Positive Liberty

Welcome to the February 28, 2007 edition of carnival of citizens. The theme of this edition is “church and state,” and many of the contributors indeed wrote on topics touching on religion and government. Many others didn’t. That’s okay; I’ve tried to include one post from all contributors, usually on the topic I liked the best in the cases where I had to decide.

At least, I included every post that wasn’t obviously spam. (My god, people spam blog carnivals?)

Update: Somehow I missed a post, from longtime blog neighbor Mark Olson, no less.

Olson writes in response to Richard Chappell (below) on religion, reason, and the public square. It’s a provocative challenge, I think, and I look forward to Chappell’s response:

Christianity for example has (at least) two major arcs of theological thought. One via Clement, Augustine, and Aquinas is in basic agreement with Mr Chappell, that the Christian faith is amenable to reason. Another current, via Irenaeus, the Cappadocians (Basil, Gregory, Gregory, and John), Dionysus, Maximus disagree (disclosure here, I’m a recent convert to this second current). Faith for them is not amenable solely to nous (reason). Does it therefore follow that the Eastern tradition is not permitted in the public square? The second problem is this, is that my guess would be that Mr Chappell probably does not include Roman Catholicism, Augustine/Aquinas notwithstanding, into the subset of religions which are “based on public reason”. If not, what religions practiced today are so included? If that set is null, then this argument is dishonest one, proposing that for religious believers to debate in the public square they must adhere to a religion not practiced by men.

I would hazard a guess, though it’s only a guess, that religions are only genuinely participating in public discourse to the extent that they are able to reach out to people who do not share these ineffable insights: If we already share them, then we are participating with you in a set of private discourses, or in a set of private meanings that can’t be expected to appeal to people with a different (but no less strongly held) set of private and ineffable beliefs.

Carnival of Citizens founder Richard Chappell presents Religion and Deliberation at Philosophy, et Cetera. He writes,

As a deliberative democrat, I hold that we should promote informed deliberation among citizens, in hopes that the best-justified positions will ultimately carry the day.

Receptivity is a key value here: it’s vital to note that public debate is not merely another instrument of power, manipulating others to do as you want. Rather, it is seen as a co-operative, rational enterprise…

So, where does religion fit into all this? I guess that depends on the nature of the religion, and the way one tries to bring it into politics. If one’s religion is based on public reason, then I see no problem in principle. For example, if you think that God’s hand is evident in nature, and his perfect character transparent to reason, then you may try to bring me to see this. If there are good reasons to think that scripture provides an accurate moral guide, then you can share those reasons with me. We might argue about the correct interpretation, or even about whether the purported Holy Book is a relevant guide at all, but those are issues to be settled through deliberation; the answers are not “given”, or something we can know prior to inquiry. They are entirely appropriate for public debate.

On the other hand, the more dogmatic forms of religion have no place here, for they are inconsistent with civic respect.

I might add that many — including the American founders — seemed to believe that, while God’s hand was certainly evident in nature, human beings were often quite bad reading it. The “perfect” character of the Deity, “transparent to reason” sounds much more like the French Revolution’s idea of the Supreme Being than like the American Revolution’s providential but distant and enigmatic God.

Adam presents Radical Islam in the UK posted at Sophistpundit.

It’s an important subject, and the role of radical Islam is one of the key questions in church/state relations today.

This is a good time to note in passing the debate taking place over Ayaan Hirsi Ali among a group of high-caliber intellectuals: American historian Timothy Garton Ash takes a somewhat condescending view, suggesting that Enlightenment fundamentalism is not necessarily any better than other fundamentalisms. French philosopher Pascal Bruckner begs to differ, writing,

The difference between her and Muhammad Bouyeri, the killer of Theo Van Gogh, is that she never advocated murder to further her ideas…. It’s not enough that Ayaan Hirsi Ali has to live like a recluse, threatened with having her throat slit by radicals and surrounded by bodyguards. She… has to endure the ridicule of the high-minded idealists and armchair philosophers. She has even been called a Nazi in the Netherlands. Thus the defenders of liberty are styled as fascists, while the fanatics are portrayed as victims!

Very true. Bruckner covers a lot of territory in the essay, and I’m not sure I can agree with him on the advantages of the French church/state relationship, which is centralizing and often compulsorily secular — but if you want a good solid aphorism, the kind that makes you read philosophy in the first place, it’s hard to do better than his “In politics as in philosophy, the equals sign is always an abdication.” The rest of the debate can be found here.

On a closely related note, Madcap presents Multiculturalism: Islam’s WMD, posted at The Global Conservative. He suggests that liberalism — not just identity politics, but even open-borders cosmopolitan liberalism — is the unwitting tool of jihadists. It’s a strong rebuke to someone like me, though I’m not sure I qualify as a “gnostic,” a term he also invokes. A subject for further reading, I think.

Phil B. offers Recycle a Penny for Two Cents « Phil for Humanity at Phil for Humanity, saying, “The United States of America spends 1.73 cents to make a one cent coin and spends 8.74 cents to make a five cent coin. That’s right, it costs more money to make a penny and nickel than they are worth!” It’s a topic I’ve covered myself — though Phil does not consider my own pet solution, which is to let the value of the penny and the nickel float. (Totally unworkable in most practical cases, yes, but it would illustrate many interesting principles about commodity and fiat money and be a field day for Austrian economists, who at long last deserve one.)

Jack Yoest presents Exxon and Global Warming and Capitalism posted at Reasoned Audacity, saying, “‘Exxon, the sign of the double cross,’ quipped one leftist wag. The oil energy giant is often maligned by anarchists, non-capitalists and environmentalists. No matter what a Fortune 500 does, it will be maligned by socialists.”

Since I’ve outed myself as a moderate on global warming — I think it’s real but am uncertain of its extent and doubt that we should act immediately — I don’t have a lot to say. I’m not strongly motivated on the issue as some people are, just doggedly skeptical.

John considers Prince’s Subtle Anti-War Statement During Halftime at The Largest Minority. I didn’t see the halftime show — didn’t see the Super Bowl, come to think of it — so I can’t really comment. The close reading of pop lyrics, though, is interesting in its own right.

Rickey Henderson presents Shhhh! He’s Pondering! posted at Riding with Rickey, attempting to get into President Bush’s head regarding the troop surge and why such a small decision took so long to make.

Omyma presents The Opium of the Cheap Shot posted at thinkbridge. He comments, “This article is not philosophical in presentation, but does present a philosophical argument regarding the relationship between religion and politics. If it seems too flip, I can do a much more academic version of the same idea: the co-dependence-plus-necessary-independence of religion and government.”

I have to confess that I found the writing rather stream-of-consciousness and that I didn’t understand a lot of it.

Credo writes on Barack Obama and Illinois’ segregationist history at Fort Wayne African-American Independent Woman. I’ve often seen the claim that there need to be more local-interest blogs, and that we could learn many interesting things from citizen-journalists with an eye to local events. This is just one example of what I hope will be a trend in that direction.

In another example of localblogging, Riversider presents Riverworks, Who Stands to Gain: Property Consultants or the Environment? at Save The Ribble, a single-issue blog opposing development on its eponymous river.

And, in a third piece of localblogging, Steve Faber presents When Will It All Stop??? at DebtBlog, about a 20-time convict who is still out on the streets.

Barry Leiba recommends Reality-Based Government at Staring At Empty Pages. He addresses the issue of what it means to have a president who believes himself to be chosen by God. Bonus: Monty Python. Yes, I suppose you can see where this one is going….

Shankar presents Freedom for Blasphemy at Shankar. In a series of short observations and aphorisms, he makes the case that religious freedom, moderation, and even progress all depend on blasphemy:

When blasphemy is banned the moderatists will lose, and the fanatics will win. The fanatics will narrow and narrow their world view as their power grows to such an extent that the slightest disagreement from the moderatists will result in the killing of the moderate who disagrees with them.

RuthJoy at Detocqueville’s Daughter argues that Democracy Needs Religion. The heart of her post seems to be the following argument:

The Judeo-Christian tradition recognizes the dignity of each human person – believer or nonbeliever– as a creature of God. Without religion, we are left only with dignity by virtue of our citizenship, a dignity that is granted by the state. And a dignity that is granted can be withdrawn or withheld.

I agree entirely that a dignity granted is a dignity that can be withdrawn. Yet I can’t quite agree that we citizens get our dignity from our government.

In Lockean systems like ours, the citizens invest the government with whatever dignity it may possess. We don’t obtain our dignity through citizenship; we have it by the natural fact of being human. We extend this respect, or this worth, to the government insofar as the government acts to secure our rights and not to violate them egregiously. You and I may disagree about whether human dignity comes from God or from some other fact about life. For that matter, I may find religious forms of dignity unconvincing or even downright undignified. But as long as we accept that our government is merely an instrument of the people, it can neither confer nor withdraw any real dignities.

While we’re on the subject of Locke, and of the right of citizens to alter or abolish their governments, consider the following provocative introduction:

An attempt to take the life of a maniacal dictator and mass murder is just one of the many dilemmas that pose a serious challenge to one of the main aspects of modern ethical theory: the dichotomy between consequential and non-consequential approaches to ethics. Consequential ethical theories quite simply focus on the consequences of decisions as the most important factor in deciding correct actions, while non-consequential theories focus on the actions themselves, not the consequences. What should be more important, the ends or the means of an action? The theology and ethical theory of the Christian theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) connect the two seemingly contradictory approaches to ethics into a practical Christianity that is involved in the present reality of this world.

Bryan Norwood examines the historical plot on the life of Adolf Hitler in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Theology and Ethics posted at Movement of Existence. How should a Christian approach assassinations, coups, and revolutions? He makes the case for Bonhoeffer’s radical political engagement under some of the most extreme conditions imaginable.

J.C. Wilmore explores the ugly side of the Republicans’ “southern strategy” in Confederates in the Attic, posted at The Richmond Democrat. More and more, the southern strategy looks like a losing proposition to me, I have to say.

D.A.N. discusses what it means to respect the U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq, even if one doesn’t agree with the war or its conduct. His post is called “Respecting those Affected by War,” and it’s posted at Sights & Sounds from the Fifth Column.

Rick Pearcey presents O’Reilly, Letterman, and the Culture War at The Pearcey Report. He argues that the United States is in a war for its survival against secular liberals, and he uses the confrontation between Bill O’Reilly and David Letterman to demonstrate it. Yes, even “nice” people like David Letterman:

It is also important to understand that even nice secularists can become part of the problem, as it were, because the more consistent they are with their inadequate worldview, the less humane they will be in their societal interactions and politics. Thus, otherwise reasonable people can become the social equivalent of destructive fanatics insofar as they are committed to, or in the grasp of, an unfortunate vision of life. Those secularists who have imbibed their worldview from the surrounding naturalistic consensus will nevertheless find themselves drifting downstream with the current of the culture. And they may not like what they see drifting along with them in the water.

Human flotsam?

Jeffrey offers some policy suggestions in Top 5 Reforms Nobody’s Talking About, posted at The Soggy Liberal. He veers off into hyperbole at the end, but I do think his suggestion #2 is both reasonable and achievable.

Jon Swift takes a look at his Blogrolling habits over at that reasonable, conservative blog known as Jon Swift. He writes, “A couple of years ago New York Magazine examined who linked to whom in the blogosphere and they discovered that A-list blogs tend to link mostly to other A-list blogs. This elitism strikes me as strangely un-liberal and un-democratic. Ironically, major conservative bloggers are on average more inclusive of smaller blogs than major liberal bloggers.”

Charles H. Green presents The Cost of Freedom, the Savings of Trust posted at Trust Matters, saying, “Half the US economy is nothing but transaction costs, because we don’t trust each other. If we don’t learn how, those costs could eat us alive.”

It’s far from clear to me, initially, that we would want to dispense with the economy of trust. After all, trust is an economic value, just like any other, and I might well want to pay good money for it, even if it means accepting the security of, say, a brand name, and foregoing the possibly “better” product just down the road.

Obadiah Shoher gives us Bold Face, posted at Samson Blinded. It argues that European nations still owe America a debt from World War II, and that the goodness we extended to them in the 1940s was perhaps overgenerous — It certainly hasn’t produced reliable allies:

The US fought essentially for Britain in WWII, the European war of no particular interest to America. Hitler, if anything, praised America for successful racial segregation. Germany economically cooperated with America and provided bulwark against communism better than any Latin American dictatorship the US courted after the war. Still, the US entered the war on Britain’s side. Now the UK pulls its troops out of Iraq – admittedly, a lost venture, but a venture with the best partner Britain could get. Instead of slapping the UK with revocation of its status of “America’s man in Europe,” the United States government welcomes the British move as a sign of successful pacification of Iraq. Who is expected to buy that lie?

The politically correct American empire shies from demanding loyalty, and receives none.

To this I have to point out that Hitler did declare war on us, just four days after his allies attacked U.S. territory. It wasn’t as if we sat down and chose sides on that one; even if it had been more expedient, in the name of anti-communism, to side with Germany in World War II, that option was hardly available.

Gella Solomon sure knows how to make me sit up and take notice. She writes as follows:

What really gets me is that people can one minute be going on and on about how I am one of the most intelligent and aware people that they have ever met, and the second they catch wind of my politics, they immediately jump to “How could you believe something so ridiculous and stupid?” rather than, going by their previous, supposedly objective assessment of my intelligence and awareness, thinking that maybe, just maybe, I have good reason to think the way that I do.

Her post is called Sic Temper Tyrannis, and it can be found at Beyond The Near. She concludes with the following, which might just be a credo for the Carnival of Citizens as it was first envisioned:

I’m tired of it. I’m tired of assumptions and labels… I’m tired of making the arguments and then having them not refuted but ignored. I’m tired of pointing out the misinformation and still seeing it disseminated as fact. I’m tired of slogans and “Who can shout loudest” competitions, of “everybody scream if you think I’m right” and “Put your fist in the air if you agree” with no thought for the fact that someone might actually dare to have a different thought. What makes me the most tired is that I have no reason to think that this will change any time soon.

Her particular apostasy? Being a Republican.

This concludes the Carnival of Citizens, and I hope you found many posts that were worth your time. I’m closing the comments on this post so that you’ll leave your replies at the authors’ sites instead. Many discussions are underway already.

Submit your blog article to the next edition of carnival of citizens using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

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Keep the comments civil. I’ve rejected four of them this morning that had no place whatsoever on this weblog, all from the same individual. If you want to talk that way, do it on your own blog.

In a long-running series of posts (all of which are in the Belfry), Rowe has sought to demonstrate the true religious beliefs of the American founders. He argues that many of them, including many of the most important, were neither orthodox Christians nor strict deists, but were what he terms theistic rationalists — They believed in Providence, and in the goodness of the gospel message as a moral teaching. They often doubted, however, such orthodox ideas as original sin, the divinity of Jesus, the trinity, the virgin birth, and the resurrection.

In a recent comment, Rowe writes, “I think we could interpret Jefferson as believing Jesus’ words (even though he thought Jesus was a man not God, or even a divine being created by but inferior to God the father) were divinely inspired.” This seems to me an accurate statement of Jefferson’s own spiritual or religious beliefs. But is it logically tenable? I don’t think that it is.

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Scof has left a number of comments to my short note below on Cold War and the war on terrorism. I thought I’d bump his remarks to the top and reply in detail.

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Towleroad raises the prospect. Let’s be perfectly clear, though: Same-sex marriage in a free country means that you get to make your marriage contract, freely, with another individual who may happen to be of the same sex, or not, as you yourself decide. Same-sex marriage in a communist country means that you get to share and share alike with your partner whatever the two of you have managed to take from others by way of the government. In mixed economies, it’s a little of both. What I support is both laissez faire and the freedom to marry.

Michael and Jana Novak have responded to Joseph Ellis’ thoughts on the Founders and Religion on the Encyclopedia Britannica Blog. (See my thoughts on Ellis’ post.) In particular, they don’t like Ellis’ use of the phrase, “pantheistic sense of providential destiny,” to describe Washington’s God. They write:

Finally, it is really not possible to demonstrate from Washington’s public decrees that the Providence to whom he asked his army and fellow citizens to pray was “pantheistic.” On the contrary, his public prayers as commanding General and as President expected Providence to favor liberty and thus, though both prayed to the same Providence, the American cause over the British. He expected his God — and the nation — to “interpose” his divine action in the course of the war, and in the later course of American history.

And just as the American Founders held that the natural rights they declared belonged not solely to them but to all humankind, so the God to whom they prayed did not belong solely to them, but is the Almighty Lord of all, who sits in judgment over this nation and others. President Washington did not scruple, in his eloquent message to the Hebrew Congregation of Savannah, to identify the God “Jehovah” who led the Jewish people in Israel, with the Providence who led Americans through their founding period.

I think “pantheistic” aptly describes not just Washington’s, but the other key Founders’ God. Though It was, as the Novaks’ note, a particular type of pantheistic Providence; theirs was an active personal God, indeed one who favored political liberty and frowned upon tyrannical leaders (not exactly attributes of the Biblical God, who doesn’t seem concerned with political — as opposed to spiritual — liberty; and Paul admonishes Christians to follow civil magistrates, even secular, pagan, and arguably tyrannical ones like Nero, the leader to whom Paul told Christians to obey in Romans 13).

The Founders’ God was, however, universalistic. Various peoples of various religious traditions, even those outside the “Judeo-Christian” one, worshipped the same God who goes by many different proper names. And it was customary for the Founders to use the proper name for God with which the addressees would feel most comfortable. The only time Washington ever, to my knowledge, named God “Jehovah” was in one address to the Hebrew Congregation of Savannah. Twice however, I have counted Washington used the proper name “the Great Spirit” — here and here — for God, but only when addressing American Indians.

In sum, if “pantheistic” can mean an active, personal, universalistic God, then such a term accurately describes the God the key Founders like Washington worshipped.

The key Founders, you know them — Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin and a few others — had a particularly nuanced view of Scripture that differed from that of the “Deists” on the one hand and the “Christians” on the other. Their view of Scripture perfectly illustrates how their religion was a hybrid of the two systems — in between Deism and Christianity — with rationalism as the trumping element.

The strict Deist point of view, ala Thomas Paine and Ethan Allen, categorically rejected all revelation in favor of man’s reason. Orthodox Christians, on the other hand, viewed Scripture as inerrant and infallible. And though some in the orthodox Christian tradition accepted natural theology — or what man can discover from reason — Christians elevated revelation over reason. See Luther calling man’s reason “the devil’s whore,” or Aquinas, who argued the findings of man’s reason must perfectly coincide with all of Scripture, or else man, as fallible, must have erred.

The key Founders believed in the truth of both man’s reason and biblical revelation. Yet, they thought only parts of the Bible were legitimately revealed by God. They elevated man’s reason over revelation as the final arbiter of what revelation was legitimately given by God. Only those legitimate parts of the Bible provided support for man’s reason which was supreme. Continue Reading »

On James H. Hutson’s The Founders on Religion: A Book of Quotations.

“The book . . . represents, with great balance, the Founders’ differing religious viewpoints. . . . All in all, this is the most balanced collection of quotations representing the Founders’ religious views published thus far.”–Jonathan Rowe, First Things

To see my entire review, scroll down here to the eighth book review.

I recently had the chance to discuss F. A. Hayek’s 1949 essay “The Intellectuals and Socialism” with a group of promising young libertarians. It’s one of the classic think-pieces of libertarian literature, and I was struck at how, again and again, they declined to take up the advice that Hayek offered in his last paragraph:

The main lesson which the true liberal must learn from the success of the socialists is that it was their courage to be Utopian which gained them the support of the intellectuals and therefore an influence on public opinion which is daily making possible what only recently seemed utterly remote. Those who have concerned themselves exclusively with what seemed practicable in the existing state of opinion have constantly found that even this had rapidly become politically impossible as the result of changes in a public opinion which they have done nothing to guide. Unless we can make the philosophic foundations of a free society once more a living intellectual issue, and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of our liveliest minds. But if we can regain that belief in the power of ideas which was the mark of liberalism at its best, the battle is not lost. The intellectual revival of liberalism is already underway in many parts of the world. Will it be in time?

I should say that I think Hayek somewhat betrays himself in the paragraph quoted above. The central contention of his essay was not that we should all run out and imagine utopias. What he chiefly argued was that the most productive way to change how the great mass of people think is to persuade the intellectuals first. Do this, and the intellectuals — the dealers in secondhand ideas, he called them — will convince everyone else for you. Recent social science tends to verify Hayek’s intuition.

Hayek also argued that Utopias were the best tool to accomplish this initial stage of a widespread change in our political culture. He claimed that utopias convince intellectuals. I think that this is often correct, but it also seems fairly obvious to me that they are not the only tool. This was simply how the socialists did it; it worked for them, and as a result we got the modern welfare state (a horrific bait-and-switch, that one).

In the discussion that prompted this post, it became clear to me that, for the rising generation, Utopia was off the table. There are several plausible reasons for this.

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There’s a vigorous discussion on global warming going on in the comments below, and I will take this opportunity to note that in today’s Washington Post, Mark Sanford, the Republican governor of South Carolina, calls for “conservative” solutions to the problem — without mentioning a single specific proposal. Such is the quality of the debate, it seems.

Meanwhile, global-warming denial got an interesting parallel today at Reason’s Hit and Run blog: A post by Brian Doherty strongly implied that HIV/AIDS denialists might actually have a point.

Which, to my mind, is kind of like saying that the UFO nuts might actually have a point.

Many commenters, including yours truly, politely (or not-so-politely) told the deniers to get lost. I’ve seen friends get sick; I’ve seen them get well again. What helps? Anti-retroviral drugs. Gosh, do you think a retrovirus might be causing them to get sick? Could it be? No, wait, maybe it’s a government conspiracy…

This kind of talk kills people.

Maybe we’re actually flat-out wrong that HIV causes AIDS. But you know what? Acting as if HIV causes AIDS still saves lives. Anti-retrovirals work, even if you don’t believe in them. They’re the best thing that we have, even if we can’t answer every niggling doubt of every denialist who ever misquoted a study. That’s good enough for me. I don’t want to see any more of my friends die, got it?

On a lighter note, what’s fascinating to me in both of these cases is how people who seem to be quite rational on one subject turn out to seem so irrational elsewhere. If you think I’m strange for holding that we should do nothing about global warming, then consider the case of Kary Mullis, who won the Nobel Prize in medicine for discovering the polymerase chain reaction. Mullis also denies global warming, denies that CFCs deplete the ozone layer, denies that HIV causes AIDS, and believes he was abducted by space aliens.

Man, I got nothin’ on him…

Some time ago I posted about how the Human Rights Campaign alienates its friends. It seems the revolt is in full swing now. Via Andrew Sullivan, Michael Petrelis writes,

The problem, as I see it, is that HRC and Solmonese believe they are above reproach and any criticism leveled against them is tantamount to betrayal, which is simply not the case.

Here are few recommendations for Solmonese and HRC: Start dealing honestly with the mounting valid complaints against your operations, develop a thicker skin and stop equating HRC as the entire movement.

What I’d like to see — and I think this would make a huge difference at all levels of the organization — is an awareness of gay families and a membership communications approach that doesn’t cater to the closeted first, while leaving the rest of us behind.

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Christopher Hitchens tries to claim another Founding Father as an atheist. First he did this with Jefferson. Now Franklin. Hitchens’ review of Brooke Allen’s book isn’t all bad. And Allen’s book is well written and researched even if it does have a few moderate gaffes (which one day, maybe I’ll discuss). Here is the offending passage:

Of Franklin it seems almost certainly right to say that he was an atheist (Jerry Weinberger’s excellent recent study Benjamin Franklin Unmasked being the best reference here), but the master tacticians of church-state separation, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, were somewhat more opaque about their beliefs.

Compare that with Franklin’s own words, shortly before his death:

Here is my Creed: I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe. That He governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable Service we can render to him, is doing Good to his other Children. That the Soul of Man is immortal, and will be treated with Justice in another Life respecting its Conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental Principles of all sound Religion, and I regard them as you do, in whatever Sect I meet with them. As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw, or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting Changes, and I have with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his Divinity: tho’ it is a Question I do not dogmatise upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble. I see no harm however in its being believed, if that Belief has the good Consequence as probably it has, of making his Doctrines more respected and better observed, especially as I do not perceive that the Supreme takes it amiss, by distinguishing the Believers, in his Government of the World, with any particular Marks of his Displeasure.

I wonder if Hitchens believes that Franklin and others were some kind of Straussians — atheists who repeatedly lied about believing in God in their public and private statements.

Note also, when Franklin says that Jesus’ teachings have “received various corrupting Changes,” that term has specific meaning. It was coined by Franklin’s friend Joseph Priestly and those corruptions were the Trinity, Incarnation, Atonement, and Plenary Inspiration of Scripture. These were central creeds of orthodox Christian Churches in which almost all founding fathers were raised and to which most — like Jefferson, Madison, and Washington — belonged in adult life. Religious conservatives are apt to note Washington et al. regulary attended the Anglican/Episcopal Church where he/they would hear orthodox doctrines — the Trinity, Incarnation, the Atonement, etc. — being preached. If he didn’t believe these things, the argument goes, why would he subject himself to hearing this? Well, Jefferson and Madison, both, without question, theological unitarians, likewise attended the Anglican/Episcopal Church in whose orthodox doctrines they did not believe.

Franklin here resolves this paradox: It’s because the orthodox Trinitarian Churches, like “all sound Religion,” even the non-Judeo-Christian ones, teach that there is “one God, Creator of the Universe. That He governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable Service we can render to him, is doing Good to his other Children. That the Soul of Man is immortal, and will be treated with Justice in another Life respecting its Conduct in this.” As long as this theistic minimum is met, it matters not that church members are taught to believe in such harmless irrationalities as the Trinity, Incarnation, and the Atonement.

While Adams and Jefferson can be quite harsh on such “corruptions of Christianity” in their letters — indeed Jefferson in a fit of anger once wrote it would be better to be an atheist than believe in Calvin’s God — judging by Jefferson’s behavior going to and never formally renouncing his membership in the Anglican/Episcopal Church, he too probably would rather see people believe in irrational Trinitarianism than in no God at all.

I have not seen in any of Washington’s letters the rants against Trinitarianism that we see in Jefferson’s and Adams’. Though he never endorses Trinitarianism or speaks in Trinitarian terms. Like Franklin, he probably dismissed the Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement as harmless irrationalities.

The eminent scholar Joseph Ellis has been posting this week about the Founders at the Encyclopaedia Britannica blog. Today he posts on the Founders and their religious beliefs. My biggest problem with his analysis is that he finds “diversity” of belief where, in fact, little diversity exists. Now, there was a split between the strict Deists, the orthodox Christians, and the “theistic rationalists” (a middle ground between strict Deism and orthodox Christianity with “rationalism” as the trumping element). But the key Founders — the ones that everyone thinks of when we say the term “Founding Fathers” — indeed the only ones that Ellis mentions here — all believed the same: They were the “theistic rationalists.” Ellis writes:

In recent decades Christian advocacy groups, prompted by motives that have been questioned by some, have felt a powerful urge to enlist the Founding Fathers in their respective congregations. But recovering the spiritual convictions of the Founders, in all their messy integrity, is not an easy task. Once again, diversity is the dominant pattern. Franklin and Jefferson were deists, Washington harbored a pantheistic sense of providential destiny, John Adams began a Congregationalist and ended a Unitarian, Hamilton was a lukewarm Anglican for most of his life but embraced a more actively Christian posture after his son died in a duel.

Jefferson and Franklin Deists? Neither of them referred to themselves as Deists in their adult life. Franklin embraced Deism as a teenager but rejected Deism his entire adult life. Both Franklin and Jefferson, contra the Deists, invoked an active, personal God. Ellis apparently is unaware that Adams’ Congregation preached Unitarianism as of 1750 and Adams testified being one since a teenager.

When one examines the specific doctrines in which each of the five key Founders Ellis invokes believed, it turns out that little difference can be found between Jefferson’s and Franklin’s “Deism,” Adams’ “Unitarianism,” Washington’s “pantheistic sense of providential destiny,” and Hamilton’s “lukewarm Anglicanism.”

More money and credit below the fold — possibly more than is good for the economy, as it turns out.

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Congressman Marty Meehan plans to introduce a bill ending the U.S. military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. This is wonderful news; if passed, the bill will remove one of the most serious barriers to gay and lesbian civic equality.

But wait, you say, can’t gays and lesbians already serve in the military, provided that they keep quiet about their sexuality? And isn’t that a reasonable compromise?

No. Here’s why:

a Zogby poll taken in October showed… that nearly one in four U.S. troops say they know for sure that someone in their unit is gay or lesbian, and of those 59% said they learned about the person’s sexual orientation directly from the individual.

Think about this for a moment. Nearly one in four people in the U.S. military know a gay or lesbian service member. This means that nearly one in four people in the U.S. military has the power of blackmail over another soldier. With a single phone call, they can end a career and possibly ruin another person’s entire life. That kind of power breeds contempt and cruelty. It has no place in a fighting force that should act with professionalism and coordination.

It’s a tribute to the integrity of most U.S. servicemen that we don’t hear of such cases very often. Yet the sheer fact that they are still possible is a crime in itself. It’s a threat to good discipline and camaraderie — and it’s unpardonable when it’s a matter of life and death.