2 of 4

When these arguments are advanced by people like Princeton University philosopher Peter Singer, they lead to such radical conclusions as the endorsement of infanticide on a massive scale to produce transplantable organs. Singer is logically consistent. He is true to his faith. But most liberals are not willing to go there and haven't seen (or refuse to face up to) the implications of their view.

In most cases, support for the destruction of human life by abortion or for embryonic research is not carefully researched. Such views are held as a matter of faith. They're the convictions of "our kind of people," the convictions of people who consider themselves to be sophisticated and bright.

Daniel Dennett, a philosopher, even has a name for people who share the secularist orthodoxy. He calls them, and he includes himself in this, the Brights. And the implication of that is the others are the Dumbs or the Stupids.

The Dims.

That's a better word, the Dims.

Is it one orthodoxy versus another? Or is it a Judeo-Christian tradition versus a variety of orthodoxies?

Just as within the larger community of people who hold Judeo-Christian values and beliefs there are people who emphasize different things, there is a variety on the secular liberal side. There are people who emphasize different issues—some who emphasize environmentalism or animal rights, some who press for what they insist on calling "abortion rights," and some who push for the redefinition of marriage to include persons of the same sex or even "marriages" of three or more people.

But there's a family of views. They hang together on the basis of certain assumptions about human meaning, dignity, and destiny. In one perspective, the dignity of the human being depends on the human being's autonomy being strictly respected when it comes to issues that they regard as being of an intimate and personal nature. So, we are told, not only must we accept homosexual conduct and polyamorous relations, we must honor them and even accord them the status of marriage where that is desired, and so forth. Abortion has to be permitted, and not only permitted but paid for with public money, and there must be no stigma attached to it.

So, as I say, it's a family of views, but the rejection of Judeo-Christian principles is central to everything on the secular Left that marks it as distinctive.

What do you think of Alan Wolfe's thesis that most Americans really are not radically devoted to one orthodoxy or another but are a muddled, moderate middle and would rather just get along?

I don't think he's right. My understanding of his method is that he has taken a couple of hundred people, perhaps on more than one occasion, perhaps different people on different occasions, and done extensive interviews with them. I don't know how much that reveals, because I don't know the details of the discussions that he had with them.

next page... |  2 of 4

share this page

June 2006, Vol. 50, No. 6