Budziszewski on Tolerance

Jim Tonkowich, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy has an absolute must read article on Colson's Breakpoint site.

He reports on an address by Jay Budziszewski before the Evangelical Theological Society, which addresses the very issues I have been trying to get at in recent posts about conservative evangelicals in politics, the idea that being tolerant of all views is in fact truly tolerant. Key paragraphs...

"...liberals argue that we must suspend public judgments about the nature of the good. After all, as liberal philosopher John Rawls argued, while the Christian sees the good in one way, the Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Marxist, or hedonistic pleasure-seeker each see it in other ways.

"Rawls calls each system a “comprehensive doctrine.” And since comprehensive doctrines can’t all be true, and each is more or less reasonable, the only solution for public discourse is to privatize them all, that is, ban all comprehensive doctrines from the public square. This, the argument goes, creates an environment of moral neutrality in which to make public decisions."



This is exactly the line we keep hearing, even from many Christian voices recently. No one has an absolute view of the truth. We must therefore "listen" to all viewpoints. And when it comes to public policy, fear of oppressing the minority view means we must avoid absolute judgments. Power is bad, except when granting power to those defined as oppressed. Metanarratives are out, banned in the name of tolerance. The irony is stunning. The article continues:

"But in truth, Rawls is not being tolerant at all. His view privileges some comprehensive doctrines and suppresses others. Any doctrine that is easily privatized is privileged while any doctrine (Christianity for example) that by its very nature has public implications is suppressed. The liberal argument is nothing more than a camouflaged grab for power.

"We see this in the abortion debate. Women, we’re told, want and need legal abortion. Arguments to the contrary from religious, natural law, or common good perspectives are ruled out of order. These are comprehensive doctrines with values that must not be imposed on others and should be privatized in the name of toleration. You are free to choose not to have an abortion, but you must be tolerant with others who choose otherwise. And so, without a debate about the actual issue of taking unborn human life, abortion is the law of the land."

The ultimate inequity here is that pro-abortion advocates get to be tolerant of the morally unobjectionable act of carrying a child to term, while pro-life folk have to be tolerant of what they consider to be an unjust killing of a living and innocent human being.

I love to see ideas so clearly expressed, as Budziszewski and Tonkowich have done, particularly ideas this important. Traditional moral views are being systematically excised from public debate in the name of tolerance, but those values are often the very things that can prevent society from destroying itself. This is a battle we cannot passively ignore.