Don't Blame Secularism; Blame the GOP

Published on by D. G. Hart

Conservatives (religious and cultural) addicted to the notion that ideas have consequences are tempted to interpret the current trend toward the acceptance of gay marriage as the outworking of secularization and its moral relativism. This assessment seems to go with the philosophical cast of mind that afflicts both neo-Calvinists and Roman Catholic apologists, both of whom have found each other (as they did in 19th-century Netherlands) as allies in the contemporary “culture wars” against secularism.

But Daniel McCarthy’s piece in the current issue of the American Conservative lends support to my suspicion that the shift toward support for gay marriage has much less to do with marriage or tolerance than with a rejection of the Religious Right. Gay marriage is a perfect rejoinder to “family values.” Let’s see how firm your commitment to marriage is when gays want to become families. This was a move the Religious Right did not see coming. Whether the domestication of homosexuality, which used to thrive on being anti-bourgeois and counter-cultural, will last in its “family values” form is another matter. (Could it be that Jerry Falwell really did get the better of Andrew Sullivan by prompting gay advocates to follow Christian conventions of domesticity?)

Dan McCarthy extends this intuitive sense to compare the consequences of the Vietnam War for Democrats and the Iraq War for Republicans.

The root of the GOP’s problem now is the same as that of the Democrats in 1969: the party’s reputation has been ruined by a botched, unnecessary war—Vietnam in the case of the Democrats, Iraq for the GOP. This may sound implausible: every political scientist knows that Americans don’t care about foreign policy; certainly they don’t vote based on it. But foreign policy is not just about foreign policy: it’s also about culture.

That the “culture war”—as well as the “War on Drugs”—assumed its present shape in the wake of the Vietnam conflict is no accident. Vietnam polarized, realigned, and radicalized cultural factions. During the Lyndon Johnson administration, Republicans in Congress were still more likely than Democrats to support civil rights legislation. Attitudes toward abortion and homosexuality did not clearly divide left from right: Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater, and even William F. Buckley favored liberalizing abortion laws in the early 1960s, while as late as 1972 Democratic vice presidential nominees Sargent Shriver and Thomas Eagleton were antiabortion. Few mainstream figures in either party supported gay rights, but it was clear enough from their social circles that right-wingers such as Reagan, Goldwater, and Buckley were not about to launch any witch-hunts.

Nor were attitudes toward drugs a mark of partisan distinction: Clare Booth Luce was an early evangelist for LSD. She urged her husband, Time proprietor Henry Luce, to try it, and he “did much more to popularize acid than Timothy Leary,” in Abbie Hoffman’s opinion. Buckley, of course, was a longtime supporter of marijuana decriminalization.

One could find many more right-wingers who took the opposite views—but one could find just as many Democrats who did as well. The civil rights movement and the sexual revolution had supporters and opponents on both sides of the aisle.

And in the early ’60s, Democrats still had a reputation for military prowess. Their party had led the country against Nazi Germany, and while Republicans blamed them for losing China to Communism, John F. Kennedy gained more traction against Richard Nixon in 1960 when he accused the Eisenhower administration of letting a (fictitious) “Missile Gap” open up with the Soviet Union. Republicans certainly weren’t the only party considered competent to handle foreign affairs.

That changed with Vietnam. President Johnson seemed to have started a war he couldn’t win or even end. It split his party and transformed the American left: until then, labor muscle and social-democratic brains were the left’s principal organs. They tended to support the war and oppose the cultural upheavals that coincided with it—positions diametrically opposite those of the student movement and nascent New Left.

McCarthy goes on to argue that the culture wars are simply hangovers from the Vietnam era and only make sense to baby boomers.

The “culture war” that Pat Buchanan spoke of at the 1992 Republican convention was, among other things, a symptom of Vietnam syndrome: a chance to right the wrongs of the 1960s and 1970s, if not in the rice paddies of Indochina then in the hearts and minds of Americans, turning back the clock to a more wholesome time before the war and its cultural coattails.

For younger voter cohorts, this couldn’t make sense. They were a postwar generation, culturally as well as militarily, and the idea of winning back what had been lost in the wars of the 1960s was emotionally incomprehensible. These voters lacked the psychological backdrop that pulled the Boomers toward the GOP after Vietnam. And over the next 20 years, as talk radio and Fox News continued to pitch the Republican message to Boomer ears, Americans born after 1975 simply tuned out.

This is why President Obama may be the real successor (for Democrats) to Ronald Reagan:

While Republicans wage a war on the past, Barack Obama has staked claim to the future—in the same way that Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan once did. The reputation for competence in wielding power that Nixon (before Watergate) and Reagan accumulated now accrues to Obama’s advantage. He brought the troops home from Iraq—however reluctantly—and is on course to end the war in Afghanistan next year. His foreign policy, like Nixon’s and Reagan’s, involves plenty of military force. But like those Republicans, the incumbent Democrat has avoided debacles of the sort that characterized the administrations of Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush.

Meanwhile, Obama is winning the culture war because that war continues to be fought by the right in the terms of the Vietnam era. That mistake, coupled with the natural credit a leader gets from keeping the country out of quagmires, gives the president’s party a tremendous advantage among the rising generation. (Sixty percent of voters under 30 supported Obama in 2012, as did 52 percent of those age 30–44.) And older conservatives, seeing that generation’s disdain for the culture war, are apt to write them off completely. If you’re not outraged by same-sex marriage, how can you be any kind of conservative?

But the reason even young conservatives aren’t interested in those kinds of battles is that they’re fighting others closer to home. Americans born after 1975 have grown up in an environment in which, Todd Gitlin admits, “only the most sentimental ex-hippie could fail to recognize the prices paid on the road to the new freedom: the booming teenage pregnancy rate; the dread diseases that accompanied the surge in promiscuity; the damage done by drugs; the undermining of family commitment…”

Young adults who have come from home backgrounds marked by divorce, or from intact families that nonetheless never sat down at a dinner table, want to form stronger bonds than their parents did. Boomers who view post-Boomer attitudes toward sex in light of a “revolution” are doing it wrong. It was the Boomers, or at least a key cohort among them, who believed in free love as a salvific concept. Young American have grown up with promiscuity and knowledge of drugs, aren’t panicked about these things, but don’t see them as possessing redemptive significance either. Even most young progressives do not believe in personal “liberation” of the sort that was at the core of the ’60s left—just as no one today believes in the kind of “liberation” once associated with Fidel Castro and Ho Chi Minh.

The Republican Party may not be able to escape its McGovern phase, even if Democrats screw up (as they will) and we briefly get a Republican Carter. . . .

Ross Douthat agrees largely with McCarthy’s interpretation:

In a similar way, even though Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney weren’t culture warriors or evangelical Christians, in the popular imagination their legacy of incompetence has become a reason to reject social conservatism as well. Just as the post-Vietnam Democrats came to be regarded as incompetent, wimpy and dangerously radical all at once, since 2004 the Bush administration’s blunders — the missing W.M.D., the botched occupation — have been woven into a larger story about Youth and Science and Reason and Diversity triumphing over Old White Male Faith-Based Cluelessness.

Of all the Iraq war’s consequences for our politics, it’s this narrative that may be the war’s most lasting legacy, and the most difficult for conservatives to overcome.

Sometimes it makes more sense to look at what actually happened than at what people think.

50 thoughts on “Don't Blame Secularism; Blame the GOP”

  3. Perhaps the GOP failures of the Iraq War hastened it and undermined the credibility of those who would speak against it, but believing that the US would have been able to resist the push for gay marriage that is occurring (or has occurred) in almost all western countries is tenuous. We’re just not that exceptional and are growing less so.

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  4. “Whether the domestication of homosexuality, which used to thrive on being anti-bourgeois and counter-cultural, will last in its “family values” form is another matter. ”

    Indeed. What hath the pre-aids San Francisco bathhouse culture to do with Ward & June Cleaver?

    An interesting documentary related to this topic is “Wrangler: Anatomy of an Icon”

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1053951/

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  5. Some other factors to look at:

    (1) The economy melting down at the end of Bush’s second term.

    (2) Republicans running stiffs like McCain & Romney against the charismatic Obama.

    (3) The religious right having apocalyptic rhetoric about social issues on one hand, and an informality about theology, lack of confessions, and worship, on the other.

    It’s less about Obama being great than it is the inability of the other side to offer a consistent, coherent, alternative.

    Darryl G. Hart for President.

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  6. People in my life who don’t get too excited about politics still hate the religious right. A few still fondly, and at the same time angrily, invoke Patty Patty Buke Buke’s address at the GOP many moons ago as a life-changing moment to turn against the religious right.

    (I thought the Dems were 100% absolved of blame for Nam, it all rests with Nixon…)

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  8. Kent,

    Johnson mucked up Vietnam so much he didn’t even run for re-election in 1968. By 1972 his party was so was so messed up they ran the liberal George McGovern against Nixon, losing in a landslide.

    Johnson’s push for civil rights also began the Southern conversion to the GOP, I believe.

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  9. Erik:

    I am fully aware of what LBJ did, but history is written by a media that is about 99% in the pocket of the Democratic Party, so he may disappear completely from the official record before we see our golden years.

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  11. Erik – “charismatic” to whom? Yes, the GOP blew the last couple of elections by placing absolutely the worst candidates into the running, but the man currently in office is great only in the eyes of that age group outlined in McCarthy’s narrative. In reality, he is merely a stooge (in the traditional meaning, not Larry, Curly, or Moe) in the hands of those cloaked behind the scenes who funded his education and likely authored his best seller. Like “Person Of Interest” there is more going on here than meets the eye on the evening news.

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  12. LBJ: guns and butter all the way!!!

    GWB: more guns, fair amount of butter, killer tax break (and deficits).

    Obama: fair amount of guns, lots of butter, and continuation of gargantuan corporate bailouts (even crazier deficits).

    Good thing we can count on some political realities never changing.

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  13. Erik – “charismatic” to whom?

    To the voters (especially those of the young, and/or female, and/or urban, and/or minority persuasion).

    Pretty much everyone but us crusty old white guys with all the money.

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  15. Erik – I’ll admit to the crusty, old, and white, but “…with all the money…” Nada. You must have me confused with that New Jersey lottery winner.

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  17. LGBTQs embracing “family values”? Maybe, but being denied 1138 legal benefits of marriage might also be important, you know?

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  21. Erik opines: Darryl G. Hart for President.

    Yack! Puleeze Erik, quit kidding!

    There are stunning similarities with Hart and Obama. First they both claim they are Christians, next neither one wants to look to special revelation for general society. They both have the same confused answers as to why or why not, concerning “gay marriage”. In fact, putting the two of them side by side, I can’t see a dimes worth of difference.

    Well, I take that back, at least Obama is usually consistent about one thing; he’s a committed socialist. Darryl doesn’t know what or why he believes anything. He’s off in the nebulous cloud of natural law, (whatever that means) Just ask him a specific question and watch him stammer.

    Ask Hart how he feels about gay marriage, and watch him chase his tail, (just like a cat) His side kick Zrim once said, “he probably vote FOR gay marriage.

    Nuff said!!

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  28. Doug, you keep getting my politics wrong. This must be what it feels like to be the Bible in your hands.

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  30. Zrim,

    I find your politics incomprehensible and Midwestern (but I repeat myself) – all the more reason to bring back the Articles of Confederation. DGH, Misty and Andrew can pal around in DC (I’ve heard the latter can be a riot after a hormone replacement boost) and I can not care because the federal government will be weak enough to stay out of my life.

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  32. Walt, what aspect, that observant religionists of whatever sort generally make good citizens? That’s usually hard for JihadWatchers to compute.

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  33. Zrim laments; Doug, you keep getting my politics wrong. This must be what it feels like to be the Bible in your hands.

    Zrim, you did say you just might vote FOR gay marriage. I didn’t bother quoting your qualifications, which I found confused and irrelevant. I wasn’t presenting a paper on how you feel about laws, just a snippet on some of your best/worst statements. Quit being so defensive! You made the comment, not me. Why is it; you feel the need to instantly qualify that particular statement? LOL!

    I think I know 😉

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  34. Doug, I see. So in other words, you are to old life what Glenn Beck is to conservatism. But tell me something I don’t already know.

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  35. zrim,

    I guess that depends on the religion. you should travel more and prove it to yourself. start with India and observe the level of religious observance and general civic pride. See other countries. I think you’ll find that the level of civic pride depends on the religion and many other factors, not just ‘religiosity’ generally. Some countries are very religious and dump trash, sewage and other things directly into the streets and waterways while trampling their fellow citizens underfoot. Others are completely atheistic but clean, orderly, and prosperous. Certain other countries might be fine as long as you think and do things the way everyone else there does.

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  36. DGH,

    I can’t tell if you agree with Douthat or not. The problem with East Coast writers is that they’re on the East Coast. If you want an alternative view of why Democrats are marching from strength to strength, you might try reading Steve Sailer. California, you see, used to be a red state but imported (usually at the behest of Republican business owners) millions of high-fertility people who pull the lever for ‘D’ every time. People writing for the East Coast Paper of Record live in places where Republicans haven’t been elected in a long time for demographic reasons, so they’ve largely stopped talking about what we’ve experienced out West over the past 30 years. Food for thought.

    The “misty is my veep’ quip was cute as long as you were never a member of the SoCal Presbytery or Redeemer OPC. But all the more reason to bring back the Articles of Confederation. You Front Porch Republicans can have it as gay as you want and the rest of the states can have it the way we want. Gay marriage has been consistently shot down at the polls – it’s 0/33 in the states that have actually voted on it.

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  37. Walt, but Reagan was from California, where apparently a sense of humor is non-existent, otherwise you would have known I was winding Doug up with Misty. My real choice for VP would be the mayor of Hillsdale (whoever he is).

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  38. Walt, I was taking a shot in the dark as to what your remark about my politics meant. If you’re getting your info from Doug, you might reconsider the source.

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  39. Well, back in the real world. Politics won’t be decided ideologically in the next 20 years, down in Texas and in places such as North Dakota and I believe in Pennsylvania, not to mention old dormant soviet oil fields, oil shale reserves, everybody can now bend the knee to fracking, is about to resolve the U.S.’ economic woes-say hello to an energy economy. Never mind the illegal immigrant problems, we need them in the mud camps and manning rigs. At the same time, here’s where ideology comes in, if we play the foreign policy cards right we’ll make the middle east play ball or drink their oil. What else do you want? Who cares what the gays do?! Can they drive a truck, work a pipe wrench, shoot a gun, dig a ditch, balance books, pay their taxes, take out the garbage and mow their lawn? Hot diggity, sign em up.

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  40. DGH,

    That whole event precipitated a lot of unpleasantness for presbytery, parishioner, and minister alike. Certain 20-somethings who were members there left the NAPARC for good having been off-put by the whole thing, though it’s not like they matter anyway. Several families were forced to drive longer distances on Sunday mornings to churches that fed them much less.

    But maybe the gays were at least made to feel better about themselves. That is, of course, the point of the entire push for gay marriage (or civil unions, as she put it). Why have a church when you can have controversy?

    I can see why everyone else outside the situation finds it funny. I really do.

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  42. Walt,

    Or Maybe so cal presbytery should have been less interested in their theonomic agenda. Would’ve saved everybody a lot of time, aggravation and inconvenience.

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  43. Walt, what are you talking about? Incomprehensible because I don’t share my politics, or because I have somewhere and you don’t understand?

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  45. Same subject (more or less), different matter (slightly): Anyone on here familiar with a book by Albert G. Huegli, ed., “Church and State under God,” 1964? It contains a chapter by H. Richard Klann and William H. Lehmann, Jr., in the chapter “Theological Expression Since the Reformation”, at pp. 130-131, reading:

    “Members of the [Reformed] clergy will consider it their right and obligation to criticize and to discuss matters of governmental concern and to urge legislation dealing with moral matters. They will on occasion seek to marshal public opinion against or for measures contemplated for enactment by government. Such matters need not directly concern the church as such but will lie in the area of common good. The [Reformed] clergy will be concerned not simply with a sphere of activities separate from governmental concern, but also with questions of political and social justice.
    A breach of law will be considered a sin, an act of disobedience to God. Hence church discipline may be instituted, not merely for reasons of heresy or moral turpitude, but also for the breach of civil law. The [Reformed] clergy will interest themselves and their parishioners in social and economic problems and will consider it their religious duty to seek proper solution. They may seek political office or urge their congregational members to seek it on religious grounds. People holding such a theory will attempt to apply religious criteria to their contemplated actions and procedures when they hold political office.
    On the other hand, civil authorities in agreement with this theory will want to justify their actions to their church group (or at least to maintain that before God their actions are justified). They will seek the prayers of the church at public functions, perhaps solicit clerical opinion on social and economic problems, and try to support religious activity in civic institutions. They will concern themselves with regulating the customs and mores of the people and with changing the social and economic character of the community through legislation. They may even be concerned with limiting by law the sort of religious worship which is to be practied.
    This sort of theory about church-state relations has been and continues to be influential in the United States of America. In fact it may well be the most influential theory in this country today.”

    I think we all agree with that last paragraph, that it reflects a pervasive opinion among mainline denominations nowadays, but “members of the Reformed clergy must..” Where’s that coming from? And which “Reformed” churches are they talking about?

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