A couple long items related to gay marriage

The first presents a conservative argument in favor of gay marriage.

- Not Whether but How: Gay Marriage and the Revival of Burkean Conservatism.

It's based on what we called Burkean Conservatism in the section on ideology. It highlights the importance of institutions that evolve organically on providing stability in society. Here's a taste of the argument:

Now, for Burkean conservatives same-sex marriage is a particular conundrum because it presents so many competing narratives and so many uncertainties. In the Jonathan Rauch narrative, for example, same-sex marriage is a Burkean no-brainer. It is good for social order because it provides gay couples with caregivers and helps them build stable families that are integrated into their communities. Why, after all, would anyone want same-sex couples to raise their children out of wedlock? How can society possibly benefit from denying these couples (and their kids) the manifold increases in health, economic security, and happiness which marriage brings? Why not tie them to each other and their communities? Moreover, in the Rauch narrative, gay marriage also advances the causes of equality, liberty, and individual dignity. And still more: given the ways in which marriage has changed over the past century, gay marriage, in the Rauch view, is a natural, bottom-up evolution, whose deep social logic is revealed in the multiple ways in which gay couples are already acting and being treated as if married. On this narrative, what is not to like?

The second article is a simple look at the political process.

- How Gay Marriage Became a Constitutional Right.

The author traces the history of the effort to establish marriage as a fundamental right that cannot denied to people based on sexual orientation without a compelling reason to do so. In 1970 it was assumed that this could be done. As of last week, it could not. Again, a chunk of the argument:

In the span of 43 years, the notion had gone from ridiculous to constitutionally mandated. How did that happen?

I put the question to Mary Bonauto, who arguedObergefell before the Supreme Court in April. A Boston-based staff lawyer for Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, Bonauto won the Massachusetts case that made the state the first to allow gay couples to wed in 2004. In 1971, she noted, sodomy was a crime in every state, gays were routinely persecuted and barred from public and private employment, and homosexuality was classified as a mental illness. “We were just as right then as we are now,” she said. “But there was a complete lack of understanding of the existence and common humanity of gay people.”

What changed, in other words, wasn’t the Constitution—it was the country. And what changed the country was a movement.

Friday’s decision wasn’t solely or even primarily the work of the lawyers and plaintiffs who brought the case. It was the product of the decades of activism that made the idea of gay marriage seem plausible, desirable, and right.

From the Constitution Daily: Video: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the birth of the left and right

The section on ideology describes recent work arguing that the current divide between liberalism and conservatism can be dated back to conflict between Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine.

Here's a video containing a discussion about this idea - if you have time to kill its worth your time.

The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left

I'm going to put this on my list of books to order for future classes. I'm still unhappy with how I cover ideology in 2305 - this book promises to address that deficiency.

Here's the description from Amazon:

For more than two centuries, our political life has been divided between a party of progress and a party of conservation. In The Great Debate, Yuval Levin explores the origins of the left/right divide by examining the views of the men who best represented each side of that debate at its outset: Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine. In a groundbreaking exploration of the roots of our political order, Levin shows that American partisanship originated in the debates over the French Revolution, fueled by the fiery rhetoric of these ideological titans.

Levin masterfully shows how Burke's and Paine’s differing views, a reforming conservatism and a restoring progressivism, continue to shape our current political discourse—on issues ranging from abortion to welfare, education, economics, and beyond. Essential reading for anyone seeking to understand Washington’s often acrimonious rifts, The Great Debate offers a profound examination of what conservatism, liberalism, and the debate between them truly amount to.

And here's an interview with the author:

. . . . we can see how the worldviews Burke and Paine laid out still describe two broad and fundamental dispositions toward political life and political change in our liberal age.

The tension between those two dispositions comes down to some very basic questions: Should our society be made to answer to the demands of stark and abstract commitments to ideals like social equality or to the patterns of its own concrete political traditions and foundations? Should the citizen’s relationship to his society be defined above all by the individual right of free choice or by a web of obligations and conventions not entirely of our own choosing? Are great public problems best addressed through institutions designed to apply the explicit technical knowledge of experts or by those designed to channel the implicit social knowledge of the community?

Our answers will tend to shape how we think about particular political questions. Do we want to fix our health-care system by empowering expert panels armed with the latest effectiveness data to manage the system from the center or by arranging economic incentives to channel consumer knowledge and preferences and address some of the system’s discrete problems? Do we want to alleviate poverty through large national programs that use public dollars to supplement the incomes of the poor or through efforts to build on the social infrastructure of local civil-society institutions to help the poor build the skills and habits to rise? People’s answers to such questions likely fall into a pattern. And the answers depend not only on our opinion of the state of our particular society at this moment but also on our assumptions about how much knowledge and power social reformers can really expect to have, and of what sort.

These possibilities suggest two rather different sorts of liberal politics: a politics of vigorous progress toward an ideal goal or a politics of preservation and perfection of a precious inheritance. They suggest, in other words, a progressive liberalism and a conservative liberalism.

John Roberts: Burkean Conservative

Andrew Sullivan argues that the chief justice's ACA decision reveals that he's the only conservative on the court dedicated to the preservation of strong institutions - which was once the defining principle of conservatism. The rest seems committed to using the court to promote conservative political positions - which tend to shift. This strain is associated with Edmund Burke, whose Reflections on the Revolution in France was once required reading.

Here's a primer on Burke's brand of thought:

Burke is the father of modern conservatism, and still its wisest oracle. Tradition-minded but (contrary to stereotype) far from reactionary, he believed in balancing individual rights with social order. The best way to do that, for Burke, was by respecting long-standing customs and institutions while advancing toward liberty and equality. Society’s traditions, after all, embody an evolved collective wisdom that even (or especially) the smartest of individuals cannot hope to understand comprehensively, much less reinvent successfully.
Sullivan wonders of the other conservatives on the court share this vision of a strong judiciary independent of political parties. Here's a similar point.

Discussion Question - 7/17/10

I'm fielding discussion questions from Blackboard and wanted to add some of what's popped up from them.

In response to a question about whether we are in fact a country based on consent -- or if we are just another coercive society -- we touched on Chomsky's theory of "manufactured consent" and the classic doctrine of "ordered liberty" (which I did not know also applied to the extent of 14th Amendment protections).

Some links I ran across:

- answer.com on ordered liberty.
- an essay on Edmund Burke.
- an essay on ordered liberty.
- something from the Acton Institute.
- the wikipedia for Manufacturing Consent.


I'll be back with more.

Brooks Contasts the Relative Influence of the French and English Enlightenment on the Development of American Government

We went over this in class today and I might make this a required read.