LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

The New Republic has an article about how fundementalism is splitting the Republican Party.

For conservatives of faith, such pluralism can allow error to flourish--and immorality to become government policy--and therefore must be limited. A conservative of doubt, however, does not regard the existence of such pluralism as a problem. He sees it as an unavoidable fact of modernity, an invitation to lives that are more challenging and autonomous than in more traditional societies. Even when conservatives of doubt disagree with others' moral convictions, they recognize that, in a free, pluralist society, those other views deserve a hearing. So a conservative who believes abortion is always immoral can reconcile herself to a polity in which abortion is still legal, if regulated. Putting government power unequivocally on the side of one view of morality--especially in extremely controversial areas--must always be balanced against the rights and views of citizens who dissent. And, precisely because complete government neutrality may be impossible on these issues, government should tread as lightly as possible. The key in areas of doubt is to do as little harm as possible. Which often means, with respect to government power, doing as little as possible.

Doubt, in other words, means restraint. And restraint of government is the indispensable foundation of human freedom. The modern liberal European state was founded on such doubt. In the seventeenth century, men like Thomas Hobbes and John Locke looked at the consequences of various faiths battling for control of the moralizing state--and they balked. They saw civil war, religious extremism, torture, burnings at the stake, police states, and the Inquisition. They saw polities like Great Britain's ravaged by sectarian squabbles over what the truth is, how it is discovered, and how to impose it on a society as a whole. And they made a fundamental break with ancient and medieval political thought by insisting that government retreat from such areas--that it leave the definition of the good life to private citizens, to churches uncontaminated by government, or to universities that would seek and discuss competing views of the truth.

In the modern world, where disagreement among citizens is even deeper and more diverse than three centuries ago, conservatives of doubt see their tradition as more necessary than ever. As the fusion of religious fundamentalism with politics has destroyed Muslim society and politics, so, these conservatives fear, it threatens Western freedom as well--in subtler, milder, Christian forms. Conservatives of doubt are not necessarily atheists or amoralists. Many are devout Christians who embrace a strong separation of church and state--for the sake of religion as much as politics. Others may be Oakeshottian skeptics, or Randian individualists, or Burkean pragmatists, or libertarian idealists. But they all agree that the only solution to deep social disagreement is not a forced supremacy of a majority or minority, but an attempt to keep government as neutral as possible, power as close to people as possible, and as much economic power in the hands of the private sector as possible.

For such conservatives, divided government is therefore critical. Judicial checks on democratic majorities are as vital as legislative checks on executive abuse. (They are just as queasy removing such parliamentary checks as the filibuster.) The same goes for keeping policy-making as close as possible to states and localities. Why? Because human knowledge is fallible, and those closest to the issues are more likely to get solutions right than people a long way away. The notion that the federal government should actively endorse one religion's perspective on social policy would appall such conservatives. So would the idea that individual states cannot legitimately experiment with policies on which there is no national consensus--such as stem-cell research or marriage rights.