Continuing on with my fascination with intellectual conservatism (just removed denigrating scare quotes at the last minute), Sohrab Ahmari vs. David French is a curious anomaly to me, though it may have been always lurking below the surface. Certainly, going back to the Moral Majority, the desire of conservatives to have their version of Christianity play a greater role in US governance has been with us in terms of voting patterns and cultural preferences, but the notion that among the intelligentsia there was a desire for some kind of Christian Dominionism or at least greater control of the public square is not a perspective I’ve encountered. Instead, there were more targeted approaches like criticizing Roe v. Wade on the basis of constitutional arguments and legal ideas, or working towards expanding tax-dollar flows to home schoolers or other select (I originally wrote “fringe” here, but need to work on my neutral voice language that ebbs and flows) religious ideas. The religious deserved to not be disregarded in the face of cultural drift.
It’s worth noting that using the US Constitution as a touchstone for bolstering protections for the religious seems to most of us as a secular appeal rather than a scriptural or theological one. Such an approach squares nicely with our increasing defense of the rights and freedoms of groups previously marginalized or discriminated against. Yet part of the right (Ahmari and a pastor named Doug Wilson, at least; French is their foe) sees a desire for greater cultural and political control as actually rooted in that legal basis. After all, if reason is intrinsically derived from their god, then the reason in the American Experiment is always and inextricably tied to that god. There is no escape from that perspective and the need for a culture that reflects it. Wilson pushes that the success of America combined with its founding by Christians means that Muslims, secularists, or others can’t claim an equal epistemological claim for correctness.
And where else do we see illiberalism rear its misshapen head? Here is Amy Wax of Penn Law being interviewed about immigration and the idea that some cultures are simply incompatible and irreconcilable to first world ideas about, well, litter and other requirements for cultural assimilation. Yes, litter, though she is frank that she has no data to support that claim. She has vague ideas that cultural values may block assimilation or cooperation or something if those cultures are too different. Her frankness about her data limitations reflects a certain care, I guess. She has anecdotes about Swiss children being well behaved (due to being taught self-control from early on), but sees many third world cultures as being unwilling or incapable of learning similar values. Open the floodgates and the hills would be alive, not with crisply disciplined melodies, but with unfamiliar jungle beats or something.
So, again, protection of a static culture against the rub of cosmopolitanism is the theme. And, again, we have no real basis for any of the claims except for rambling (yes, sorry, I stand by that derogatory assessment) illiberalism. The cultural purists are shocked by 21st century change even more than they were in the 60s, but have drifted themselves in their acceptance of women in the workforce and a full acceptance of racial minorities having a place at the table. But marriage equality and too many odd strangers in the castle threatens to undermine the ramparts. We just keep losing too much, from worshippers to public opinion.
Reading on in French’s rebuttals as well as the data-poor admissions of Wax we see some clarity, however. Whatever incipient desires lurk in the hearts of the illiberal theorists and theologians, when these arguments get processed in the broader modern culture they are exposed for their limitations. Without evidence that our (semi-)open societies are broken we have nothing but strangled arguments and mini-outrages about things of little concern like Drag Queen Story Hour or cake decoration bigotry.
And that may be the defining trend since the Enlightenment. With freedom of conscience comes an expectation of genuine justification for any oppression of others, and for an epistemology derived from facts and reason that takes us far afield from traditionalism.