Atheists and Libertarians
A TDE reader sends this along: Ayn Rand's Atheists are Crashing the Tea Party. It's a good piece, with a good deal of insight.
One line, though, especially struck me: "What we are seeing here, breaking out into the open, is a fundamental problem that has largely lain dormant: the far right, the Tea Party and much of the Republican Party, in their embrace of libertarian positions that are heavily influenced by Ayn Rand, are flirting with atheism."
I at first recoiled at the statement and scoffed, but then I read it more carefully. "Flirting with atheism." Flirting: to behave amorously without serious intent (Webster).
Okay, that might be appropriate. I mean, if you look into libertarianism, its brightest lights have been atheists or agnostics: Rand, von Mises, Hayek, Chodorov, Rothbard. The godfather of modern libertarianism, Nock, was an Episcopalian minister, but he kept religion, at best, on the back burner. In the words of The Nockian Society's Robert Thornton: "Of the greatest importance [for Nock], then, was the spirit of Christianity, not all the trappings of ecclesiastic religion. Religion, he declared, 'is a temper, a frame of mind; the fruit of the Spirit, as St. Paul says, love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control.' Nock did not find 'any evidence that Jesus laid down any basic doctrine beyond that of a universal loving God and a universal brotherhood of man." He "exhibited a way of life to be pursued purely for its own sake, with no hope of any reward but the joy of pursuing it .....'" Link.
That, needless to say, is not the attitude the Religious Right, whose big circle greatly overlaps with the Tea Party's circle. To the extent that the Tea Party is libertarian, it might be said to "flirt" with atheism and agnosticism, though it strikes me as absurd.
For the life of me, I don't see why libertarianism needs to be atheistic or agnostic. As a Catholic, I'm far more comfortable with American society today than were Catholics with the religiously-inclined America of the 19th century. Sure, the secularism of modern society sickens me, but I'm not the target of any overt prejudice, much less the target of the Klan or the Know Nothings. Things are much more free today, as far as religious practice goes, and as a Catholic, I like this libertarian-like development.
And now I'd like the libertarianism to spread to the economic sphere. I've had such luck with it in the religious sphere, I'd like to see what happens with total freedom in the economic.
In this, I don't see myself as agnostic or atheistic. I even contemplated the problem during Mass on Saturday evening, and nothing came to me. Maybe I'll burn a votive tomorrow morning after the Communion Service, or maybe pray on it during Friday's Mass. Maybe I'll meditate on this line from yesterday morning's Psalms: "It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes." (Ps. 118) Maybe, eventually, an answer will come to me.
And in the meantime, my fellow Christians can continue to harbor the idea that a libertarian is a bad Christian because he flirts with agnosticism and atheism, simply because its leading lights were atheists and agnostics.
I'm just glad they weren't also child molesters. If they were, Tea Partiers, by association, would be flirting with child molesters. The syllogism is so crystal: The libertarians had a disproportionate number of child molesters in their ranks. You, a Christian, like libertarian ideas. You, therefore, are flirting with child molestation.
What could possibly be muddled about that?
Later Addendum: I draw a distinction between Rand and the others, incidentally. Rand was diabolically anti-Christian, to the extent that her loathing of charity and other Christian virtues became a part of the Randian intellectual universe. That's not the case with von Mises and the rest. I would also add that I don't think Rand's anti-Christ views are necessary adjuncts of her anti-Statist and economic worldview (put another way, I think she could've taught her libertarian principles without being a complete wench).
