Reich Calls For War On Evangelicals
Robert Reich keeps calling for a war on evangelicals. Does he really mean it? Writing for the liberal magazine The American Prospect, former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich calls for a war against conservative religious believers. "The great conflict of the 21st century will not be between the West and terrorism. Terrorism is a tactic, not a belief," he writes.
"The true battle will be between modern civilization and anti-modernists; between those who believe in the primacy of the individual and those who believe that human beings owe their allegiance and identity to a higher authority; between those who give priority to life in this world and those who believe that human life is mere preparation for an existence beyond life; between those who believe in science, reason, and logic and those who believe that truth is revealed through Scripture and religious dogma. Terrorism will disrupt and destroy lives. But terrorism itself is not the greatest danger we face."
That's a remarkable comment, but even more remarkable is that Reich has been calling for’ or at least predicting’ this war for a long time. In the past, his use of war language has seemed rhetorical and metaphoric’ but was it?. "The outcome of the 2004 presidential election will depend partly on what happens between now and Election Day in Iraq and to the U.S. economy. But it will also turn on the religious wars’ fueled by evangelical Protestants, the ground troops of the Republican Party," he wrote in December.
"Democrats can hold their own in these wars’ if they respond vigorously to the coming assault. Democrats should call all this for what it is’ a clear and present danger to religious liberty in America. For more than three hundred years, the liberal tradition has sought to free people from the tyranny of religious doctrines that would otherwise be imposed on them. Today's evangelical right detests that tradition and seeks nothing short of a state-sponsored religion. But maintaining the separation of church and state is a necessary precondition of liberty. The religious wars aren't pretty. Religious wars never are. But Democrats should mount a firm and clear counter-assault. In the months leading up to Election Day, when Republicans are screaming about God and accusing the Democrats of siding with sexual deviants and baby killers, Democrats should remind Americans that however important religion is to our spiritual lives, there is no room for liberty in a theocracy."
The phrase clear and present danger isn't just a cute phrase. It's the phrase the Supreme Court used in the 1919 Schenck v. United States decision, allowing for the restriction of freedoms. In that decision, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, "Words which, ordinarily and in many places, would be within the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment may become subject to prohibition when of such a nature and used in such circumstances a to create a clear and
present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils which Congress has a right to prevent."
That's a hint, then, that Reich really believes that religious speech should be curtailed, that religious conservatives should be limited in opposing gay marriage, abortion, and the free exercise of religion in public schools and elsewhere (three issues that Reich specifically mentions). "Democrats should be clear that the issues of abortion and stem-cell research are about religious liberty," Reich says. If either of these is limited in any way, he suggests, America becomes a theocracy, regardless of whether it officially sponsors a specific religion. And that, the logic necessarily follows, demands a revolution.
Can Reich really mean what he says, asks Ramesh Ponnuru in National Review Online. "His most recent column is a denunciation ’ as a graver threat than terrorists ’ of people who believe that the world to come is more important than this world, or that all human beings owe their allegiance to God. Many millions of Christians, Jews, Muslims, and other religious believers will reject Reich's witless rhetorical oppositions. One can believe in the political "primacy of the individual," the obligation of all people to answer to God, and the wrongness of any governmental attempt to make them answer to Him, all at the same time. But if our choice is between the primacy of individuals and the primacy of God ’ if, that is, we are to choose between individual human beings and God ’ then the vast majority of traditional religious believers would have to choose God. I certainly would. That would be the case for plenty of believers who are not sure what they think about abortion law, or want a higher minimum wage. All of us, for Reich, are the enemy."
Religious believers don't have to accept the battle cry, Ponnuru says. "Reich is not my enemy, although I certainly want most of what he stands for politically not to prevail. I don't think we have to have the battle he forecasts. I hope we don't. In fact, I pray we don't."
