Whose Freedom?: The Battle over America's Most Important Idea (24 page)

Note that this freedom, this “First Liberty,” is a version of what we have called a conservative freedom: It is unconcerned with impinging on the freedoms of others who may not want to hear the “Truth of the Gospel.”

Here is the Alliance Defense Fund again:

This directive from the Heritage Foundation is an example of fundamentalist freedom of religion:

Here religious freedom consists in the right to discriminate in employment on the basis of religion. It’s the same idea as that of the conservative businessman who wants to be able to hire and fire on any discriminatory basis that suits him. But it is more: It is a way to use taxpayer money to support members of a religious denomination—all in the name of “religious liberty.”

One of the major claims of fundamentalist Christianity is that religion is the source, and the sole source, of morality, and that fundamentalism is the religion of America. Hence, fundamentalism is the source of morality in America. It follows that their issues are “the moral issues” and their positions on them are
the
moral positions.

They are wrong on all counts. Fundamentalist Christians are a minority of Christians. Traditional American values are progressive. And morality originates outside of religion.

Fundamentalists assert that religion is the source of morality. One of the biggest mistakes of the Enlightenment was to counter this claim with the assumption that morality comes from reason. In fact, morality is grounded in empathy, which (as we’ve already discussed) concerns our biological capacity to connect emotionally with others, to feel how they feel.

Remember that we come prewired with neural connections linking the premotor cortex (which “choreographs” complex actions) and the parietal cortex (which integrates perceptual information). These connections contain mirror neurons that fire when you either perform a complex action or see someone else performing the same action.

This area of the brain has connections to emotional regions. When you see another person’s face and body registering the
physiological correlates of emotions, your own mirror neurons are activated, and via connections to emotion regions, you can feel what someone else appears to be feeling.

The mirror neurons are believed to be “tuned” in childhood, as a result of positive nurturant parent-child interactions called “attachment.” A failure to cultivate empathy in a child can lead to a failure in the child to feel it.

Morality is ultimately about recognizing and responding to others’ needs—it is about empathy. Morality therefore arises and develops independent of religion. It comes to religion secondhand.

Religion does not have any special claim to morality. Nor does radical conservatism. At this writing, only 12.7 percent of Americans claim to be evangelical Protestants—and many evangelicals, like Jimmy Carter, are progressives. Most Christians are progressive.

Progressives in general must articulate their views in moral terms, which is not the “shift to the right” that some are calling for. Progressives need to make explicit what is already inherent in their worldview—vigorous ideas about virtue, morality, character, and freedom embodied in its central value, empathy.

And progressive evangelicals have a special mission. They are being misrepresented as fundamentalists. Jesus was a progressive, and to follow in his footsteps is to live progressive values. That’s the good news!

George W. Bush has made foreign policy the centerpiece of his presidency. And he has made it relentlessly clear, in speech after speech, that the focus of his presidency is defending and spreading freedom. Yet progressives see in Bush’s policies not freedom but outrages against freedom.

They are indeed outrages against the traditional American ideal of freedom—progressive freedom. It is not the American ideal of freedom to invade countries that don’t threaten us, to torture people and defend the practice, to jail people indefinitely without due process, and to spy on our own citizens without a warrant.

But it is self-deception to think that Bush does not have a radical conservative view of “freedom” that indeed makes these outrages instances of “freedom” from his point of view.

There are two opposed views of freedom in our nation: strict and nurturant. As we have seen, strict father morality unifies the right’s conception of personal, economic, and religious freedom. Strict father morality defines freedom in Bush’s foreign policy, tying it in surprising ways to his domestic agenda.

Why did Bush speak of an “axis of evil” that linked three very different countries, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea?

Strict father morality sees evil as a strong, tangible force in the world. There is a clear and strict good-evil dichotomy and the need for an overpoweringly strong strict father (who is inherently good) to protect against evil. This carefully chosen phrase echoed Ronald Reagan’s calling the Soviet Union the “evil empire.” A fight against evil itself justifies spending as much as necessary. It justifies cutting social programs. The phrase also echoes the Axis powers of World War II, identifying those three nations as a kind of alliance held together by their evil essence. It is hard to justify not opposing “evil.” Evil poses a threat of harm and coercion, and hence a threat to freedom.

Why, instead of following Colin Powell’s suggestion to treat the September 11 attack as a crime, did Bush declare a “war on terror”?

Fear activates and reinforces the strict father model. The war on terror metaphor is used, first, to frighten and intimidate the American public; second, to centralize Bush’s war powers in the executive branch and enhance his role as commander in chief; and third, to allow him to run the country as if it were the military, which is a strict father organization in which morality is obedience to orders.

Since there will never be a time when there will be no terrorism or its potential, a war on terror can go on without end, the president’s war powers can extend indefinitely, and a permanent strict father approach to government, both at home and abroad, is given legitimacy, especially in foreign policy. The pretext is a defense of freedom.

Why did the Bush administration use and try to justify torture?

If, as strict father morality tells us, the president is fighting evil itself, then he can justify using the devil’s own means against him in protecting the nation. Acts that might seem evil otherwise, are just matters of self-defense, a defense of freedom.

Torture?
We need the information to prevent a possible attack to protect Americans’ freedom, because, after all, terrorists attacked us “because they hate our freedom.”

You suspect that someone might have such information?
Arrest him and hold him without due process.

You need the information to prevent the possibility of attack?
Use torture.

Congress passes a law against it?
Overrule Congress.

The Constitution says you can’t?
Overrule the Constitution. Appoint judges to the Supreme Court who will back you up.

The Geneva conventions guarantee rights of captives?
The president’s need to fight evil overrides the Geneva conventions.

Spying on American citizens?
Some of them might be terrorists or might have information about an attack. Just in case, we’d better spy. To spy on Americans, the FISA law says you need a warrant. It’s easy to get if you have any good reason at all. A request takes a few minutes and is almost never turned down. But the president is commander in chief. He has war powers and, in his view, they override any considerations, FISA law or no FISA law. The president has to assert his authority under those war powers or he might lose that authority. Besides, it would be immoral not to. The strict father is the ultimate moral authority, and it is his moral duty to assert that authority. The president morally should not obey the FISA law in a state of war—or admit any higher authority!

And what constitutes “terrorism”?
Strict father morality gives the strict father, who knows right from wrong and is unquestionably good, the authority to decide. The Bush administration has decided that certain purely domestic acts against property in the name of environmental or animal rights activism (for example, releasing minks from mink farms or setting afire SUVs on new car lots) constitute acts of “terrorism.” The Patriot Act supersedes laws protecting the rights of citizens. It allows the arrest of suspected activists, enacts harsh penalties for “terrorism,” and
justifies spying on environmental and animal rights activists, now renamed “terrorists”! In other words, defending property rights is now “defending freedom” against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Declaring a war on terror has given Bush, at least as he sees it, expansive war powers that can be extended for the length of his presidency—in the name of freedom.

What has determined Bush’s attitude toward the United Nations, the World Court, international treaties (such as the nuclear test ban treaty), and our allies France and Germany?

One of the central metaphors of American foreign policy is that of the nation-as-person in a world community, where there are neighborhoods and neighbors, friendly states, enemy states, and rogue states. In this metaphor, there are adult and child states. The industrialized states are the grown-ups and the developing and underdeveloped nations are the children.

In the strict father model, the adults tell the children what to do, and if they don’t do it, they are punished, say, with “fiscal discipline” or military intervention. A “police action” suggests intervening to enforce obedience to the law—of the adult states. In this metaphor, it is in the interest of a person to be strong, healthy, and influential, so it is in the national interest to be militarily strong, economically healthy, and politically influential.

The United States is the most industrialized and most powerful nation, and it assumes it knows right from wrong and acts morally—indeed, that it is a moral paragon in the world that knows inherently how other countries should be run. Its essence at its founding was to be good. It is the very model of a strict father. The strict father is the leader of the family, both the strongest person and the moral authority. So, in the world community, which consists mostly of developing and underdeveloped nations, the United States is the moral authority, and it enforces this authority through strength, through military and financial power.

This is not old-school realpolitik, maximizing self-interest
and no more. Force is used in the name of good and freedom from evil and oppression. The self-interest of the United States is, in this view, for the good of the world. Our self-interest is theirs too. It is classic “this may hurt but it’s for your own good” strict father logic.

Just as the strict father should never give up his authority in the family, so the United States should never abandon its sovereignty in the world. Not to the UN. Not to its closest allies. Not to the World Court. Even if it means opting out of treaty obligations.

Just as the strict father enforces his judgment with force, so should the United States.

Just as the strict father should act in advance to prevent children from becoming rebellious and challenging his authority, so the United States should strike preemptively to prevent other nations from challenging the hegemony of the United States.

Just as the strict father acts benignly for the benefit of all, so the United States acts benignly for the sake of peace and freedom. Our allies should recognize this.

During the occupation of Iraq, the United States has run the country, determined which Iraqis could have governing power and, to a large extent, what the Iraqi constitution could say. How is this seen as “freedom” for the Iraqis?

Just as children first have to be under the discipline of the father and learn right from wrong, then learn internal discipline, so the Iraqis must first be ruled by the United States and be told how to write a Constitution, then learn how to gain the internal discipline to govern themselves. And just as a child newly reaching adulthood will make mistakes, so will a new democracy like Iraq.

As President Bush said in his second inaugural: “Self-government relies, in the end, on the government of the self.” The government of the self is the internal discipline required to be moral. Applied to Iraq, this means that Iraqi democracy (self-government)
requires an Iraqi governing force that maintains legitimate order inside Iraq (the government of the self). The Iraqis must learn internal discipline just as a child must. And the father may withdraw the threat of punishment—bring the troops home—only when self-discipline is achieved.