Noah Millman has an interesting contribution to the ongoing debate begun by Damon Linker at TNR which was taken up by Deneen and Larison. (All the appropriate links to earlier posts on this question can be found on the posts I link to above.) Linker, I think, misjudges Larison and Deneen, but not Millman insofar as Millman thinks it's impossible to define where cultural issues end and political issues begin. I address this question in my post from a couple of years ago, "Religion and Politics."
Millman argues from a premise that must be rejected. Politics in a pluralistic society has nothing to do with defining the good life. It has instead to do with defining rules for adjudicating between competing interests in a pluralistic society. Those rules in order to be fair have to assume an attitude of neutrality toward all metaphysics and moral systems. Politics must strive to operate in a framework that respects different values complexes and metaphysical worldviews, but is itself organized around valuing the promotion of good citizenship which has mainly to do with promoting and protecting citizen rights. Here's the nub of his argument:
It’s not possible because there is no agreed upon boundary between “mere life” and “good life” questions; because there are liberal virtues the lack of which among the citizenry will make it impossible to sustain a liberal polity; and because propagating those virtues through education necessarily involves the state in conflict with those citizens who radically dissent from liberal metaphysics.
Whether or not it's possible to define such boundaries is irrelvant because questions of the good life/mere life are not relevant to politics in the political sphere in pluralistic society. If you are going to embrace pluralism–and we don't really have a sane choice to do otherwise–then you have to develop a values neutral political sphere that treats the pluralism of groups with their metaphysics and moral vision equally. The state is only concerned that these groups and the individuals in them treat one another with a basic level tolerance and respect.
Concerns about the good life are for the cultural sphere alone, and the state has only the responsibility to see that individuals or groups are not impeded by other groups or the state in defining what the good life means in the plurality of ways people seek to define it. The state has no stake in traditional definitions, but it respects traditional definitions. The only values that are appropriate to the state are those that promote good citizenship, which comprise in the main respect for the rule of law, tolerance of the Other, and respect for the rights of other citizens as constitutionally defined.
In other words, in order to be deemed a good citizen, one has to accept that he lives in a culturally pluralist society, and that nobody imposes his cultural values on the other in the political sphere. That's the only values principle that the state should care about. Individuals can persuade and proselytyze their metaphysics or moral vision in the cultural sphere, but must understand that they cannot legislate their metaphysics or their moral ideas about the good life. Ethics in the political sphere is solely determined by neutral human rights or citizen rights framework. The only ethical values the state cares about are those that protect rights and promote the respect for the rights of others to define the good life for themselves.
Now Millman would object:
Your personal “good life” may involve freedom to beat your purported inferiors with impunity, but the liberal state won’t allow you to pursue it because that interferes pretty fundamentally with the well-being and good-life-pursuit of those purported inferiors. If, on the other hand, you can form a community of sado-masochists to engage on consensual beating activities, the liberal state has nothing to say about that. So far, so good.
But not all injuries are physical. Pornography, blasphemy, hate-speech: all have been alleged to cause real injury to some people’s psyches, and I don’t see the basis on which to dispute the testimony of the injured. How is the liberal state to respond to such allegations?
I don't see the problem. I'd answer that in a pluralistic society, the protection and exercise of one's speech rights always trumps when it comes into conflict with those who are offended by the exercise of them. Being offended is not the same thing as having one's rights impinged upon. (If someone wants to argue the point, please bring it up in comments.) We allow people to express the vilest opinions so long as they don't impede the pursuit of the good life of those offended. Harassment, it should be obvious, is a different issue, and individuals or groups should be protected from it. His arguments in the subsequent paragraphs don't hold water because the state has no stake in insuring the good life for any individual or group; it is concerned only to protect their rights. If I'm missing his point, someone explain it to me.
Then Millman brings up education:
Yes, but those values are determined first and foremost by the commitment to pluralism. There should never be any attempt to get into discussions of value except to treat different values systems respectfully. I reject the assumption that education is about building character. That's the province of the family and the churches. The public-school system has no interest in buidling character except to promote good citizenship and the virtues of tolerance and respect for others in a pluralistic society. It is otherwise concerned to give students the opportunity to be exposed to what is known about the world in which we all live and to give them the opportunity to assimilate as best as possible the body of knowledge in various subjects in a metaphysically values neutral way.
Then as an example, he brings up evolution:
Is that what the state is doing? Put simply: yes. The state takes the perspective that learning science is good for you and so it teaches science. The state doesn’t teach evolution because of neutrality; it teaches evolution because it endorses a substantive, value-laden judgement about what citizens should know and understand.
This is a big deal. Liberals should be aware that it’s a big deal. Families are ontologically and chronologically prior to the state. Among the core things families are about is self-replication – and that means replicating culture, religion, and values as well as genes.
Is he saying that students shouldn't be taught biology or chemistry if it impedes with the family's right to preserve its cultural prerogative to replicate itself? I could do a whole post unpacking the implications of this assumption, but his argument holds no water if it's accepted that every American child should be taught as objectively as possible the facts concerning the current state of knowledge in different spheres. I'd argue that parental enforcement of ignorance is a form of child abuse.
If the parents or churches have a different interpretation about what the facts are, they can teach that to the kids outside of school. I'd be fine if kids were taught about intelligent design or creationism in a Theory of Knowledge type class in which it was presented as a possible interpretation of the data alongside other interpretations. A central premise in being an American is the freedom to choose
How do the Amish handle this? Someone correct me if they know for sure, but my guess is that they tell their children, "This is what the English think; this is what we think."
If we accept that the state only has a stake in promoting the virtues of good citizenship, it is not some usurpation of parental rights to insist that students be aware of what other people think, so long as the views of religious minorities are not denigrated. Does that mean that the children of young earth Christian parents should leave the room when carbon dating is explained and the teacher talks about how the earth is 4.5 billion years old? No. It's up to the parents to explain it, and it's up to the kids to make up their own minds what they want to accept as the best interpretation of the facts.
P.S. The Liberal Linker, by the way, takes a position very much like mine with regard to abortion, to wit, that it should be de-constitutionalized and left to the states:
Prior to Roe v. Wade, the Constitution took no stand on abortion. Instead, each state was allowed to resolve the issue (imperfectly) in its own way while the country as a whole — its fundamental law — remained silent on the issue. (This, by the way, is also how the issue is handled in socially liberal Western Europe, where democratically elected legislatures readily place modest restrictions on abortion that would never be allowed to stand under current American constitutional law.)
But all of this changed with Roe. Some Americans believe that an abortion is an act of lethal violence against an innocent human being whose rights (like everyone else's) should be protected by the state. Other Americans believe that the only legally relevant moral considerations in an abortion are the wishes of the pregnant woman — which of course presumes that the fetus is not a human being in need of protection against lethal violence. These are contrary and incompatible metaphysical assumptions about matters of life and death and human dignity. On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court declared that the fundamental law of the United States affirms the position of the second group and rejects the views of the first. On that day, the Constitution ceased to be neutral on this matter of metaphysics.
Exactly.
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