The Anti-Manichaeist

Knowing full well what a sordid business much of politics is? I’ve been engaged in that debate over at Jesus Politics with a fellow Christian named Scott. Scott takes a libertarian view that is against the gov’t using violence to take from some and give to others. I’ve been rehashing Hobbsean arguments for why this is inevitable and justified and how the real issue is not whether we participate in gov’t, but rather do we deliberate on how we act wrt gov’t and act on behalf of more than our own interests. It’s a simple and persistent point, but one that needs to be revisited frequently as more people grow in their understanding of the political process and the ambiguities of right conduct in politics.

Friar Jape over at New Pantagruel(tNP) pens about how,

history is replete with the tragic lesson that political power is inherently corrupting of principle, yet the truth of principles cannot get any traction in the world without being in and of it.

The NPG main editors go on to chastise those Xtn leaders who want nothing to do with the existing state of US politics, but still keep their political power and express their angst over the existing system. According to the editors of tNP,

“the best of Xtn political tradition teaches us to align ourselves radically with the particular and the individual without actually believing that the institutional regime must be overthrown. One can thus work to mitigate and contain institutional power…knowing that even if good can be done, evil will be done too.”

Having said all that, they think US is caught in the sands of extreme nihilistic individualism, with abortion being the jewel of that culture. Thus, they continue to justify why they weight abortion so much as a political issue for them.

One can counter by asking whether we Xtns need to learn from experience about the extent we are fallible in our selection of particular political goals and the degree and manner of radicalism therein? Didn’t the radical move for the prohibition of alcohol do more harm than good? Didn’t the prohibitionists fail to help secure rights for African-Americans in the post-bellum South? Haven’t prolifers’ political strategies led primarily to increased acrimony and the degradation of the US’s democracy over the past thirty some years, rather than the effective prevention of abortions or the loss of already-born lives? Even if abortion is the jewel of nihilistic individualism, that doesn’t mean we can effectively combat the culture of death by extending legal personhood to the newly-formed zygote.

The rest of the post at tNP is a dialogue that shows strong differences among the editors apart from a deep anti-liberalism. I’m afraid that I am pro-liberalism. I am very much a consequentialist in my political ethics. Although I am not a utilitarian in that I don’t believe there is a natural or divine god-given way of weighting the importance of the different ends involved in policy, such a weighting is inevitably an exercise of our god-given free-wills. And so, what my liberalism means is: (1) we should cast a wide net of not-so-radical, potential political changes; (2) we need to be more transparent in how we make fallible judgments about what can and cannot be changed about the world we live in and (3) we need to permit for some decentralization in activism along conflicting views on these matters; (4) we need more of a focus on the rules of the system and their fairness, or how they give voice to others, relative to pressing for our particular causes; (5) we need to value ecumenicism(which is unfortunately often referred to as tolerance by many today). Ecumenicism here is taken to be that conversion should never be an immediate goal in political involvemen and our ultimate goal of political involvement should be to win opportunities to help disciple others to become Christ-followers, not convert to our systems of beliefs, both political and theological.

So I guess our difference over liberalism may be why tNP never gave this blog a response from the comments I made earlier about their blog. Such is unfortunately much of life.
dlw