Wrestling With Religion: What GOP Strategist Steve Schmidt Doesn't Understand

(and why this matters around the world)
Also, a post that must be read entirely to be understood.

Caricature from "Le Rire" regarding a 1905 French law on the separation of Church and State)

John McCain's campaign manager Steve Schmidt made some news of his own the other day with his speech at the Log Cabin Republicans' national convention. The Huffington Post summed it up very well; "Steve Schmidt, McCain Campaign Manager: Religion Could Kill The GOP". Unfortunately the Huffington Post has also, in summing up Schmidt's point, made a better one than Schmidt himself did. To quote;

"If you put public policy issues to a religious test, you risk becoming a religious party," Schmidt declared. "And in a free country, a political party cannot be viable in the long term if it is seen as a sectarian party."

Whatever you think about the policies and beliefs of the Republican Party, this statement is incorrect.

First, in a technical sense, "Christian Democratic" political parties are extraordinarily common throughout the globe, and are frequently dominant in European Union nations. The international organization of Christian democratic parties, the Centrist Democrat International (CDI), is the second largest international political organization in the world (second only to the Socialist International). A majority of of the nations that the average North American would acknowledge as being democratic have extremely strong Christian Democratic parties. There is plenty of reason NOT to want any party with religion embedded directly of course, but nobody should pretend it is impossible.

In the second place, Schmidt's statement about the proper role of religion in politics is logically unsound. This is a pretty strong statement on my part, and such criticism would be unfair if the statement was taken casually, but policy at his level has to treated precisely.

What Schmidt is saying, is that an issue, or proposal that arrives, or is taken into the public sphere, is not to be filtered by religious convictions. Obviously in this context there is no question of Republican positions being formally certified by some specific religious hierarchy. What he is talking about is the religious sensibilities of Republican Party members.

To Schmidt these religious feelings should be ENTIRELY private; they should not influence or veto a proposal. Who however, imagines that a person who is egalitarian, who feels that people should not starve, who feels that everyone should have medical care, or who is a feminist, is NOT going to allow their feelings about what is right, appropriate and ethical, to influence their positions on political issues?

Anyone who claims that their convictions, of whatever type, are not going to influence their position on political issues, either simply doesn't know how to FIND their convictions "with both hands", does not in fact, hold the convictions that they claim to, is LYING, or, worst of all, is "just following orders". Each and every political party is going to have to take the deeply held sensibilities of their members into account.

But why should a liberal, or someone who has never even visited the US think that this point is so important? To be sure, everyone has convictions, a nice and politically pius sentiment, but isn't this fundamentally still a defense of theocratic politics?

In fact, Steve Schmidt's comments indirectly reveal exactly why religion threatens the future of the Republican party, and also why theocratic religious politics are such a problem around the globe. Schmidt asserts that the sequence;

public issue - policy proposal - voter evaluation according to personal convictions & beliefs

is corrupted if the religious convictions of the voter affect his or her REACTION to a policy proposal. This idea is wrongheaded to be sure, but the reaction to these notions is often equally undesirable. The theocrat simply reverses the sequence to;

personal convictions and beliefs - policy proposal - public issue evaluated by political calculation.

Instead of the government AVOIDING policy that offends the convictions of the populace, one gets religious convictions regurgitated ONTO the public, by the government. This theocratic regime tramples upon anyone with divergent beliefs, and the impure vessel of government stains, rots, and fouls what is pure in religion. If the public and if political parties of any nation fall into a false choice between a 'morals-free-zone, and theocratic rule, then that nation or party is in for a very hard time.

Real friends, and real empathy. On mandatory niceness and bullying policies.

I was curious to see how the New York Times article Gossip Girls and Boys Get Lessons in Empathy would be received. I should not have expected much I suppose, since the comments are in fact, moderated, and most responses are favorable of this scheme to the point of being promotional.

One writer argues that the students are likely to become resentful of authority, but this is the only direct attack on the whole scheme. Frankly I doubt that additional resentment is much of a serious concern in that some sort of expectation of "good behavior", however defined, is a universal element of society, and distinctive resentment is most likely when the social expectations are illogical. Empathy and kindness toward others are certainly not illogical. Research projects involving interviews with the elderly and a survey of wheelchair ramps might be resented as extra work, but it is difficult to see how they are more onerous than the other annoying projects that students are tasked with.

There are other very serious problems with the 'forced empathy' schemes however. Take the personalized party sweatshirts for example. At Scarsdale Middle School, the main school featured in the article, it is apparently common for students to give out commemorative sweatshirts at big and significant parties like bar or bat mitzvahs. Popular students are naturally more likely to receive plenty of such invitations, and so, with the goal of combating feelings of exclusion, the Parent Teacher Association, is trying to prevent students from wearing their personalized sweatshirts on the Monday after the big party weekend.

There are a couple of problems with this idea. The obvious one is that not going to the party is plenty of reason to feel excluded, and most students around the United States are able to exclude, or be excluded without the aid of embroidered cue sheets.

A more significant and subtle problem is that this proposal, and many other egalitarian and inclusive social engineering schemes can disrupt the formation of alternate social groups. I cannot comment on the rest of the globe, but in the US at least, most schools have the "popular kids" to be sure, but there are many other social cliques that purport to disdain the social butterflies and the jocks.

Since cliques who hate the popular kids are very often more numerous than the popular kids themselves, it is clear that the complete authenticity of their scorn is often in question. Without a doubt, many members of the less popular cliques would abandon their introverted, nerdy, or acne-spotted comrades for the athletic, the gossipy and the beautiful, but the fact remains that literally millions of students find durable and lasting friendships that are far better tuned to their own personalities and interests than would be the case if they were invited into the most social circles. Artificially linking the so-called unpopular with the popular might well do more to elevate the status of the popular, and lower the status of anyone who is not consumed by socializing, than it would eliminate socially inflicted pain. As students work their way through the high-school system they are forming their own interests, personalities, and identities, and it is crucial that these identities and interests are tailored to the individuals that bear them. Turning a 'band geek', 'chess nerd', or music fanatic into a sycophantic hanger-on, cackling and groveling at the behest of the popular is no improvement.

The superficiality of the PTA focus on sweatshirts also raises notable questions in my mind as to whether formal "empathy" programs and their ilk are going to be better at improving the social lot of less popular students, or whether they will rather, allow socially dominant bullies and snobs to anchor their elevated status with adults. At this point in social history, it is often the case that the 'popular' kids are at best, semi-popular with the society as a whole. Obvious obnoxiousness triggers memories of bullying and contempt endured decades before by adults. Such memories are not so powerful that a teenager may be assured of adult understanding however, and formalized kindness programs seem very likely to provide the socially skilled and popular with all the necessary tools to camouflage their scorn and contempt toward less popular students. Whatever the results, you are likely to see them if you live in an English speaking nation. Anti-bullying schemes have been spreading throughout the English language diaspora nearly as fast as anti-terrorism laws.