Christian and Libertarian

At a conference this last week in Washington, DC, a group of Catholic bishops and thinkers gathered to discuss the deep schism between Catholic teaching and American libertarian thought.  The title of the conference laid out the core premise pretty clearly:

"Erroneous Autonomy: The Catholic Case Against Libertarianism."

The speakers and presenters weren't there for dialogue with the libertarian movement.  They were there to present the Vatican's position, which is pretty solid.  That position is that...as it is manifested in the United States right now...libertarian thought is fundamentally opposed to Catholic teaching.

The reasons for this are various.

The most obvious, is that the "libertarian" thought typified by Ayn Rand and some right-wing masters of global capital is utterly alien to the teachings of Jesus.  You cannot hold the poor, the outcast, and the weak in contempt and consider yourself a Christian.  You cannot have personal profit or "shareholder value" serve as your primary moral compass and consider yourself a Christian.  That cannot be so.

This is the thrust of the Vatican's case against what often passes for "libertarian" thought in American political discourse. What does this look like?

It looks like the cretin wandering through Target with a faux-assault long gun.

It looks like the CEO who couldn't care less about workers, customers, clients, or community, but only thinks about maximizing profits.

If you use your freedom to threaten or prey on others, Jesus has beef with that.  In that, I find myself in agreement with my Catholic brothers and sisters.

I'm not totally there, though, because I think it's easy to assume from the morons and magnates who tend to become the public face of libertarianism that that's all there is to it.  That's a flawed assumption.

I'm also aware that Catholicism is a deeply hierarchical and authority-based faith tradition.  If you are a traditional Catholic, all autonomy is erroneous.  Final authority for all spiritual matters rests with the Vatican.  One can resist, of course, or disagree.  And I know folks do, and still consider themselves Catholic.  But within that system of faith, autonomy is not a core value.

Or to put it another way, when Catholicism errs, too much freedom ain't the error.

While it is not possible to be an acolyte of Ayn Rand or Milton Friedman and also Christian, it is entirely possible to be libertarian and Christian.

I can speak this with confidence, because I've bothered reading the Bible.  Jesus has plenty to say about freedom and the law, in both his actions and his teachings.  While he honored the intent of the law in both his actions and his teachings, he was also not willing to be bound by authority when authority itself transgressed against the purpose of the law.

The Apostle Paul--not "deutero-Paul," but the Apostle himself--taught precisely the same value set.  Honor and respect the law, even if it kills you.  He'd say this.  But at the same time, he recognized that following Jesus meant we no longer felt under the pressure of coercive power.  There's one law.  Just one.  Other than that, we're completely free.

That's the same position held by the Letter of James.  The "Royal Law" is also the Law of Liberty.

The Gospels and Epistles make it clear: liberty exists so long as love is the rule of our life.  If we do not love our neighbors as ourselves, then the systems and cultures we create will become the enemies of our own freedom.

If this is how you live, valuing your neighbor's freedom as deeply as your own, then liberty is a meaningful value for you.  You're both Christian and libertarian.

If not?  If all that matters to you are your rights, your wealth, and your power?  It is not a love of liberty that guides you.

That so many in our culture choose to understand liberty otherwise creates an interesting and observable irony: profit-driven capitalist "libertarianism" is the enemy of human freedom.  It controls with hunger and fear, and zealously defends its selfish freedom even if the liberty of others is trampled in the process.

So we can talk endlessly about liberty, while doing everything in our power to destroy it.  It never ceases to amaze me how many novel ways human beings can come up with to screw things up.

A Question of Diversity

With the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, I'm seriously stoked. Who'd have thought my 200-to-one bet would come in? I mean, dang. I had to argue a bit with my bookie about her cat's name, but Puddles Q. Puddleton still counts.

Given this potential new addition to the Supremes, there's a great deal of chatter in the media and the blogosphere about the role of diversity on the court. The whole event is highly charged, crackling with allegations on both sides of racial bias. Racism is, in the strange spin calculus of America's binary political system, the primary charge being leveled against Sotomayor by her opponents. Given the rather tenuous and troubled linkage between the conservative movement and Latino culture, this seems a rather foolish approach. The most effective counterspin seems pretty straightforward: "So she's proud of her culture and her heritage, and that makes her racist? Being proud to be a Latina makes you racist?" I guess the Latina vote in Florida and Texas just aren't important any more. The GOP seems so deafened by the din in it's increasingly small echo-chamber that it's walking right into that one.

The charges that she's an "intellectual lightweight" aren't going to help them much either. So...she's a Latina, ergo she could only have gotten where she is with the help of bleeding heart liberals, ergo she must be una muchacha estúpida. Again, I'm not sure that conservatives grasp the whole concept of getting la gente to vote for your candidates.

The piece that most interests me in this whole media maelstrom, though, is the rather odd spin this puts on the religious makeup of the Court. If Sotomayor is confirmed, the Supreme Court will have a Catholic supermajority. Of the nine justices, six will be Catholic, two Jewish, and one Protestant. This little oddment hasn't really made it past the radar of the faith-blogosphere into the broader media, but it's interesting. There was a time when the idea of having a Catholic in a position of leadership was a radical thing. Now, people seem utterly unphased by the idea that one of the three branches of government...the one in which people have lifelong appointments....is two-thirds Catholic in a nation that is majority Protestant.

As my tinfoil hat is quite effective in keeping the transmissions from the Illuminati at bay, I don't worry too much about some great Catholic conspiracy to take over the nation. What I do find myself wondering is what factors have lead to this seemingly random and utterly disproportionate weighting.

This seems mostly a construct of interesting dynamics within the conservative movement. Given that two of the last three administrations have been conservative, and that the conservative wing of the Court (Roberts/Scalia/Alito/Thomas) is entirely Catholic, I find myself wondering: is there something about conservative Protestants that makes them steer away from careers in law and government?

In stark contrast to the vigorous intellectual life that is encouraged in certain quarters of the Catholic church and Catholic systems of education, the American evangelical movement has been typically charged with a strong anti-intellectualism, favoring instead an emotive approach to faith. I'm not sure that this is all that is at work here, as within fundamentalism in particular the life of the mind can be surprisingly active. It is constrained within presuppositions about Biblical inerrancy, sure. But it's amazing how much intellectual capital one can expend defending that worldview.

What I think is more significant is the conservative Protestant understanding of the role of the state. Moving in step with cultural conservatism, the evangelical movement has woven into itself a deep distrust of government and the federal government in particular. This doesn't mean that evangelical Conservative Protestants are averse to practicing law. Some of the most intensely fundamentalist souls I've interacted with have been lawyers. Folks who get off on the structures of the law can find the legalism of a literalist faith deeply affirming. Even Jesus noted that tendency on occasion.

But given the deep distrust of government that defines Protestant conservatism, finding evangelicals whose calling is to federal civil service might be something of a challenge.