They consider declaring government morally illegitimate when decisions don't go their way...

...The symposium asks whether Americans have a duty to commit civil disobedience or even "morally justified revolution" against such a "regime...

...The Right's Anti-American Temptation By David Brooks The November issue of First Things, the conservative monthly, features a symposium called "The End of Democracy: The Judicial Usurpation of Politics...

...Long gone is the thing that used to be known as the Conservative Temper...

...Well, at least they were prepared...

...That sentiment in favor of a return to first principles is the antithesis of the Conservative Temper...

...Such a conservatism won't present a very happy face to the world...

...Actually, none of the respondents endorses full-bore civil disobedience or declares the government illegitimate, although Colson comes close...

...So it's perhaps fitting that if conservatism rose to political power by wedding itself to abstract ideas, it should also withdraw from political power because of that tendency...

...Two years ago, in the midst of the controversy over The Bell Curve, one writer did warn his fellows that not all subjects are fit for public discussion...

...Participants in this centuries-old discussion make a distinction that Americans are not prone to consider, one between the nation and the "regime...

...What happens, for example, when the nation doesn't live up to the high ideals and shows no prospect of doing so...

...This is the mood that fears change, distrusts abstract notions, reveres the here and now, and is obsessed by historical continuity...

...Well, Republicans had better learn to take the good with the bad...

...But the First Things symposium, while still an outlier, may also be a harbinger...

...He declares that the "'putative alliance' between the religious right and the Republican Party offers little solution...

...The court decided these Coloradans were motivated by "animus" and declared their motives unconstitutional...

...The Republican party proudly calls itself the party of ideas...

...Those who apply religious principles directly to politics, their opponents will say, measure the political realm by moral criteria that are inappropriately abstract...

...They interpret Clinton's resurgence as an odd confirmation of the conservatism of the time...

...They will declare, as Neuhaus does, that the phrase "God and country" should not come tripping off the tongue because the two are not necessarily linked...

...Its introduction, by editor in chief Richard John Neuhaus, suggests that an unrestrained judiciary is seizing control of crucial sections of American life and taking decision-making power away from the democratic process and the American people...

...Members of the staff of The Weekly StanDARD are intertwined with the dispute by familial bonds, professional relationships, and ties of friendship...

...But I do not at all agree that this raises the specter of the illegitimacy of the government," she continues...

...It may well be that the end result of this discussion will be that we will have to get used to asking how you live in an order that is morally dubious and not amenable to change...

...Conservatives could no longer just mutely cherish and preserve...

...American conservatism is far from going down this road...

...The first thing that happens is that the conservative (maybe it is more accurate to call him "orthodox" because of his love of abstract ideals) starts proposing radical solutions in an effort to jerk his country back to where he thinks it should be...

...The editors chose five authors to contribute to the discussion—Bork, Charles Colson, and the academics Russell Hittinger, Hadley Arkes, and Robert George...

...Others have independently written letters of protest—some of them, like Norman Podhoretz's, quite heated...

...To explore whether the American government is legitimate is a slippery slope, and the most distasteful portion involves the mention of Nazi Germany...

...The new conservative style, based on conscious fealty to abstract ideals and beliefs, is not necessarily bad...

...If the conflict is between loyalty to state and loyalty to God, then surely duty to God comes first...

...It raises one of the more interesting questions of the moment: Is the Right about to go anti-American...

...They needed to put into words things that had been accepted as given, and they needed to apply abstract ideals to political debate...

...They will cite, as the contributors to the First Things symposium do, the many different ways theologians have addressed this question over the centuries...

...Idea-driven people are quick to abandon political parties...

...Suddenly the just prejudices that nobody had much thought about—for example, that the two-parent heterosexual family is naturally superior— were called into question...

...And it has given those of us in conservative circles something to talk about...

...Or maybe the people are not corrupt, but are still in the sway of a corrupt elite whose hold on the leading institutions gives it the power to determine the course of the nation...

...Already, many conservatives are profoundly disturbed by the calm way the American public seems to have accepted Bill Clinton's character, and find themselves asking the same questions as Ross Perot: "Is there no sense of decency in this country...

...he has adopted many conservative-sounding policies and is more comfortable with being religious in public than any president since Jimmy Carter...

...It's worth emphasizing here that Colson is a major figure in the evangelical movement, and those familiar with the scholarly literature generated by that movement (and by the orthodox Catholicism represented by Neuhaus, Hittinger, and George) say these sorts of questions are common...

...The other thing such people do is hold debates about whether they can support their government...

...What had been a prosaic, incre-mentalist political clique became a visionary, ideological creed...

...Berger thinks the symposium is a huge overreaction: "The first charge is that the courts have usurped power...

...But by declaring that, Hittinger argues, the court "excludes from the political process the objects of mutual deliberation that make political order desirable, indeed even possible...

...But he says despair is premature...

...Then, citing a papal encyclical on the supremacy of moral law over secular power, Neuhaus warns, "America is not and, please God, will never become Nazi Germany, but it is only blind hubris that denies it can happen and, in peculiarly American ways, may be happening here...

...And now, along comes First Things, questioning the legitimacy of the American government itself...

...Modern American conservatism rose by changing its character...

...For the existing U.S...

...It would console itself with the glories of transcendence and hope these could compensate for its abandonment of the here and now...

...Americans are accustomed to thinking that ours is a government of the people...

...In 1996's Romer v. Evans, the First Things contributors argue, the Supreme Court looked improperly into the psyches of Colorado voters who voted to prevent localities from adopting gay-rights statutes...

...In other words," Hittinger writes, "individual liberty is defined not merely by the kind of act or decision that one is free to engage in, but by immunity from a certain kind of motive or purpose on the part of the legislator...

...Peter Berger, the distinguished sociologist of religion and an old friend and collaborator of Neuhaus's, argues that the respondents are only backing up the point that the American "regime" is illegitimate...

...In her letter of resignation from the First Things editorial board, Gertrude Himmelfarb agrees that the judiciary has vastly exceeded its proper powers...

...Neuhaus posits: "Law, as it is presently made by the judiciary, has declared its independence from morality...

...Robert Bork's Slouching Towards Gomorrah is number two on the New York Times bestseller list—a book in which Bork argues that America "is on the road to cultural disaster...

...A certain number of people who regard the symposium as alarmist or worse will say it proves how dangerous it can be to bring a religious sensibility into close contact with politics...

...And intellectuals sometimes blithely engage in discussion of civil disobedience and revolution, as if talk of these horrendous subjects had no real-world consequences...

...Those who object to the symposium insist that the nation is not in such desperate straits and that it is reckless and foolish to question the "regime...

...Finally, in the 1996 euthanasia case Compassion in Dying v. Washington, Judge Stephen Reinhardt's majority decision for the Ninth U.S...

...But it does contain its own dangers...

...Colson speculates on how religious conservatives will respond as the judiciary continues to usurp power to enforce its own "amoral libertarian regime...

...Is there no sense of honor...

...Neuhaus argues that no topic should be out of bounds for discussion and that the radical nature of the recent court crisis demands new types of thinking in response...

...Indeed, this is just another chapter in a long-running debate in religious quarters over how to square duty to God with duty to nation...

...And it is a tone mainstream conservatives have not used in a long while...

...Is there no sense of shame...

...If conservatives feel that they love their ideals more than their country, then you will see them withdrawing from public life, as Colson warns religious conservatives will...

...But that moment may be fast approaching, and in the meantime Christians should consider all options: "The fervent and ceaseless prayer of every Christian should be that the discussion of resistance and revolution remains an academic exercise...

...But revolutionary talk has become common in conservative circles...

...Circuit Court of Appeals struck another blow for the notion of the autonomous self...

...This symposium is only the beginning of the discussion, he maintains...

...and by the aid and comfort you for all practical purposes offer to the bomb throwers among us...

...It's a position paper with a chorus of papers to support it...

...It's not a symposium...

...What happens, in short, when the conservative finds he loves his ideals more than his country...

...To conclude from that the system is illegitimate is absurd...

...I am appalled," Podhoretz wrote to Neuhaus, "by the language . . . you use to describe this country, especially your own reference to Nazi Germany...

...Himmelfarb points out that Neuhaus's contribution "cites the American Revolution as if we are now in a similarly revolutionary situation—an analogy that, in my opinion (and that, I believe, of the overwhelming majority of Americans) is absurd and irresponsible...

...All the talk of "regime" is not proper political discourse and discredits, "or at least makes suspect, any attempt by conservatives to introduce moral and religious considerations into 'the public square'"—an effort Himmel-farb supports...

...government may be not only undemocratic, but immoral...

...The country has not reached the point at which Christians should cease to swear allegiance to the United States...

...Religious thinkers who are active in the public square do not want to avoid debates about first things...

...That style of conservatism was extinguished, many conservatives would say, when the unconscious assumptions upon which it was based were challenged by the 1960s...

...Reinhardt argued that people with religious convictions are not free to impose their beliefs on others...

...They retain faith in the wisdom of the American people, in their ability to eventually correct the errors of their courts, and in the basic health of the American government...

...Either traditional theists will be forced to abandon their religious beliefs, or, more likely, they will be forced to withdraw from public life and become what theologian Stanley Hauerwas calls "resident aliens" in America—no longer "concerned about the fortunes or misfortunes of a flawed Republic, no longer considering this land their country...

...It will call America into question in the name of higher things...

...If so, we are witnessing the end of democracy," Neuhaus writes...

...Jefferson was too reckless when he said the ground of democracy needed to be watered every thirty years by the blood of revolution," Neuhaus says, "but we should raise fundamental questions and look things over from time to time...

...Other conservatives would pass a constitutional amendment doing away with judicial review...

...But "we must—slowly, prayerfully, and with great deliberation and serious debate—prepare ourselves for what the future seems likely to bring under a regime in which the courts have usurped the democratic process by reckless exercise of naked power...

...Most people throughout history have lived under dubious regimes," Neuhaus says...

...First Things is a magazine about religion and the public square, and Neuhaus is a leading proponent of the idea that religion must play a larger role in political life...

...Robert Bork has a proposal that would radically alter the constitutional order, one that would allow the Congress to overturn by majority vote any Supreme Court decision...

...Thus, religion can breed apocalyptic extremism and zealous outbursts...

...Neuhaus, a Lutheran pastor turned Catholic priest who is on close terms with Pope John Paul II, has gone into all this with his eyes open...

...I don't accept the idea that the issue is simply an exploration of the matter, though that's the language," Berger says...

...American conservatism is based on abstract ideals, and if there is a wave of disenchantment on the right it will take the form we see here...

...They have been known to fly off the handle...

...In those days liberals were the ones who sought to declare the American "regime" illegitimate...

...That writer, of course, was Richard John Neuhaus...

...Possible, because once private individuals are allowed rights to use lethal force for vindicating justice in their own cause (as in abortion or euthanasia), it is difficult to see how even the most rudimentary foundations of the older political society—those that reserve the use of lethal force to public authority—still remain...