IGF CultureWatch

Last weekend, Oct. 19-20, more than 2,000 members of the religious right held a "Values Voter Summit" in Washington, D.C. Several Republican presidential aspirants--Romney, Giuliani, McCain, Thompson, Huckabee--addressed the group, all (except Giuliani) trying to assert their conservative and religious credentials.

But a couple of odd elements hovered over the event. John McCain spoke movingly of his Christian faith, but one wonders just what values that religion promotes. Only a few days before he had asserted that the Constitution establishes the U.S. as a Christian nation. But of course it does nothing of the sort.

So either McCain is desperately ignorant about the Constitution, not unusual in a politician, I suppose, or else he was mendaciously playing to a voter constituency who apparently believe just that. Neither seems very admirable. Why did no one publicly ask him exactly where the Constitution says that?

Then at the "summit" itself, Mitt Romney praised families with a mother and father and listed the reasons for their superiority, including more financial resources, more parental time with the children, the assurance of "a compassionate caregiver" when someone becomes ill, etc. But notice that all the advantages Romney mentioned of a mother-father family are also true of any gay or lesbian two-parent family.

Theoretically Romney could be telegraphing actual pro-gay marriage views over the head of his audience while seeming to agree with their opposition. I know of philosophers in repressive regimes who have written that way. But based on Romney's record of opposition to gay marriage, it seems more likely that he stupidly just didn't realize that his reasons don't support his conclusion and his religious blinders prevent him from seeing winvite me to their "values voter" summit. I certainly think of myself as a "values voter" since I try to live my life and cast my vote (or abstain) based on my values.

For instance, I value honesty, civil behavior, tolerance (for other tolerant people), a certain amount of social and cultural variety, personal freedom (including economic and sexual freedom), total disjunction of religion and government, freedom for speech and press (including for thoughts that may dismay or offend people). These, among others, are values I hold.

You will probably notice that several of these values are meant to accommodate or provide for a variety of individuals values. We could call them "meta-values." That's primarily because I admit that I don't know enough about every other person's character and capacities to know what will enable them to flourish and find happiness and personal fulfillment. They may even choose wrongly, but it is their life.

Nor, I will quickly add, do other people, much less the government, know enough about me to know what will bring me happiness and fulfillment-and some of those are things that would bore other people: listening to music by certain composers, going to galleries and learning more about art, reading books by authors I like, conversation with a few good friends, settling in every morning with my New York Times, etc.

So how did it happen that the religious right managed to commandeer and monopolize the notion of values, as if to suggest that all the rest of us don't have values at all? Part of the answer must be that people who hold to rock-ribbed values, particularly values said to be divinely revealed, have a hard time taking seriously any other positions said to be values: Real values are my values, other people's values aren't real values.

Another reason may be that people advocating the two main alternative positions, liberals and libertarians, don't seem comfortable asserting their positions as "values," and are even worse at explaining reasons for them-either in social or individual terms. The next time someone asserts the value of free speech, ask them "Why?" and see what happens. They may say it is in the Constitution, which isn't quite true, but even if it were that would only be providing a source of authority, not a reason for it as a value.

Or the next time someone praises tolerance or diversity, ask them why. Diversity is certainly a fact but we seldom celebrate facts. Nobody says, "Celebrate gravity." And tolerance? If we know the right way to think and act, why let people do otherwise? It only promotes social discord and their own ruin. Or so the Saudi Arabians seem to believe.

So it might be helpful if we started promoting our own values as values and explaining the reasons for them. We have to assume our reasons are better than theirs so if they win this rhetorical battle it will only be by default.