I'm a committed liberal pluralist, and I think freedom of conscience
and state neutrality are bedrock virtues of a just society. At the same
time, I think that a politics that takes the fact of pluralism
seriously is perfectly consistent with vigorous culture war. Indeed, I
think pluralist democracies demand culture war (call it
"public reason" if you want to be fanciful). I think crazy conservative
talk radio is a healthy part of pluralist culture war, and I think the
attempt to whittle away the cultural prestige of people with crazy
religion-saturated politics is also a healthy part of healthy pluralist
culture war. I will go to the mat to defend the freedom of Pentecostals
and John Birchers to do their things. And I will go to the mat to
defend the idea that ours would be a better society if individuals come
to be so embarrassed by Pentecostalism and John Birchism -- by the ideas
-- that these communities of belief die peaceful natural deaths.
Cultures become what they are through a process of selection, and this
is a process we help along by arguing with one another. The reason
there are so many meta-arguments about what we are going to count as
good arguments-as good reasons, as considerations worth taking
seriously-is that once we come to a broad social consensus on
standards, some factions in the culture wars are left defenseless and
end up an impotent doomed remnant. One reason I'm not that interested
in partisan politics is that I think it is a higher-order manifestation
of factionalism at a deeper level of the culture. I'm interested in
engaging at that level. I'd like to argue for reason,
science, the utility of the extended liberal order, and the authority
of the liberal moral sentiments. I sincerely do not know what practical
politics or partisan alignments this implies. It's fun to guess, but I
know our guesses are very likely to be bad ones. As Doug North likes to
say, we live in a "non-ergodic" world.
-- Will Wilkinson
