Religious Conviction in Liberal Politics (part 6): Restraint and Religious Liberty

Up to this point in this series I have done my best to represent Eberle's perspective on the role of religious conviction in liberal politics. I am now at the point when I begin to lay out my own take on Eberle's argument. These posts have been lengthy, so I'll reiterate Eberle's argument in brief. Eberle affirms:

[A] citizen has an obligation sincerely and conscientiously to pursue a widely convincing secular rationale for her favored coercive laws, but she doesn't have an obligation to withhold support from a coercive law for which she lacks a widely convincing secular rationale. (10)

In relating his thesis to the claims of justificatory liberalism, Eberle wants to affirm the ideal of conscientious engagement-- all citizens have a moral duty to pursue reasons behind these policies that they can reasonably expect other citizens to accept--while denying the doctrine of restraint--citizens should restrain themselves from supporting coercive laws for which secular (or, in some accounts, public) reasons are unavailable.

Eberle's book is characterized by a remarkable depth of insight and organization. Especially important is his discussion of differing accounts of public reason, a topic that deserves more attention than I can give it here. There is a lot that one can commend in his book, but his conclusion still strikes me as flawed. To pinpoint my main concern, it will help to clarify a two more basic questions that informs the distinction Eberle rightly draws between conscientious engagement and restraint. The ideal of conscientious engagement bears upon the question of how we should engage other citizens when discussing public policy. Does respect entail anything as to how we engage other citizens? Eberle says yes; we should do so with openness and generosity. We should be honest about the principle reasons for our support of a policy. We should pursue reasons that other citizens, especially those with whom we disagree about matters like religion, can accept. We should listen to the counterclaims of our compatriots. Eberle's account of conscientious engagement is commendable; there is little to disagree with here.

The doctrine of restraint, however, bears upon a very different question, a question that Eberle doesn't directly address in his book: Does respect entail anything about the kinds of policies that citizens support? Are there some policies that are by their very nature disrespectful toward those who are unwillingly coerced? Advocates of restraint believe that liberal democratic respect places limits on the range of policies that citizens can justifiably support (i.e. any policy that lacks public justification falls outside the limits of what citizens ought to support). Eberle, however, places no limit on the range of policies that citizens may support--i.e. what citizens actually support is inconsequential to the question of respect--as long as how citizens support these policies lives up to the ideal of conscientious engagement. Respect, in short, only pertains to the manner by which we engage citizens, not the content of the policies that we advocate.

I may well be overstating Eberle's position here. A plausible alternative might be to say that respect does entail limits on policies that can be supported in a liberal democracy but that public justification is irrelevant to these limits. Eberle seems to move in this direction early in his book when he says,

"I believe and will assume throughout this book, that a responsible citizen in a liberal democracy adhere to characteristic liberal institutions and practices. Of particular importance, I believe, and will assume throughout this book, that a responsible citizen will affirm the right to religious freedom. But from the fact that a responsible citizen will adhere to liberal commitments, nothing at all follows about his reasons for those commitments and, in particular, whether he has, or needs a public justification for those commitments" (59).

Eberle's comment delimits the range of policies that reasonable (and, one might add, respectful) citizens may advocate. Policies that are inherently discriminatory, that reject characteristic liberal institutions and practices, or that deny religious freedom, are out of bounds. What is not out of bounds, however, are policies that simply lack public justification.

But here is where I see the principle problem that Eberle's argument faces. On the one hand he wants to affirm that all reasonable citizens will affirm distinctively liberal commitments such as the right to religious freedom. At the same time he also wants to affirm that reasonable citizens may advocate policies premised solely on distinctive religious beliefs not shared by other citizens. But it seems to me quite possible to frame the doctrine of restraint as a natural outgrowth of a liberal conception of religious freedom. My argument proceeds as follows:

(Premise 1) Respect entails that responsible citizens affirm the right to religious freedom;
(Premise 2) Policies premised solely on the religious convictions of some citizens--that is, policies for which there is no compelling secular or public justification--infringe on the right to religious freedom of dissenting citizens.
(Conclusion) Therefore respect requires that responsible citizens not support policies premised solely on the religious convictions of some citizens.

The word solely is important in (2) and (3), above. My point here is not that respect requires that religious citizens bracket religious convictions. I believe that religious citizens, like their nonreligious compatriots, should be free to bring any reasons that inform their support for a coercive public policy. My concern is to rule out support for policies that are lacking any sort of public/secular justification (note: I am aware that I keep blurring the important distinction between "secular" and "public," which I hope to come back to in a future post). Along with other public reason liberals, I believe religious citizens are free to support public policies on the basis of their deeply held religious beliefs. Like other public reason liberals, however, I believe that religious citizens ought not to support coercive policies on the basis of religious beliefs alone. My argument, in short, is that policies premised solely on religious beliefs infringe on the religious liberty of those dissenting from these beliefs.

So what might Eberle say in reply to my defense of restraint as an outgrowth of the liberal commitment to religious liberty? It is clear to me that Eberle affirms premise (1), above, so the real point of difference resides in premise (2). While I believe that any policy premised solely on religious conviction infringes on the religious liberty of those who do not share this conviction Eberle simple denies this claim. Having affirmed the presumptive value of religious liberty, Eberle touches only briefly on the meaning of religious liberty, and his discussion is confined to an endnote (#28, pg. 353):

"I take no stand on the understanding of religious freedom a citizen ought to adopt: I take there to be reasonable differences of opinion among good liberal citizens both on what constitutes religious freedom and about the implications of that right for specific issues. Of course, I am committed to the claim that a citizen who supports his favored coercive laws solely on the basis of his religious commitments doesn't violate his compatriots' right to religious freedom--he isn't imposing his religious commitments on them in a way that violates their religious freedom. And I take it to be clear that he doesn't: that a citizen (or a majority of citizens) supports, say, a flat tax solely on religious grounds does not transmute the flat tax into a religious imposition. Given that, on any reasonable understanding of the matter, the state appropriately taxes its citizens--given that taxation falls under the legitimate jurisdiction of the state--support for a flat tax solely on religious grounds doesn't count as a violation of religious freedom."

From my perspective the flat tax example falls flat, but I'm almost out of time today, so rather than continuing down this path I'll pick up with my argument in my next post. Currently I've got my graduate assistant helping me pull together resources that discuss philosophical, historical, and theological conceptions of religious liberty, which will hopefully inform my own argument in which the concept figures heavily.

Religious Conviction in Liberal Politics (part 5): Why Restraint?

It's been a few weeks since I've written anything, in large part because teaching and grading have consumed a lot of my work time. In my last post I described some plausible reasons to reject the doctrine of restraint (see my earlier posts for a description of the doctrine). In this post I intend to lay out two arguments for the doctrine of restraint. While justificatory liberals share a common commitment to public justification and the doctrine of restraint, there is no consensus about what these commitments entail. Some arguments for restraint are more plausible than others, or so I would argue--admittedly, Eberle finds all arguments for restraint unconvincing. The two I present today, while not exhaustive, illustrate the reasons why liberal scholars intuit restraint as an outgrowth of the commitment to public justification as well as Eberle's response.

Let's start with Lawrence Solum's argument, from his 1990 article in the Depaul Law Review entitled "Faith and Justice." Eberle presents the logic of Solum's argument as follows:

Premise 1: "Society should respect the freedom and equality of citizens."
Premise 2: "Respecting the freedom and equality of citizens requires the giving of reasons that allow one's fellows to accept the government action as reasonable."
Conclusion: "Each citizen ought to articulate publicly accessible reasons in support of her favored coercive laws."

The implication of premise 2 is that when a citizen fails to offer public reasons (i.e. reasons that other citizens actually accept as reasonable) to her compatriots she demonstrates disrespect. Respect entails that we actually give reasons that other citizens can accept. Thus, if we cannot offer reasons that other citizens find reasonable we should restrain ourselves for supporting a coercive policy.

Is Solum's argument convincing? Eberle points to a basic flaw in the argument. The implication of the argument seems to be that if a religious citizen pursues public justification but fails to find adequate reasons that other citizens actually accept then he should restrain himself. This is surely inadequate. There are circumstances where even public reasons won't convince other citizens of the rightness of a public policy. Eberle agrees with Solum that religious citizens should pursue public justification, but pursuit doesn't entail that I will be successful in convincing other citizens. There is a difference between a vision of respect that requires citizens to pursue public justification and one that requires us to be successful in publicly justifying a policy. The later vision seems too strong; sometimes even public reasons don't offer a basis for consensus.

More plausible in my view is Robert Audi's defense of restraint. Audi argues for the principle of secular rationale: a citizen "has a prima facie obligation not to advocate or support any law or public policy that restricts human conduct, unless [she] has, and is willing to offer, adequate secular reason for this advocacy or support (say for [her] vote)" (quote in Eberle, 134). Audi uses a role-reversal argument to defend his version of restraint. For us to treat other citizens as equally valuable we should be willing to reverse roles with them. We should be willing to subject ourselves to the same constraints to which we would subject other citizens. The role-reversal argument applies directly to the idea of restraint: "If the only reasons that move me are religious, and if I would not want to be coerced on the basis of religious reasons playing a like role in someone with a conflicting religious perspective, I would want to abstain from coercion" (Eberle, 135). Eberle presents as an example this hypothetical case to religiously-minded citizens who wish to impose coercive public policies solely on the basis of their religious beliefs:

"[O]ne might ask the religious voters in question whether they would accept comparable restrictions of their conduct . . . on the basis of coercive legislation protecting the dandelion as a sacred species or prohibiting miniskirts and brief bathing suits as irreverent" (Eberle, 136).

If we can imagine for a moment a religious group pressing for a public policy prohibiting the mowing of lawns when dandelions are in bloom, Audi's point should be clear. Citizens who do not believe dandelions to be sacred would feel justifiably upset at the imposition of a law premised solely on this religious belief. Role reversal thus entails that we not impose coercive policies premised solely on our own religious beliefs not shared by other citizens.

I find Audi's argument more plausible than Solum's. In reply, Eberle agrees that as a citizen he would be unhappy about a coercive law that prohibited him from mowing his lawn. He argues that some of his resentment would stem from the lack of rationale justification for the belief in the sacredness of dandelions, but setting aside the question about the rationality of such a belief, Eberle rejects the idea that his resentment of the law has anything to do with the religious foundations used to justify it, and he denies that Audi offers a convincing case for the doctrine of restraint:

"The fact that I'm forcibly inhibited from achieving my aims is a natural source of frustration, anger, and perhaps even resentment. . . . Does this provide the advocate of restraint with the opening necessary to drive home the essential point? I don't believe it does. The frustration, anger, and resentment I'd feel if subject to a law that forbids me to kill dandelions seems to me a consequence not of the fact that my compatriots support that law on the basis of their religious convictions alone, but of the content of that law (as well as of the coercion employed to secure my obedience to that law). It's the coercive law itself that frustrates and infuriates me, not my compatriots' reasons for supporting that law. The imposition of that law inhibits me from attaining ends I very much want to pursue; as a consequence, it's entirely natural and appropriate for me to feel frustration and anger at being so constrained. But I don't see that my reaction has anything in particular to do with my compatriots' willingness to support that law on religious grounds" (138-139).

This post is already getting long, so let me leave readers with a question: is Eberle right that the resentment that we experience when subject to a law with which we disagree is no different when based on exclusively religious grounds? My sense is that there is some difference between a law with which I disagree that can be justified publicly (e.g. a law establishing a flat consumption tax) and one with which I disagree for which public grounds are unavailable (e.g. a law that hinders me on the basis of religious premises that I do not share). While I may object to both laws, my objections are not synonymous. I would object to the flat consumption tax on the basis of other public reasons that I find more convincing. It's difficult to see how one could even begin arguing against a public policy premised solely on religious grounds that I do not share, especially when those grounds are the sole evidentiary basis for the policy. My resentment is heightened by the lack of recourse.

In my next post I intend to lay out in brief my own contribution to this debate, an alternative argument for the doctrine of restraint that draws from the ideal of religious liberty.

Religious Conviction in Liberal Politics (part 4): What's Wrong With Restraint?

In my last post I described the doctrine of restraint, a doctrine that is basic to justificatory liberalism but which Christopher Eberle rejects. In short, Eberle believes that once religious citizens have conscientiously engaged other citizens they do not need to restrain themselves from supporting coercive public policies. Religious citizens may demonstrate respect toward other citizens even as they support public policies solely on the basis of their religious beliefs. In contrast, justificatory liberals believe that religious citizens ought to restrain themselves from supporting public policies that they are unable to justify publicly.

But why is restraint so controversial? Liberals have long valued religious liberty as a basic matter of political justice, and at first glance the doctrine of restraint flows naturally from this commitment; to impose coercive policies solely on the basis of religious premises conflicts with this ideal, or so justificatory liberals might argue (Eberle, of course, disagrees with the premise that policies that flow solely from religious premises inherently violate religious liberty). The seminal political philosophers John Rawls speaks well in this vein. The doctrine of restraint flows first from the reality of reasonable pluralism, the fact that our society consists of a diversity of incommensurable, reasonable conceptions of the good--for a liberal democracy, "the normal result of its culture of free institutions" (Rawls, "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited," 573 in Collected Papers). Because citizens are fundamentally divided about their respective value commitments, it behooves citizens of a liberal democracy to refrain from supporting policies that infringe upon the deeply-held comprehensive beliefs of other reasonable citizens (Rawls, along with other liberal democrats, precludes unreasonable comprehensive beliefs from the mix, which seems right even as it raises the question about what qualifies any belief system as "reasonable"). As Rawls says, "Our exercise of political power is proper only when we sincerely believe that the reasons we would offer for our political actions--were we to state them as government officials--are sufficient, and we also reasonably think that other citizens might also reasonably accept those reasons" ("Public Reason Revisited," 578). The point is that political power in a liberal democracy needs to be united with reasons that can be justified to citizens who do not accept our deeply held beliefs; We need to pursue "public reasons." Restraint is simply the corollary of this commitment. Because the liberal citizen needs to find reasons that may persuade citizens who do not share her religious beliefs, when the liberal citizen is unable to find such reasons she should restrain herself from supporting the policy.

So why does Eberle find the doctrine of restraint so problematic? Surprisingly, Eberle never enumerates his reasons for objecting to restraint, but his concerns are implicit in several places in his book. Most importantly, Eberle believes that the doctrine of restraint puts some religious citizens in an untenable position. At least some religious citizens take obedience to God as the principle mandate for all of life, and for them the prospect of restraining themselves from supporting policies consistent with this obedience will be psychologically "doubtful." Eberle worries that the doctrine of restraint, along with other social dynamics internal to modern liberal democracies, encourages citizens to privatize their religious commitments, to treat them as mere lifestyle choices of little public consequence (144). For citizens who believe that God's will is an overriding concern for human life, the doctrine of restraint entails that they compromise this deeply held conviction in order to participate in public policy discourse, or that they simply abandon public life altogether to remain faithful to God.

Second, Eberle believes that the doctrine of restraint itself lacks any sort of rational justification (i.e. for reasons that we will examine later, he is not persuaded by arguments like that of Rawls, above). Thus, to impose it on religious citizens is itself a violation of the norm of respect. The doctrine of restraint embodies the very browbeating that concerns secular critics of religious citizens (150-151).

Third, Eberle also believes that justificatory liberals have failed to offer a defensible account of what public reason is that at the same time (1) non-arbitrary, and (2) capable of precluding religious reasons without also precluding reasons basic to rudimentary political discourse. But the doctrine of restraint requires some account of what qualifies as a public reason. Because justificatory liberals have yet to offer a defensible definition of public reason that responds effectively to these criticisms, the doctrine of restraint exemplifies one way that non-idealized citizens simply express their own disagreements with one another.

While I'm describing what Eberle believes is wrong with restraint, I'll close with a fourth concern, expressed most forcefully by Jeffrey Stout in his book Democracy and Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). In chapter 3 of his book, Stout responds at length to Rawls's argument for public reason. In his later work, Rawls argues that religious citizens may introduce reasons from their reasonable comprehensive doctrines, religious and otherwise, "provided that in due course public reasons, given by a reasonable political conception, are presented sufficient to support whatever the comprehensive doctrines are introduced to support" (Political Liberalism, li-lii). As Stout observes, this language makes it sound as if religious reasons serve the function of political IOU's, with cash payment to be proffered at some later point. Stout observes that by this standard Christian abolitionists and Martin Luther King Jr. themselves barely qualify; did they ever fulfill this proviso (Democracy and Tradition, 69)? For Stout, as for Eberle, the doctrine of restraint too quickly abandons more dialogical approaches to public discourse that entail giving and listening to one another's reasons, stepping into the shoes of the other, conscientiously engaging other citizens.

As I stated in part 1, I think Eberle is wrong here, but I'm nearing the end of this post. In part 5 I will present one of the stronger arguments for the doctrine of restraint and will explore Eberle's argument against it.

Religious Conviction in Liberal Politics (Part 3): The Doctrine of Restraint

Today I turn my attention to the major issue at the heart of Chris Eberle's book Religious Conviction in Liberal Politics. In my earlier posts I noted that there is a lot about which Eberle and other liberal democratic scholars agree concerning the obligations of respectful citizenship. The ideal of conscientious engagement, which I reviewed in my last post, well summarizes the overlap between Eberle and justificatory liberals. Everyone agrees that democratic respect requires that we sympathetically engage other citizens, trying to view the world from their perspective, seeking out reasons that we believe might reasonably persuade them about the justness of the coercive policies that we support.

But here is the rub: justificatory liberals believe that respect requires more than conscientious engagement. Respect also requires that we restrain ourselves from supporting laws solely on the basis of our comprehensive (e.g. religious) beliefs. For justificatory liberals--scholars like John Rawls, Charles Larmore, Robert Audi, Stephen Macedo, Amy Gutmann, Lawrence Solum, and many others--respect requires public justification of coercion (54). The definitions of public justification and its corollary, public reason, are notoriously complex (and there is notable diversity among justificatory liberals about the proper understanding of the terms), but the general idea is that coercive policies need to be justified on bases that other citizens can accept from within their own comprehensive belief systems. If citizens are unable to find reasons that qualify as public in this sense than it is disrespectful for them to continue advocating the policy.

A lot needs to be said about public reason/justification, but I'm setting this aside for a later post. To get closer to the doctrine of restraint, I want us to consider the case of citizen X once again, a deeply committed religious believer whose religious beliefs motivate him to support the enactment of policy Z. Citizen X's religious faith is fundamental to his support of policy Z. Absent his religious faith, in fact, citizen X realizes that he would feel no real need to advocate for the policy. Nevertheless, citizen X holds fast to his religious belief, and he expresses strong public support for policy Z. What does respect require? For justificatory liberals and for Eberle alike, citizen X needs to realize that many of the citizens who will be affected by policy Z do not share his religious beliefs. He needs to take the concerns of these citizens seriously. He needs to respect them by earnestly seeking reasons for the policy that they might find acceptable (even when those reasons are not his own primary reasons for supporting the policy). He needs to engage in imminent critique, finding ways that they might be able to support policy Z from within their own reasonable comprehensive belief system. In short, he must conscientiously engage them.

But what happens if public justification fails? What if citizen X can find no public reasons capable of convincing reasonable citizens? What if the only reasons available to citizen X are those that emerge from his deeply-held religious beliefs? Justificatory liberals say that citizen X should no longer support the public policy. To continue to advocate for policy Z would show disrespect to other citizens. Respect requires that citizen X restrain himself from supporting the policy. Eberle disagrees. Eberle believes that as long as John makes an earnest effort to pursue public justification he has exercised his moral obligations and may continue to push for the enactment of policy Z, even solely on the basis of his religious beliefs.

In my next post I'll give some explanation about why Eberle believes that the doctrine of restraint to be flawed.

Religious Conviction in Liberal Politics (Part 2): The Ideal of Conscientious Engagement

Yesterday I posted an introduction to the major questions that Chris Eberle explores in his book Religious Conviction in Liberal Politics. I indicated that in my next post I would summarize Eberle's case against the doctrine of restraint, but it has become clear to me that it would be better for me to precede this with a summary of what Eberle's position shares in common with justificatory liberalism (JL). Thus, I'll reserve discussion of the doctrine of restraint for a future post. Today I'll talk about the "ideal of conscientious engagement."

Let's imagine citizen X, a religious person deeply concerned by the direction that culture has taken (note: I'm purposefully avoiding language like "moral decline" or "social injustice" so as to not suggest that citizen X is by nature conservative or liberal. The exact issues of concern are not relevant to the point I'm illustrating). Citizen X feels strongly about a variety of issues, and his religious faith inspires him to speak out on these issues in order to steer public policy to address these problems. But citizen X is faced with a choice about how, precisely, he speaks out about these issues. Citizen X could, for example, simply offer zealous defenses of public policies that flow from his deeply held beliefs irrespective of the protests of citizens who do not share these beliefs. He could strive to martial political power so that policies are enacted consistent with his deeply held beliefs. He could blithely ignore the objections of non-believers, dismissing their reasons as evidence of their heterodoxy or moral depravity.

Liberal theorists would treat this sort of posturing as a quintessential example of disrespect. To ignore the voice of other citizens who do not share one's deeply held religious beliefs is illiberal; we are being bad citizens when we do so. Fortunately, other postures are available to citizen X. Citizen X could choose to conscientiously engage other citizens who do not share his deeply held beliefs. Eberle, with justificatory liberals, argues that conscientious engagement is critical to meaning of respect in a liberal democracy. Conscientious engagement entails some constraints on how we engage other citizens. Eberle highlights 6 constraints that make up the ideal of conscientious engagement. To demonstrate respect for other citizens, Citizen X will do the following (104-105):

(1) She will pursue a high degree of rational justification for the claim that a favored coercive policy is morally appropriate.
(2) She will withhold support from a given coercive policy if she can't acquire a sufficiently high degree of rational justification for the claim that that policy is morally appropriate.
(3) She will attempt to communicate to her compatriots her reasons for coercing them.
(4) She will pursue public justification for her favored coercive policies.
(5) She will listen to her compatriots' evaluation of her reasons for her favored coercive policies with the intention of learning from them about the moral (im)propriety of those policies.
(6) She will not support any policy on the basis of a rationale that denies the dignity of her compatriots.

The ideal of conscientious engagement points to the critical role of discourse in liberal democratic politics. Because laws are coercive it is important that citizens remain open to the reasons offered by other citizens about the merits of public policies, especially those citizens with whom we disagree. In public discourse respect requires that we pursue reasons that we can reasonably expect other citizens will accept, even when we disagree with one another about our comprehensive beliefs (Note: Eberle's appeal to public justification in (4), above, is problematic in relation to the overall logic of his book, in which one of the central claims is that there is no way of establishing a coherent, defensible account of what qualifies as public reason. I hope to address this in a future post).

I'll conclude this post with a concrete example that will clarify what it means to live up to the ideal of conscientious engagement. Public policy pertaining to same-sex relations stands as one of the more controversial public policy issues today. One could well imagine religiously motivated citizens--Christians who believe that same-sex relationships are against natural and divine law, for example--calling for the repeal of laws that forbid discrimination against same sex couples, or advocating for the reestablishment of sodomy laws that punish consensual same-sex activity. Let's imagine that Citizen X is a religiously-motivated citizen of this sort. He is morally opposed to gay marriage. He is against public policies that in his view legitimize same-sex sexual activity (e.g. anti-discrimination laws that protect gay and lesbian individuals), and he laments the invalidation of sodomy laws by the 2003 Supreme Court ruling, Lawrence V. Texas . According to Eberle, the ideal of conscientious engagement requires that citizen X make an earnest effort to communicate the merits of these policies to citizens who do not share his religious beliefs. Citizen X needs to take seriously that the coercive laws that he supports will cause no small amount of distress for those citizens who do not share his beliefs. Thus, he must
seek reasons that these other citizens might reasonably accept, even when these reasons are not the primary reasons why he himself advocates these laws. Citizen X must adopt a posture of openness to the counterclaims of other citizens. On these matters Eberle's vision of liberal democratic respect coincides with that of justificatory liberals.

This is another long post, so I'll close with a cliffhanger. Eberle and justificatory liberals agree about the importance of conscientious engagement. But what does respect require when public reasons are unavailable or evidentially insufficient to justify a public policy? On this point Eberle parts company with JL. I'll turn my attention to this in my next post.

Religious Conviction in Liberal Politics

About a year between posts--I'm feeling sheepish! I'm relaunching my blog, principally because I need a space to get some ideas out on paper, and I find that blog writing is a good way for me to think through things with comments and questions from others. I'm writing a paper this Fall that explores the role of religious conviction in liberal politics. My paper is a reply to Chris Eberle's recent book, entitled (appropriately) Religious Conviction in Liberal Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Eberle offers a dense, tightly argued case against what he calls the "doctrine of restraint." While I find parts of Eberle's argument commendable, I disagree with his main conclusion. My paper is an attempt to rebut his argument, to reaffirm the doctrine of restraint as an important feature of liberal democratic discourse.

Eberle raises two fundamental questions at the heart of current debates about religious conviction in liberal democratic politics:

A. "[I]s it morally appropriate for a citizen . . . to support his favored laws on the basis of his religious convictions?
B. "[I]s it morally appropriate . . . [for him] to support his favored laws on the basis of religious convictions alone?" (8)

The United States has many citizens possessing wide-ranging, incommensurable religious (and non-religious) beliefs. Many religious citizens feel very strongly about these beliefs, and understandably these beliefs inform perceptions of issues on issues like abortion, same-sex marriage, stem cell research, and the like. But to the degree that we are divided about comprehensive beliefs, what role should these beliefs play in informing public policy debates? Laws are coercive; they punish, they limit, and they threaten the sanction of the state when they are broken. Is it appropriate for citizens to support laws on the basis of their religious beliefs, even knowing that these beliefs are not shared by other citizens?

Many liberal theorists say "Yes" to question A. There is nothing disrespectful about religious citizens allowing their religious beliefs to inform their attitudes about public policy. How could it be otherwise? More controversial, however, is B. Justificatory liberals--theorists like John Rawls, Charles Larmore, Bruce Ackerman, Robert Audi, and Amy Gutmann--argue that supporting favored laws solely on the basis of one's religious beliefs is morally inappropriate (i.e. they say NO to question B). We disrespect other citizens when we advocate coercive laws solely on the basis of religious beliefs that they do not accept. We are bad citizens when we do so. According to justificatory liberals, respect in a liberal democracy entails that we offer public justification for coercive laws. We need to find public reasons that other citizens can accept, reasons that do not require them to abandon their own reasonable comprehensive beliefs.

Debates about the role of religious reasons in public discourse are not new, but Eberle does an uncommon job of injecting new life into the conversation with his incisive, balanced description of justificatory liberalism (JL), the principle opponent that he critiques in this book. JL actually encompasses a range of liberalisms that are often treated separately (e.g. Rawlsian liberalism and deliberative democratic theory qualify as forms of JL). Eberle identifies two claims at the heart of justificatory liberalism:

"(1) the Principle of Pursuit: a citizen should pursue public justification for his favored coercive laws.
(2) the Doctrine of Restraint: a citizen should not support any coercive laws for which he lacks a public justification." (68)

Justificatory liberals affirm both (1) and (2). Eberle, in contrast, affirms (1) but denies (2). He agrees with JL that citizens must pursue public justification for favored coercive laws, but he believes that once a citizen has exercised that burden that good citizens may continue to support coercive laws when public reasons are unavailable or public justification unsuccessful. My paper, in short, is meant to reaffirm the importance of (2) and to respond to Eberle's critique of justificatory liberalism.

This post has gotten long. In my next post I'll lay out Eberle's case against the doctrine of restraint.

Reading Keynes

With all of the debate circulating about the economic crisis I've decided to become an economist. No, not really, but I admit that some of the intense conversations I've had with colleagues across the political spectrum have made me wish that I was more conversant in real economic theory, not the tired half truths that I find all of us spouting. I am no expert in economic theory, but I find myself wanting to pretend that I'm one quite often online. I've decided that instead of continuing to add to the pabulum of cliches and witty retorts about the inner workings of free market, the diabolical machinations of "socialists," and the ethics of taxing citizens to pay for Wall Street bailouts that I'd step back and do some more reading before proceeding with the conversation.

Enter John Maynard Keynes. As I've said, I'm not an economist, but I have read enough to know that Keynes figures as a seminal figure in 20th century. Much of the recent debate about the U.S. response to the economic crisis centers on the relative merits of Keynesian economics. Paul Krugman's recent article in the New York Times Magazine draws attention to the rift that, generally speaking, has divided economists in the central United States (Chicago, etc.) from their west and east coast colleagues (the Ivys, etc.) over Keynes's insight into the way that markets work and the role of governmental response to recessions. An economics professor at my university recommended a few books for me to read, but I decided (perhaps against my better judgment, as it were) to eschew some of the more recent laymen's introductions to economics for Keynes himself. Yesterday I picked up a copy of Keynes's The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money (1935). My goal is to work slowly through the book in order to get a better understanding of what Keynes himself is saying. Could be slow going indeed; I'm not conversant in all of the language of the economics guild, but I'm hoping that my wading through deep waters won't be for not. Perhaps my readers might have something to gain as well. More to come!